What are my chances? T20s

Academics

  • demographics: white male
  • Grade: 12th
  • Major: economics/business
  • SAT/ACT: 1570/35
  • GPA un/weighted: 3.6, 4.8
  • (college) gpa: 3.6
  • credits obtained in dual-enrollment by the time I graduate: 84
  • national merit semifinalist pending finalist

ECs:

  • manage/developed two virtual item-based trading websites, own both (unnamed for privacy), through both those and my deals outside sites have profited ~$4000
  • internship at a carpentry firm, learned basic house structure and builds in autocad for around a year
  • work for my university as a paid stats tutor since july
  • worked in a restaurant since march 2019
  • jv cx/track

rec letters: got to read one of mine, the other is unknown. first one is from a college prof in a 400-level course with a very good recommendation, like a 8.5/10 imo, other is from a precalc teacher in freshman year that I have faith in

essays: seem good?

Without needing a chanceme, I know there are weak points of my application, but I’m mostly hoping other parts of my app will make up for it. 3.6 is extremely weak, I didn’t have a very strong freshman year (3.1) but had a straight 4.0 in all ten classes junior year

thanks for looking!

Academics are def impressive. where r u applying? probs a good shot at the ivies

harvard/toronto/yale/nyu/cornell/columbia/dartmouth, a few others

currently at a top ~250 or so uni in south florida

Toronto will not care about your freshman year at all. This will help your chances quite a bit. The same would be true of McGill if you want to add it to the list. I think that they are your best chances of the schools on your list.

Be sure to add some safeties so you’re not disappointed. I encourage you to read stats threads on this site from previous years on the schools you mentioned because it’s important you know the competition. Last year there were two students from my D’s school, both IB diploma candidates, both with 4.0 UW GPAs, one a national merit scholar, both with very high SATs, both with strong EC’s and awards, one with state music award and one with 2 yrs lab research. Neither got into any ivies, neither got into Northwestern or Norte Dame. One applied ED Princeton, and one ED U of Chicago; both were denied. One ended up at Emory and the other at U of Minnesota. The only kid in the class who got into an Ivy League (Yale), had all of the above plus she went on a 6-month survivalist in the woods expedition where she foraged for food and then wrote a book about it. Seriously, the competition is brutal unless you have a hook. There’s no harm in aiming high but you also want to be realistic. There are plenty of great colleges where you can be happy and successful. I wish you the best of luck.

1 Like

Was thinking of applying to BU, both parents went there. A possibility, but not sure if I would want to