What are my chances?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
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<p>Thanks in advance for the feedback! Be as harsh as you need to, I would like an honest assessment and whether or not I need to change focus for my applications.</p>

<p>I'm a girl, thinking of doing polisci or pre-law.</p>

<p>SATs - superscore of 2320, 800 Reading, 770 Math, 750 Writing
SAT IIs - Chinese - 800, Literature - 780, Math I - 800 (yeah, I took the wrong math on accident)</p>

<p>Taking the hardest courses my school has (IB/AP classes)- as of senior year, I will have taken (plus AP scores):
IB/AP AB Calculus (5)<br>
IB/AP Chemistry SL (4)
IB/AP English IV (Lit-5, Lang-5)<br>
AP Government (4)
IB/AP US history (5)<br>
AP Statistics (TBD)
IB/AP European history (5)<br>
IB/AP Chinese V (5)
IB/AP Economics (TBD)</p>

<p>My grades kind of went to hell junior year, I dropped about 20 ranks and am now 31/540 students, GPA is a 3.9 unweighted out of 4, and a 5.44 weighted out of 6. I really wish I had tried harder junior year but it's kind of late now.</p>

<p>Extra-curriculars:</p>

<p>Debate team president (100+ members, 4 years as a member), I do policy debate competitively on the national circuit, consistently end up top 32 teams and/or final/semifinals at a tournament. I spend most of my time doing stuff for debate - researching, etc takes up ~50 hours a week so I really don't do many other things..</p>

<p>Chinese Club president (45+ members, 4 years as a member) - I speak the language fluently, and I co-founded the club during Freshman year. We meet twice a month to do tutoring for beginners in the language, learn chinese history, games/movies etc</p>

<p>National Honor Society - member as of senior year,
IB Student Organization member,
Mu Alpha Theta member as of senior year</p>

<p>Volunteering -
Most of this is also debate related, I attended a summer camp where we taught and coached incoming debaters for around 12 hours a day for three weeks, added up to about 300 or so hours.</p>

<p>Every other week or so I do judging and coaching at local debate tournaments, Friday-Saturday for about 8 hours a day.</p>

<p>IB CAS hours require some other stuff, so I have a few miscellaneous ones volunteering with Red Cross - CPR training, food shelters, water stand for a marathon.</p>

<p>Awards -
National Merit Semifinalist (PSAT - 235), will probably get Finalist but those haven't been announced yet.
National AP Scholar
Graduating Summa Cum Laude from my school, although that's only recognized by the district so I'm not sure how much that really matters (side note - should this be on my common app, or do I just leave it out?)
Chinese Knowledge Contest finalist - sophomore year, the Chinese government hosted a knowledge/writing contest internationally and invited the top scorers for a free trip to Sichuan. I was invited but turned it down since it was in the middle of the school year.
Lots of debate stuff - individual tournament trophies, "Superior Distinction Award" by the National Forensics League, etc.
Piano - I used to enter competitions until about junior year, never did super well - won 2nd place at a statewide festival junior year, and got Solo contest "superior" awards.</p>

<p>My recommendations should be fairly strong, one teacher loves me but not so sure about the other one. For my essay I'm writing about an experience when I went to school in China for about a month during summer and how that changed my views of the American school system/government.</p>

<p>I know most of my focus has been on debate during high school, so most of the colleges I'm applying to have pretty strong debate programs that I think would boost my chances. But Columbia not so much, so do you guys think my narrow focus might have hurt me a little?</p>

<p>Thanks! If I missed anything crucial, please tell me instead of just skipping it!</p>

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<p>Forgot to mention - I’m Asian, I know that lowers my chances somewhat/maybe a lot.</p>

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<p>~bump</p>

<p>120 views and no replies? Help me out here :(</p>

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<p>The math will hurt you
they won’t know why you took Math I instead of Math II :/</p>

<p>Your ECs don’t show that much depth besides the Chinese club one. But that’s a school club…</p>

<p>but your academics are pretty strong as well as your test scores (besides Math I)</p>

<p>I think the narrow focus is good! It shows a strong part of you!</p>

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<p>I’m sorry nebbish but thats not true. The admissions department doesn’t care at all if you take Math I or Math II because they just want to see the highest scores possible from the applicant. Largely because on their statistics sheet of admitted students when they average the SAT IIs it doesn’t take into consideration whether it was Math I or Math II. They just average the top 2 scores of each admitted student regardless. And for those who think that Math I is simple, think about this: if you get an 800 on Math 1 you are in the 99th percentile, but if you get a 800 in Math II you are in the 94th percentile due to the extremely large number of people who get a perfect score on Math II due to the extremely generous curve. And no I did not make this information up, this is directly from an member of the admissions department at Columbia who my college counselor spoke to in order to help me decide which test to take.</p>

<pre><code> OP: I think your chances are pretty good. Again there is nothing about you that is a hook or that truly sets you apart but your academics are strong and your SAT is very strong in the two subjects that matter the most (Math and CR). I would say that you have probably a 30-40% admissions rate based on the number of students who get accepted who have an 800 in CR is about 30%. By the way, your academic profile is extremely similar to mine except you have a few more APs than me but I have a slightly higher SAT :p.
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<p>Hope this helps and I hope to see you in the class of 2016!</p>

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<p>Thanks for the feedback!</p>

<p>From what you guys said it seems like Columbia seems to place more of a focus on GPA/test scores? In that case it feels like my class rank would hurt me quite a lot >.<
How much do extracurriculars factor in? Is something like debate not valued as highly since the school doesn’t really have a debate team? I figured that would be a stronger aspect of my app than Chinese club, tbh.</p>

<p>Thanks for the great advice on the SAT! I hadn’t known the difference in percentiles for Math I and II, that’s really helpful. I also asked the counselor at my school and she said it wouldn’t make much of a difference since I wasn’t applying for a math/science major. It was a really dumb mistake on my part, though lol.</p>

<p>Good luck brandnew3773, hope we both get in! And yeah ugh that writing section was just horrible. I don’t think I ever gotten higher than an 8 on the written portion, even though I’ve never scored below a 9 for any of the AP essays.</p>

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<p>Well colleges like Columbia and the other Ivys place a high value on things that make their statistics look good. EG: they want a large number of applicants who are in the top 10% of their class and students with high SAT scores because that is what they are reporting in their admissions statistics. So luckily for you, you are in the top 10% at your school so you won’t hurt Columbia’s statistics and with Math and Reading SAT Is as high as yours, you can actually help raise their average SAT score of the accepted class. I hate to say it, but the more prestigious the college the more they care about beating the other top universities on paper. That translates into them being very very unlikely to accept students with low SATs or low class ranks unless there is some awesome hook to them that makes it worth it.</p>

<pre><code>On your other point, ECs are very important but not nearly as important as test scores and class rank/(to a smaller extent) GPA. That being said, as far as ECs go, debate is one of the best ECs to do that aren’t directly recruited for (e.g. sports/ musicians/ artists etc.) The reason being is because debate by its very nature is an extremely intellectual EC. It requires a lot of complex thinking and being able to think quickly while under pressure which is why colleges like to accept students who are good at debating because they know that they will probably be able to succeed in a rigorous classroom environment.

But yeah the writing section on the SAT is horrible. I got an 800 on CR, 790 on math and 740 on writing all because I can’t remember some stupid obscure grammar rules. Luckily colleges like the math and CR better than writing anyways so…
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<p>Lol, the writing section is the easiest part of the SAT. The grammar rules are simple and the essay is formulaic. But whatever on that - you have a good chance, OP, the only thing that I can see hurting you in any way is that class rank, especially if there are other people from your school applying with a higher one. Barring that, all your stats are more than sufficient and you a better chance than most.</p>

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<p>I think your chances are pretty good…</p>

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<p>brandnew - hadn’t really thought about that for college statistics, but it makes a lot of sense. By that logic though class rank also shouldn’t matter as much, should it? As long as you’re within the top 10%, it all basically reflects the same way on their admission statistics (unless you’re valedictorian or salutatorian, which is like impossible at my school; they’re both monsters who don’t really do anything but study and do homework). At least, that’s the only way I’ve seen schools break down their statistics for class rank.</p>

<p>francis - you’re right, the writing seems like it should be really easy which makes it twice as aggravating when you don’t do well -.-
I got an 80 on it for the PSAT since I’d had an English teacher who was really into hammering us with this grammar work book, so I didn’t even study for the SAT when I took it. Probably not a good choice, in hindsight (I’d forgotten most of the rules after a year).</p>

<p>Like I said before, I kind of slacked off junior year and ended up dropping a ton of ranks :frowning:
My school’s pretty competitive within the top few ranks, a 0.01 difference can drop you 5 or 6 places. Not many from my school are applying to Columbia though, they’re all the math/science MIT/Caltech/Stanford types. Lucky me I guess :D</p>

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<p>Ah, I totally understand that. I tanked the math section, not because it was hard, but because I would just freeze up and find myself totally unable to think. It was terrible. But they don’t really look at writing, anyway. The class rank thing should be fine as long as no one else from your school is applying - they won’t be able to tell that you slacked off, I certainly wouldn’t be able to if you hadn’t said so.</p>

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<p>I think your stats are pretty mediocre. You’ll be lucky to even get into Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University.
JK, you should really work harder in school though</p>

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<p>you’re definitely a strong candidate! your standardized testing is great (other than the math 2 but since you’re not applying to sciences/math i dont see how that could hurt you a lot). your ecs are great and just with some great essays you have a fair chance :)</p>

<p>will u chance me back …)=</p>