GPA w: 3.891 uw: 3.4 ish
Act:29
Sat2: math 740
Extra curriculars:
4 years of cross country, one expected varsity letter senior year, one year of tennis junior year
4 years debate team, officer position junior and senior year (2 years total)
4 years science Olympiad, one 4th place award junior year
4 years math team, about 60 hours of volunteering from this
Sophomore cabinet, junior cabinet, senior cabinet, and student council, all student government and leadership groups
Lifeguard summer of junior year for 40 hours a week, 4 days a week
166 hours of volunteering at a science museum, 60 from math team, 39 with the Red Cross, 26 from a golf tournament
State: Ohio
Ethnicity: Asian
Thanks so much! Ill chance you back if you want! Just post a link in the comments!
UW only considers your unweighted gpa, which is low. However, if that gpa represents lower grades that have improved a lot this past year it could help. Your grades are also lower than one would expect with your ACT score- this could mean a lack of studying. Underperforming could mean you do not have the study skills to be successful at a rigorous university such as UW. EC’s are no substitute for a lesser academic record. Summer activities do not count as EC’s. What you have shown here sounds like you spent too much time doing things other than learning the material to get the best grades. School work has to come first.
I never heard that summer activities don’t count as ECs. So if a student works full time all summer or does volunteer work in summer - that’s not relevant to his/her college application?
Also it’s not like I took the easy classes… I took the most rigorous courseload as possible, with 7 ap courses, and my Senior year I’m taking 3 more, as well as chemistry and neuroscience at OSU…
Why would they count? EC means extra after the curriculum- shows how students do more than just classroom work during the school year. I can’t see how spending one’s summer doing A or B instead of C necessarily matters. I think EC’s with top grades show how a student can handle a rigorous workload and still have time to do more. Summers count as activities but not “extra” in addition to school work. I can see an essay about how volunteering, working or learning an academic or other skill enriched a student but not giving more weight to the volunteer or paid worker than the student who went to an academic or sports camp or traveled. None were done in addition to doing the classwork to get top grades.
In this student’s case I see time spent on activities where more time spent on studying may have made a huge difference in getting more A’s than B’s. Time management fell short.
I believe extra curricular activities to mean extra curricular, i.e. outside of school, therefore summer activities would certainly count. Doing ANYTHING during summer (camp, work, volunteering, sports) shows that the applicant didn’t just sit around staring at his or her computer screen all summer! Summer activities prove a student wants to better him or herself.