<p>GPA: 4.0
SAT
M:660
R: 660
W: 600
I will be taking three subject tests soon, US History, Math 1, Math 2. On practice tests I score mostly in the low to mid 700s for all three of them.</p>
<p>I take mostly Ap college level classes</p>
<p>Involvements:
DECA
NHS*
SGA
MAO (math club)*
KEY club
Environmental Club
Previously involved with Band
No sports :(
* means I'm an officer</p>
<p>I have a successful tutoring business
I work at a food pantry once a week</p>
<p>I also volunteered and worked on several political campaigns and know local politicians very well</p>
<p>If they defer you, you are automatically considered for regular decision and you can send in updated scores. If they reject you, no, you cannot apply for regular decision.</p>
<p>^Yes, conventional wisdom for most schools is that if your scores are not comfortably within the mid 50% of admitted students, and you’re unhooked, then you risk being rejected in the early round, </p>
<p>A politician’s rec letter is worse than useless. It would HURT because it dilutes the rest of your LORs. It’s not WHO writes it, it’s WHAT it says about you.</p>
<p>Your SAT scores are the problem. If your scores were 200 points higher, you’d have the same 7.3% chance as other applicants. Realistically, your chances are significantly lower than 7.3%.</p>
<p>Lets say I score in the low to mid 700s for my subject tests and score mostly in the mid 700s for all three sat tests if I retake it, will i have a decent chance then?</p>
<p>You don’t need to take Math 1 and Math 2. Just take Math 2. Also, you would rather take two subjects tests in ones day instead of three if you can avoid it.</p>
<p>In the last application cycle one of my daughter’s HS classmates, in addition to having a high class rank and near-perfect test scores, was a conservatory-level Cellist, state champion debater, sang with an internationally-aclaimed boys choir and taught himself to speak, read and write Mandarin Chinese by spending his evenings with a local Chinese family. He is a caucasian with zero primary schooling in Chinese, and he was accepted to the University of Oxford in England to study Chinese. </p>
<p>@gus447 what special talents and accomplishments do you have that might set you apart from Princeton’s extraordinary national and international applicant pool?</p>
<p>@gus447 I think you should take @arwarw’s above post with a grain of salt. Yes, he/she is speaking some truth. Princeton’s applicant pool is incredibly diverse, skilled and multitalented. However, don’t lose hope just because you haven’t taught yourself Mandarin. I know a girl who got into Princeton with just the basics. She did a few ECs she was personally passionate about, she did lots of community service at a soup kitchen right next door, played the standard one varsity sport. She was a straight-A student. She tested well; I believe she got something around a 2200 SAT. Good essays. She was white, so not a URM.</p>
<p>The point of this anecdote is to say that for every extreme case like @gus447’s, there is a counter-example. The world of college applications, especially in the HYPSM world, isn’t black and white. You can get into Princeton. Your chances are around 7%. You can get into these schools without being a once-in-a-generation genius. You don’t even have to stand out above the rest.</p>
<p>The odds will never be in your favor no matter what you do, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t send in your application. Plenty of people have gotten in that weren’t even conservatory-level cellists or state champion debaters.</p>
<p>That being said, your chances still hover just under seven percent. My advice is, don’t get your hopes up but don’t let them get down either. If you got in? Great! You won the metaphorical lottery. If you got rejected? So what? You lost the metaphorical lottery. </p>
<p>@arwarw and @merlion both well said. With a daughter who went SCEA, it will be very interesting. The reality is that the best we can hope for is to be part of the roughly 7%.</p>