<p>Hey, all. I've been trying to work out my college list (I'm a senior and Asian-American btw) and am having trouble with certain things. In general, my stats are: </p>
<p>GPA: 3.6 UW, 4.2 W (Top 10%, valedictorian has ~4.7) with increasing gpa year by year (for senior year ALONE I'm looking at probably a 4.6 or 4.7 weighted GPA)
SAT: 2340
SAT IIs: Chemistry and Math II, both 700+
ECs: National Merit Commended, Good/great otherwise (decent community service, internships, etc.)</p>
<p>I'm sorry I can't elaborate more but I'm a bit paranoid. Anyway, my dilemma is that I don't know what schools to apply to. Do I even have a shot at schools like Penn/Duke? I ask because despite my high SATs, my GPA is a bit low for these schools (average accepted GPA from Penn and Duke from my school hovers around 4.5 weighted, though they do have lower SATs than I do). Thus, because there is such a difference between my GPA and SAT, I'm not really sure what my chances are at schools like I just mentioned. </p>
<p>** TLDR: ** I have an average GPA and high SATs. What schools can I look at that I have a realistic shot of getting into? I don't want to suffer by shooting too high. Then again, I don't want to shoot too low. Also, how much would my chances change if I applied ED to Penn or Duke?</p>
<p>I’m just going to be completely honest with you so please don’t be offended. You are seriously reaching for both Duke and Penn because of how low your GPA is and because you’re Asian. Your ECs don’t sound strong compared to Ivy League acceptees and your GPA is much lower than theirs. Also when looking at the stats for Ivy league acceptees, you have to add a little something because you’re Asian. Studies have shown for top universities, Asians generally have by far the highest stats of accepted students. You have to add something like .1 to the GPA and 80 points to the SAT to get the Asian average. It sounds horrible to say this but URM stats partially contribute to making the stats for those schools look lower and students with special circumstances also do so. You should probably lower your target schools a bit. I would say try for schools like NYU, Wake Forest, and Wisconsin, which by the way is seriously underrated. GPA is still the most important stats for colleges to look at and that is your weakness. That was also my problem when I applied to schools. I had strong test scores but a relatively weak GPA and it cost me quite a bit when I applied to schools like Northwestern, Virginia and Michigan. I didn’t get into any of them despite having test scores that ranged from the 65th percentile to above the 75th percentile.</p>
<p>By hiding everything for the sake of anonymity, you kind of defeat the purpose of a chance thread. You want to know if you will get in but you only reveal part of yourself to us and then use the completely subjective term “good” to describe your ECs. With so much unknown, any chance is kind of pointless because of the number of assumptions that have to be made. Highlight a few of your best ECs, you don’t have to specifically say where it is, i.e. financial intern at Goldman Sachs in NYC, but you can say financial intern, which hardly reveals anything about yourself. But if you are uncomfortable with giving these details, just realize that no one can chance you accurately or give you accurate suggestions. Maybe your ECs are remarkable and my suggestions for schools are a little lower than what you could get into but I can’t say without knowing. I do, however, suggest that you don’t discount schools that you believe are “beneath” you just because you haven’t really looked into them or your parents feel they are not good schools. You’ll find that there are quite a good excellent schools that are not Ivy caliber and have plenty of students going there that were accepted to Ivies but chose not to go because a certain program is very strong and they got scholarships.</p>
<p>With the caliber of schools you want to go to, every little thing counts, GPA and test scores are only the first step, plenty of people with 3.9s and 2300+ SATs get rejected from these schools so what sets the admitted people apart from the others is their ECs. You should look at people who have previously gotten accepted to Ivy league schools and see what their ECs look like as well as their GPAs. From my experience, unless they were a URM or had the absolute most amazing ECs, such as founding companies that had revenues over $100k a year, they had at least 3.9 GPAs and 2300+ SATs. I don’t think I have ever seen an Asian get admitted with anything less than a 3.85.</p>