I really love UPenn and my brother is going there next year for grad school but I’m afraid my low GPA will not let me in.
Right now I have a 3.7 UW, but that is an upward trend, since I got 6 B’s in Sophomore year. I’ve taken the most rigorous courses at my school and around 10 AP classes. Other than those 6 B’s I have all A’s.
My ACT score is a 34.
My extracurriculars are great + I’m president of 2 clubs. I have some pretty great awards, though they aren’t that big - AMC 10 AMIEE placer, gold key, etc).
I’m Asian American - female. I think my essays will be pretty good - though not outstanding.
I got a 760 on my USH SAT 2 (should I submit?)
I want to major in English and go to law school afterwards.
Also, speaking of law school - I would like to attend law school. Which school do you think is best for that? I really like williams because it gives me a good chance, but I feel limited in the number of opportunities it gives.
Right now it looks like Penn is the best school for ED for you. I think Williams is much harder to get I to then Penn.
Williams has a 42% ED acceptance rate. Penn has around 24%. Duke has 25%.
Why do you think Williams is harder to get into?
Duke, Penn and Dartmouth are harder to get into than Williams is. Go with the school that you feel most comfortable at!
I think the ED rate is misleading. I think kids who got into Williams also are kids who might get accepted to Harvard, Yale and Princeton, they just prefer LACs. Dartmouth is not easy to get in either. I don’t know about Duke. Penn you may have a slight edge because your brother is there but your GPA is not the best. So they are all reaches. That’s why I said Penn.
I think of all those Williams or Dartmouth would be the easiest, but they are all very competitive.
@DrGoogle, I went to an elite private boarding school in the NE that routinely sends ~15% of each graduating class to HYPS and ~40% to Ivy+Stanford+MIT+Duke+Chicago, and even most people here don’t consider Williams to be Ivy-level (both in terms of selectivity and prestige). Kids here who get into Wililams and the mid-Ivies almost always choose the mid-Ivies (I have one friend who chose Brown, and one who chose Duke over Williams essentially without a second thought). There’s a reason why Williams has a 42% ED rate–it is not HYP level.
With that said, @foreignlawyer I think you have the best shot at either Penn (due to legacy) and Williams ED (42%, and the % of Asians at Williams is significant lower than that at Ivies and Duke). Regarding pre-law, I think Penn is the best fit (you can take Law courses as a Penn undergrad at Pen Law), followed by Williams.
@MBVLoveless You think I can still get into penn with a 3.7, if I apply ED?
Also, a lot of people from my school got into Duke this year - one person got the trinity scholarship (full ride), and one person from my school got waitlisted at Penn but into Duke.
Applying ED is not an advantage. It’s merely an option. If UPenn were to accept your 3.7 UW GPA, they’d do so in the regular round as well.
Yeah it is…the acceptance rates nearly double for UPenn…
@mdw1519 No matter how many times ED acceptance rates are explained, it doesn’t register with people. The pool is never examined, only the admit rate. The RD pool always has a very large amount of underqualified applicants, and in the two examples, Penn and Williams, no athletes and probably few to no legacy applicants.
No school I am aware of says its easier to get in ED.
Williams has 42% ED rate because athletes are a much larger proportion of the class than larger schools. These students “applied” over the summer and were told the result of the preread before they actually applied.
I believe Duke does say it is easier to get into ED.
From my high school’s Naviance from 2011-2015:
Average GPA of Penn ED Admits: 3.63 (43% acceptance rate)
Average GPA of Penn RD Admits: 3.81 (22% acceptance rate)
Average GPA of Duke ED Admits: 3.62 (45% acceptance rate)
Average GPA of Duke RD Admits: 3.83 (21% acceptance rate)
so 3.7 seems to be in the ballpark- but judging from the scattergrams A LOT of 3.8s get rejected from both schools.
Granted, a lot of the ED kids are legacies and athletes, but I believe if your school has a good relationship with either Penn or Duke (which seems like the case, since you said a lot of people got into Duke last year from your school), your GPA puts you in the ballpark for an ED acceptance. I would say forget it if you’re an aspiring Whartonite, but if it’s Penn A&S you’re going after, I think you as a legacy have a decent chance.
Edit: I read your past posts and it seems like you’re going to school in NC. It IS a little easier to get into Duke from NC & SC (confirmed by Duke adcoms) than from OOS, which makes you a decent candidate for Duke ED as well.
I think you should apply early to whichever school you think is the best fit for you. All of the schools you list are very strong, and you should be able to pursue your dream from any of them. I would talk to your GC about whether he thinks your school has an advantage at one school over another. Duke and Penn have some similarities - very interdisciplinary, with a strong emphasis on civic engagement, and fairly strong social environments. They are obviously quite different in some respects as well.
FWIW, former admissions officer Don Betterton suggests that applying early may give about a 10-15% bump on chances, due to the heightened interest and (in the case of ED) commitment. That’s much lower than the roughly 50% increase in admissions rate, which largely reflects the applicant pool, but it’s something. I don’t think your brother going to Penn grad school qualifies you as a “legacy”, but it may count for something. You could call the admissions office to discuss how they would view this. I believe that Penn legacies have something like a 45% ED acceptance rate.
ED to the school you most want to attend! After all, if accepted you’ll be there without question for the next four years of your life.
Chance me back please:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18676261#Comment_18676261
how are people so dumb to say ed isn’t an advantage… colleges need a high matriculation rate to rank better on the us world report list… it’s the same reason they’re so obsessed with test scores. they need good numbers to rank well. Hence why colleges accept so many at ed. Also the reason they encourage tons of kids to apply via email who have no chance of getting in… to drive the acceptance rate down (once again it improves their ranking).
@BatesParents2019 I don’t know which side you are arguing.
All I am saying is that I was told that ED round is usually more competitive (more legacies, recruited athletes, and eager students) than the RD round (more applicants). And many, if not all, of the colleges and universities I toured stated something along the lines of: “If you are qualified to get in ED, you will get in RD” (for non-hooked applicants).
@foreignlawyer At UPenn the admissions rate is so high because they are accepting recruited athletes, minorities, and legacies. If you fall under one of those categories, you are correct, your chances of getting in ED are better. If you do not, then your chances are roughly the same as RD
*the admissions rate is that high ED