<p>I'm a female (who is going to be a junior) with a mixed background (my mother moved here from Jamacia) and would love to go to Williams. What are my chances? Here are my stats:</p>
<p>Academics:</p>
<p>GPA - Unweighted: 95.00
GPA - Weighted: 100.00
Class Rank: top 10%
Class Size: 300</p>
<p>Scores:
haven't taken SAT (i did take the psats sophmore year and got 186, tho i'm sure i will greatly improve)
SAT II World History: 700 (weakest subject)
didn't get scores back for AP World History yet</p>
<p>Regents:
Earth Science: 98
Bio: 98
Math A: 99
didn't get scores back yet for chem, world history, math b, or french</p>
<p>Significant Extracurriculars:
Science Research:150hrs+ (currently looking for a mentor)
Science competitions
Working at library: 200hrs+</p>
<p>Leadership positions:
Youth Court Advisory Board member
Hospital Volunteer Junior Council member
Leading Junior troop for a year (for Gold Award)</p>
<p>Athletic
Winter track: Varsity
Spring track: Varsity
Volleyball: JV</p>
<p>Yeah, how did you manage to fit that in on top of three sports and academics? I’m not saying I don’t believe you, it is possible. But if you did do those hours, I’m assuming you had to do a lot during the summer, weekends, or some hours before highschool began… maybe I’m wrong. But if I am correct, be sure you emphasize that on your resume, because schools routinely turn down kids who say they have more hours than seems possible. My college counselor used to be an adcom and he said that a few times he saw students who made it seem that they literally did more EC hours each week than hours existed each week taking into account school and sleep. Those kids got turned down. It is very possible that they did do all of those hours, but they didn’t show on their apps when they completed those hours, and thus it looked like they were lying. I just don’t want it to happen to you! So just make sure you make it clear on your resume when you did everything.</p>
<p>But anyways, I think you have a GREAT shot… if you can do well on SATs or the ACT. You have a great GPA, great ECs, (tons of time worth), and I think you are an URM… not quite sure from your post. So yeah, you have a good shot. congrats</p>
<p>I disagree with silverturtle. Your hours listed, I assume, aggregate several years and not just school term periods. </p>
<p>However, deriving a coherent ‘narrative’ about your interests and experiences is part of a successful application, Id say, and it’s not very clear whether this is more than a scattershot of busyness. Activities can be a big part of a narrative. So can life experience. So can background. So can hard work (as demonstrated through these activities, which might include school work). In reality, it would sound pretty cheesy to write your narrative on a board like this – and yet envisioning it is the thing that will probably help you the most, in the end, to get where you want to go (which is where? Why?) Much like a successful resume, you will want to have a compelling story that is obvious to any reader from a 1-2 minute scan of your file. You will want to be seen in a light of being successful at what you do, whatever it is – and probably as someone who acts in life with purpose. These are the people who excel at Williams, in whatever ways they manifest it.</p>
<p>It’s actually a very personal sort of judgment someone makes about you, reading your case file, aside from grades and test scores. In my experience, knowing this and building your young life to suit this purpose can be a tremendous burden, just as writing and editing your narrative to yourself can be a burden and a formative and difficult experience. That is, you are young, you are barely experienced. And yet you have something and enough experience to obviously show potential. This is what you must highlight.</p>
<p>Your scientific research sounds very interesting, but is totally opaque as mentioned so far. Being able to describe it in every-day terms while also describing it in a way that shows competency and accomplishment would be a tremendous asset. That, or winning accolades that demonstrate your success in these efforts.</p>
<p>You sound like people I went to school with, which is why I’m writing all this to begin with. If you really want to live in the Mountains, more power to you (I would ;)</p>
<p>I may have been sloppy in the way I presented my thoughts; I meant to suggest the possibility that the admissions committee could respond in that way to your ECs. I shouldn’t have stated it as absolutely as I did.</p>
<p>All of these hours are starting from freshman year-I’ve always been involved in many hours of community service. I really don’t know how I’m able to do all of this without my grades suffering-even my guidance counseler is impressed. </p>
<p>I accumulated so many hours for science research because I created and worked on a long term experiment during my sophmore year which I worked on everyday for at least an hour. I then entered it into a science competition (there I had to give a 5 minute speech to 2 judges at different times about it and answer any questions they had.) </p>
<p>For the hospital, I volunteer about 4 hrs there every saturday. I work at the library about 10 hours a week during the school year and about 20 during the summer.</p>
<p>Hours build up quickly and I would NEVER lie about it to admissions because they would find out someway.</p>
<p>Btw, other scores:
World History SAT II: 5
Global regents: 99
Math B regents: 95
French regents: 100
Chem regents: 92</p>
<p>As the parent of a member of the class of 2013 I want to address the issue of EC. My child was like many others who thought that many activities equated to improvement of chances of admission. This is not necessarily true. You can have only 1 EC and still be admitted.</p>
<p>My child eventually decided to concentrate on the following activities:</p>
<p>Music</p>
<ol>
<li> Strove to pass the level 8 test for both piano and cello of ABRMS. Pazssed</li>
<li> Participated in orchestra HS orchestra (eventually became 2nd cello).</li>
<li> Participated in youth orchestra and became principal cello.</li>
<li> As part of the application submitted CD with recordings of playing both cello and piano.</li>
</ol>
<p>Since we are of Chinese descent my child continued Chinese lanuage.</p>
<ol>
<li> Finished 8th grade at local Chinese school.</li>
<li> Won scholarship to Chinese language summer camp in Beijing China.</li>
<li> Took SAT 2 in Chinese and got 800.</li>
</ol>
<p>Finally my child has done well in Spanish.</p>
<ol>
<li> AP Spanish 5</li>
<li> SAT 2 Spanish 800.</li>
<li> Co-president of the Spanish Club.</li>
</ol>
<p>Another person from her HS got admitted with only 2 activities: Writing on the school paper and taking care of younger siblings. In fact the topic for the essay was how caring for the siblings made her more mature.</p>
<p>The point of all this is that the colleges are looking for depth instead of width of EC. They want to know that you are dedicated to the activity.</p>
<p>Thanks, commserver. This makes me feel a lot better. I’m only in three extracurriculars and two service clubs. Knowing that being dedicated is more important than overdoing oneself really is satisfying. I always feel that I’m not doing enough, but I know that I can’t keep up my grades if I do more.</p>