I’m wondering if I should waste my one chance of applying SCEA to Harvard or Stanford my senior year. Harvard is my top choice and my dream school, but if Stanford give me any better chances than Harvard, I would definitely SCEA there than Harvard. I’m not a legacy in any way and me being a recruited athlete is impossible. If I should apply SCEA to Harvard, I would have to work harder since I would only have this year and junior year left to make myself a good applicant for EA and want to prepare ahead of time if that’s the case… I have some hooks but I don’t know if they would give me an edge if I were to apply SCEA as would me applying RD. I’m a URM since I’m Hispanic/Latino (Though I’m not sure for how long since it’s not looking too good for AA right now…), I’m very low income (<35,000) and would definitely be applying for financial aid, and I’m from a very low achieving high school which I’m pretty sure I’ll be the only one applying to these schools since everyone here goes to state schools and no one in my school district has made it to any Ivies in its history, very rual underrepresented area in NC. I know there isn’t enough stats for me to make a good evaluation of me, but I would like to know ahead of time since time is limited if I were to apply SCEA…
Some schools offer fly-in visits to low income applicants to visit their school in September of senior year. Take that opportunity to take a look there. Also attend the school visits to towns near you. Otherwise, there is no easy way to tell which school can offer you a better SCEA chance.
As a soph, work on your rigor and ECs. Rather than plan now how you’ll apply in 2 years, spend time learning all you can about your targets, what they offer, what they want, from what they say and show… Otherwise you may be guessing.what it really takes.