u/Used_Okra_6489

Chud Locks in Junior Year and Gets In To College

Demographics

  • Gender: male
  • Race/Ethnicity: white
  • Income Bracket: over $100k
  • Type of School: public, feeder to state schools
  • Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): none

Intended Major(s): political science

Academics

  • GPA (UW/W): 3.93 UW, 4.17 W
  • Rank (or percentile): N/A, school doesn't do rank
  • # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 13 AP courses, 8 dual enrollment, 9 honors
  • Senior Year Course Load: 6 APs and 1 honors, including 3 math APs and 1 physics course lol

Standardized Testing

List the highest scores earned and all scores that were reported.

  • SAT: 1510, only one attempt
  • AP/IB: submitted 6 5's and 1 4

Extracurriculars/Activities

List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.

  1. Worked in state legislature, full time in summers, part time in school year. Lots of legislative research, constituent services, and community outreach work.
  2. Student Council President
  3. Founded school's Mock Trial team. Competed in state comp.
  4. NHS President
  5. Student advisory board founder/president. Helped make school's phone policy. Got on the news a couple times for it
  6. 3 year MUN, won 2 international awards
  7. Political volunteer in community. Helped with local party's campaigns by knocking thousands of doors and developing a youth grassroots movement to volunteer for elections. Also did social media work
  8. Did a big research paper on a presidential candidate from a century ago
  9. Invited to do some speeches at local courthouse

Awards/Honors

List all awards and honors submitted on your application.

  1. MUN intl 2nd place award
  2. Alternate for Boys Nation
  3. Mock Trial best lawyer award
  4. national student council award
  5. natl merit semifinalist

Letters of Recommendation

junior yr history teacher: 8/10 --> very very involved in his class and showed lots of interest in course content. He also guided me with the research paper.

junior yr english teacher: 8/10 --> he made a very good impression of me

superintendent of school: 8/10 --> showed some personal insights

boss: 10/10 --> showed the depth of my work and my genuine interest in helping others

Interviews

harvard: was ok, he just ran through my resume with me

yale: best I've ever had, super chill and we respectfully talked about politics for a while even tho we disagreed on some stuff

georgetown: I think it went well, but I didn't get a very good connection with the person. I asked if there was anyhting I could do to improve my interview performance at the end of the interview, and she said no, that i was very humble etc. but I'm not sure if she meant it lol

PSU honors: ok, nothing to write home about

washington and lee: was a great time. My only in person interview, as well. I had some trouble getting a seat for us at this coffee shop, but it ended up working out and we had some cool chats

Essays

personal statement: talking about how I could (physically, and emotionally) barely talk when I was little, and about how I grew through it, and I now am interested in political advocacy in order to give a voice to those who couldn't speak for themselves (like little me)

supps: lots of stuff on policy that interest me and how I see it intersecting w my community and such. none of them were great, but none of them were too bad either

Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)

Acceptances:

  • american u rd
  • northeastern (NYC scholars) rd
  • W&M (monroe scholars) rd
  • george washington rd
  • villanova rd
  • washington and lee university (attending!)

Waitlists:

  • jhu rd
  • upenn rd

Rejections:

  • uva rd
  • swarthmore rd
  • northwestern rd
  • harvard rd
  • yale rd
  • dartmouth rd
  • georgetown ea
  • duke rd

-------

Overall I'm super lucky to have gotten into W&L and some of those other schools. For context, I was not locked in whatsoever freshman and sophomore years. I was super demotivated, didn't really care about college and such. End of sophomore year, something changed and I locked in super hard. I would say for anyone out there that its never too late to get your stuff together. You're going to do great as long as you try your hardest.

reddit.com
u/Used_Okra_6489 — 9 hours ago