u/Acrobatic-Ferret-254

Hope this provides context on the many different types of applications that can be admitted!

Demographics
Gender: Male
Race/Ethnicity: Hispanic
Residence: Northern California (Siskiyou County)
Hooks: Rural 

Intended Major(s): Linguistics, Economics

Academics
GPA: 3.6 unweighted / 4.1 weighted
Class Rank: Top 10%
# of APs: 7

Standardized Testing
ACT: 36 
AP: 7 scores of 5

Extracurriculars
My extracurriculars focused on my interest in linguistics, specifically conlangs and the Universal Grammar Theory. I’ll list my main activities below

• Founding the Siskiyou County Linguistics Alliance (very small rural organization for linguistics with ~50 kids)
• Creating my own Conlang (a fictional language and grammar system) and creating a long dictionary 
• 2 Paid Jobs at a local Mount Shasta Tour Center and a Roadhouse restaurant
• Family responsibilities, caring for mom with a stomach disorder (epithelial lining metaplasia)

Awards

• National Merit
• A local, community scholarship for my ACT score
• A county award for my small Linguistics organization
• AP Scholar with Distinction

Essays
My personal statement was very personal about my family situation and resilience I gained from, which I don't feel fully comfortable sharing in depth on Reddit. My supplements focused on unique linguistic programs at Columbia (like the Teacher’s College Program where they focus on using linguistic models in school education, which piques my interest and I did similar work on a smaller scale in my county organization)

Letters of Rec were from my English and Calculus teacher. I think they were moderately strong.

Decisions
Acceptance: Columbia (Early Decision)

Additional Information
I added more context below

I went to a high school in Northern California in Siskiyou County and our high school was considered rural. Not many kids at all go to T20s and its a small class size. I was the only one of two ivy acceptances this year (the other one was Dartmouth). Finances were not a huge issue for me (middle income with loans, some financial aid, and some grants)

I know rural is an established hook. I am also Hispanic and LGBT, though I don't know how/if that plays into admission post-affirmative action

I got a 36 ACT on the second try and opted out of science. My first attempt was a 34 but I didn't submit that. Columbia was test-optional when I applied but I still submitted

My class didn't publish class rank in the traditional sense but they did this weird thing with deciles where they would list if you were in the top two deciles. They listed if you were top 20% or top 10%. I was in the top 10%.

My school offered 8 APs and I took 7, and tied for the most number of APs taken with three other kids.

My intended major and ECs were on linguistics bc I got interested in linguistics after trying to learn Esperanto in the eight grade 😝

Hope that provides more context!

Demographics
Gender: Male
Race/Ethnicity: Hispanic
Residence: Northern California (Siskiyou County)
Hooks: Rural 

Intended Major(s): Linguistics, Economics

Academics
GPA: 3.6 unweighted / 4.1 weighted
Class Rank: Top 10%
# of APs: 7

Standardized Testing
ACT: 36 
AP: 7 scores of 5

Extracurriculars
My extracurriculars focused on my interest in linguistics, specifically conlangs and the Universal Grammar Theory. I’ll list my main activities below

• Founding the Siskiyou County Linguistics Alliance (very small rural organization for linguistics with ~50 kids)
• Creating my own Conlang (a fictional language and grammar system) and creating a long dictionary 
• 2 Paid Jobs at a local Mount Shasta Tour Center and a Roadhouse restaurant
• Family responsibilities, caring for mom with a stomach disorder (epithelial lining metaplasia)

Awards

• National Merit
• A local, community scholarship for my ACT score
• A county award for my small Linguistics organization
• AP Scholar with Distinction

Essays
My personal statement was very personal about my family situation and resilience I gained from, which I don't feel fully comfortable sharing in depth on Reddit. My supplements focused on unique linguistic programs at Columbia (like the Teacher’s College Program where they focus on using linguistic models in school education, which piques my interest and I did similar work on a smaller scale in my county organization)

Letters of Rec were from my English and Calculus teacher. I think they were moderately strong.

Decisions
Acceptance: Columbia (Early Decision)

Additional Information
I added more context below

I went to a high school in Northern California in Siskiyou County and our high school was considered rural. Not many kids at all go to T20s and its a small class size. I was the only one of two ivy acceptances this year (the other one was Dartmouth). Finances were not a huge issue for me (middle income with loans, some financial aid, and some grants)

I know rural is an established hook. I am also Hispanic and LGBT, though I don't know how/if that plays into admission post-affirmative action

I got a 36 ACT on the second try and opted out of science. My first attempt was a 34 but I didn't submit that. Columbia was test-optional when I applied but I still submitted

My class didn't publish class rank in the traditional sense but they did this weird thing with deciles where they would list if you were in the top two deciles. They listed if you were top 20% or top 10%. I was in the top 10%.

My school offered 8 APs and I took 7, and tied for the most number of APs taken with three other kids.

My intended major and ECs were on linguistics bc I got interested in linguistics after trying to learn Esperanto in the eight grade 😝

Hope that provides more context!

Demographics
Gender: Male
Race/Ethnicity: Hispanic
Residence: Northern California (Siskiyou County)
Hooks: Rural 

Intended Major(s): Linguistics, Economics

Academics
GPA: 3.6 unweighted / 4.1 weighted
Class Rank: Top 10%
# of APs: 7

Standardized Testing
ACT: 36 
AP: 7 scores of 5

Extracurriculars
My extracurriculars focused on my interest in linguistics, specifically conlangs and the Universal Grammar Theory. I’ll list my main activities below

• Founding the Siskiyou County Linguistics Alliance (very small rural organization for linguistics with ~50 kids)
• Creating my own Conlang (a fictional language and grammar system) and creating a long dictionary 
• 2 Paid Jobs at a local Mount Shasta Tour Center and a Roadhouse restaurant
• Family responsibilities, caring for mom with a stomach disorder (epithelial lining metaplasia)

Awards

• National Merit
• A local, community scholarship for my ACT score
• A county award for my small Linguistics organization
• AP Scholar with Distinction

Essays
My personal statement was very personal about my family situation and resilience I gained from, which I don't feel fully comfortable sharing in depth on Reddit. My supplements focused on unique linguistic programs at Columbia (like the Teacher’s College Program where they focus on using linguistic models in school education, which piques my interest and I did similar work on a smaller scale in my county organization)

Letters of Rec were from my English and Calculus teacher. I think they were moderately strong.

Decisions
Acceptance: Columbia (Early Decision)

Additional Information
I added more context below

I went to a high school in Northern California in Siskiyou County and our high school was considered rural. Not many kids at all go to T20s and its a small class size. I was the only one of two ivy acceptances this year (the other one was Dartmouth). Finances were not a huge issue for me (middle income with loans, some financial aid, and some grants)

I know rural is an established hook. I am also Hispanic and LGBT, though I don't know how/if that plays into admission post-affirmative action

I got a 36 ACT on the second try and opted out of science. My first attempt was a 34 but I didn't submit that. Columbia was test-optional when I applied but I still submitted

My class didn't publish class rank in the traditional sense but they did this weird thing with deciles where they would list if you were in the top two deciles. They listed if you were top 20% or top 10%. I was in the top 10%.

My school offered 8 APs and I took 7, and tied for the most number of APs taken with three other kids.

My intended major and ECs were on linguistics bc I got interested in linguistics after trying to learn Esperanto in the eight grade 😝

Hope that provides more context!

I got into Columbia Early Decision, but I think a big hurdle for me when I was applying last year was proving academic readiness.

I had a 3.6 u/w GPA with many Bs in high school. I did take maximum rigor and took the most APs in my class, granted. There were semesters where I had a 3.2 😭 (granted I was still in the top 10% of my class)

However, I did score very well on my AP Exams and got all 5s on the 7 I took.

I feel like this could be an interesting context for those applying this year. I think perhaps the AP scores did help my lower GPA (especially since my activities were not all that (no research, national awards, etc.)

Does anyone with more insight into T20 admissions want to chime in if the AP scores meaningfully address a student's lower GPA or if it was the performance relative to my class that mattered more? Or perhaps a combination of the two?

I'll ask for my admissions file, perhaps and see any comments they wrote on this matter.

I got into Columbia Early Decision, but I think a big hurdle for me when I was applying last year was proving academic readiness.

I had a 3.6 u/w GPA with many Bs in high school. I did take maximum rigor and took the most APs in my class, granted. There were semesters where I had a 3.2 😭 (granted I was still in the top 10% of my class)

However, I did score very well on my AP Exams and got all 5s on the 7 I took.

I feel like this could be an interesting context for those applying this year. I think perhaps the AP scores did help my lower GPA (especially since my activities were not all that (no research, national awards, etc.)

Does anyone with more insight into T20 admissions want to chime in if the AP scores meaningfully address a student's lower GPA or if it was the performance relative to my class that mattered more? Or perhaps a combination of the two?

I'll ask for my admissions file, perhaps and see any comments they wrote on this matter.

I'm referring to the CED. I know people online all the time talk about using the CED to look at "the structure of the exam" and "the weighting of the course's units", and while I def feel like those are helpful, I feel like the list of key concepts is where the real stuff is at.

For example, on AP Chem this year, there was a multiple choice discussing a cis and trans isomer and why rotation in the isomer is limited. Many people struggled with this question, and hadn't seen similar content covered in class, but the CED provided the answer (page 59 of AP Chem). There are many more examples with Chem

For the History APs, the Key Concepts in the CED are even more useful! I genuinely feel like a person who never took the course could just read the CED in 2-3 days and score at minimum a 3-level on the multiple-choice. And a student who's been doing APUSH the whole year can read the CED and score a 5-level on the MCQ for them should not be out of reach. Some examples from my exam version this year include a question on the stability of the bison population, which many of my classmates struggled with but was once again answered by the CED (page 273 of APUSH CED).

A "hack" for MCQs is an exageration but I believe that for certain courses (ESPECIALLY History APs), reading through the blue sections of the CED provide a very helpful review of the content that is (1) in the language of the exam, making it easier to recognize concepts on exam day and (2) all MCQ content is likely to come from or be based off CED concepts and (3) if you notice anything niche that many have been skimmed over in class (like isomer rotation in Chem or Bison Stability in APUSH) there's a good chance it may be a harder MCQ that, as Trevor Packer puts it, "differentiates" between higher scores and lower scores.

Reviewing the CED is genuinely a good idea for pretty much every AP class.

UPDATE: This link to a practice APUSH exam released by the college Board shows how many of the mcqs are just highly based of the CED: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-united-states-history-ced-practice-exam.pdf

Is the House System a fun, additive part of the college experience, or does it feel tacked on? Is it great for forming acquaintances and friends, especially for first-years?

Idk, I feel like online I constantly see this sort of negativity around people who take less popular majors (especially humanities), and the assumption is that they are wasting their money and aren't setting themselves up for success. But given the broader landscape of employment and post-grad opportunities, this doesn't really make sense?

Most students applying to top schools are interested in fields in technology, medicine, law, and finance. While technology roles are obviously very major-dependent, I feel like major selection plays a lot less of a role in the other three fields (obviously, this is a generalization)

For Medicine and Law, the primary medium for top jobs in those fields is attending a top Med School and Law School. For the most part, as long as you meet core requirements, nearly any major qualifies for admission. Biology students don't really get much preference over Marine Science students, yet I have seen so many judge Marine Science students online for picking a "useless" major, when many of them go on to become doctors in the very fields the judgers are aiming for?

MCAT and the LSAT, alongside GPA, are the primary considerations for med and law schools, and although being in a certain major may expose you more to concepts on the test, literally anyone of any major can take and perform well on these tests.

For pre-med and pre-law applicants, I feel like I'm missing why there is so much concentration on a bio or polisci major specifically, when other majors may be a better fit and provide the same outcomes?

This also opens up a broader conversation on the crazy stuff pre-med and pre-law do in high school students do to become doctors and BigLaw associates, when I feel like most of these career outcomes can be successfully achieved from almost any university? It seems to create a lot of pressure on high schoolers. It's not like investment banking, where you need to be at a certain "target" school to get an interview.

Briefly touching on finance, while being an econ or biz major definitely makes sense, the primary filter for those roles seems to be the college you attend, and not the specific major.

But yeah, let me know if there's stuff I'm overlooking or missing, as I'm sure I'm oversimplifying this.