Realistic College Advice

First off, you’ll be fine, like you’re already so ahead of the game. Go to any of the schools on this list , network with alumni, and you’ll get an awesome job at a BB or EB. I would personally say UVA on the middle tier list cuz their placement is very high but like make sure you enjoy college too. Go to a school you like, and think you’ll fit into that has good placement. Also try and look into an IB club on campus so that you can hang out with people your similar to interests wise. Other than that tho you’re pretty much good man, just get a high GPA at college, internships, and network and like you’ll be golden.

While my stats were a bit higher than yours, I think I fit into similar boat of having good extracurriculars with average grades (now at a target). I commend you on all the initiative you’ve put into your ECs - your capacity for leadership and action is something you can 100% leverage to get into the schools you’re aiming for.

If you haven’t already, research the “spike” method of crafting college admissions, where you show extremely high achievement in a specific area, as opposed to being the traditional “well rounded” candidate with high grades and scores with decent ECs. While I know almost nothing about the intricacies of your story, developing an image of a self-starter that tries to make a measurable difference in the world (ex. your response to COVID) is something that will present yourself as a cut above the cookie cutter 4.0 Student Body President types that you’ll be competing against.

At the end of the day, colleges look for students who can make a difference in the world (and, as a result, garner notoriety and donations for the school). If you craft your story and leverage your impressive ECs to the best of your ability, you’ll be just fine.

why the biden reference? are you in high school? improve your grades, ace sat, focus less on ec's.

As someone who just went through this process with a GPA slightly lower than yours with worse EC's, I can offer a bit of advice.

1. Essays, Essays, Essays. Slave away on your essays and try to make them as good as possible but DO NOT under any circumstances compromise your "voice" in an attempt to make them closer to what you think the admissions officers want to see. They look through thousands of essays and not only is it what every other kid is trying to do but, they see right through your bullshit. As cliche and dumb as it sounds, there's nothing more effective than being genuine.

2. Take the SAT and knock it out the park. I'm talking 1500+ to even have a fighting chance. Unless you're a gay, black, recruited athlete schools, schools are gonna see your GPA and auto-ding you unless you have your scores to bail you out. In order to achieve this you have 2 options. First would be to beg your parents to hire you a private tutor from a reputable service which depending on your familial finances might not be possible (personally, I managed to outscore pretty much all my friends that went this route but, I go to a school that is chalk full of dumb rich kids). Your other option is to sit yourself down and grind. Unless your naturally good at taking standardized tests hit Khan Academy and go through all their exercises taking practice tests every once and a while to gauge how much you improve. I'd personally probably take one as a baseline to see where you're at.

3. Don't sell yourself short. My biggest regret was not applying to as many schools as possible. Although you will get a ton of rejections, all you need is one acceptance.

4. Research the colleges you apply to thoroughly. Find out what kind of personalities they are looking for and try to highlight the ways in which you fit their culture. The kind of students UVA is looking for are a lot different than Brown or Columbia would look for. Find out what that culture is and try to show how you fit it (this ties back to point number one).

The most important single piece of advice I can give you is don't give up. I got absolutely destroyed by my ED/EA as well as most of my RD. Waitlists don't mean rejection. In closing I would say, if you haven't already, head on over to r/ApplyingToCollege they have tons of great advice (also complete bs, much like here) and they were instrumental in helping me get into a few semi-targets despite my 3.6UW (rounding up btw...) and only one real EC.

Hope this helps, feel free to pm if you have any questions!

Hey OP can you pm me? I’m in a similar situation, but I’m 2 years younger and I’d love to talk to a like-minded person.

A few tips from someone who just went through the process:

1. Apply ED to Cornell assuming you can vibe with the culture there, best balance between prestige/recruiting and difficulty of admissions

2. Don’t bother applying to Wharton unless you have hooks or a perfect app

3. Take a serious look at UVA, probably the easiest target school to get into (assuming OOS everywhere)

4. Apply to a ton of places (20-30 for max odds), it’s a huge crapshoot

Good luck!

Check out NYU Stern and Georgetown, both have amazing placement although they're reaches for you.

It honestly sounds like you have a shot of doing well on the SATs, so maybe lean towards taking it and prepping for it appropriately.

In some ways your ECs start to sound like you're fluffing too much and admissions might dismiss this without any sort of tangible SAT number.