What can I do to make my college resume look shinier Answered
I am planning to apply for Columbia university early decision later this year and was wondering what I could do to spruce up my resume. I have over 400 hours of community service at a hospital and hospice alone, have had three jobs since the 9th grade, started my own nonprofit that's raised about 2000 dollars so far, and have taken 4 AP classes and 2 college courses so far. While all this might seem pretty good, my gpa is a 3.7 unweighted and I would like to do as much stuff as possible to distract the admissions officers from my alright gpa.
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In my opinion, starting some new extracurricular activity in your junior year would not be really helpful; it may even backfire because that shows your intention behind an extracurricular just for the sake of admission. Instead, you should try to spend more time on the same extracurriculars that you have been involved in for years, which shows commitment.
As for the GPA, you can distract the admissions officers with an outstanding SAT/ACT score. A good score will be as near as possible to the 75th percentile SAT(1570) /ACT(35) scores for Columbia University. For your application cycle, Columbia is test-optional, so not taking SAT/ACT does not harm your chances, but it doesn't increase them either. However, taking SAT/ACT and submitting a high score can increase your chances of getting admitted.
As a Columbia matriculate, I would say that I would focus on the following in the order of importance.
1. Get that GPA up. Unless you are a legacy, recruited athlete, child of a big donor or faculty, your 3.70 may not cut it. If you attend a top private boarding school have shown evidence of college level course rigor, it might be okay. Not if you are coming out of public or parochial school where there is rampant grade inflation. Most admits have a 3.90-4.00 UWGPA coming out of public school.
2. Improve your course rigor. For Columbia your peer competition are applicants with 8-12 APs and many of them have DE or online college credit.
3. Work on your ACT or SAT. Last cycle the middle 50% was 34-35 for ACT and 1510-1560 for SAT. So you want to be in that range. Contrary to popular sentiment, test scores do matter. There is a high correlation between successful admits and submitting test scores. While Ivy's certainly admit those with out test scores, the rest of the applicants file is usually so compelling with the very best grades, course rigor, evidence if Intellectual curiosity/vitality, essay, glowing recommendations and interviews, the putting a cherry on top doesn't really matter.
4. Your ECs are not really focused on a "spike" or "wow" factor. I wonder if you had to work 3 jobs since 9th grade because you are low income or a first gen. applicant. If that is the case, then that will help you. If your family income is less than $75,000 I highly recommend that you use the next couple weeks to apply to the Questbridge College Prep Scholars program. This is the very best mentoring program in the US for low income, first gen high achieving students. The closing date is 3/24/22. Unfortunately this is only open to people living in America, not abroad. https://www.questbridge.org/high-school-students/college-prep-scholars
If you qualify, this will help you apply over the summer to the Questbridge Match program which gives finalists the ability to apply to 12 of the best colleges including 7 out of 8 Ivys (including Columbia/Barnard) a couple weeks before ED/EA deadlines and get your decision by 12/1 or 10-14 days before anyone else. Applying to this will put you in touch with other peers. I would put a hold on the 400 hours of community service. You need to find something better to do with your time which speaks your personal talents and skills.
5. Work on your essays this summer and spend some time reading some good books. A few of the short essay answers will ask you how you fill your free time and what you consume to satisfy your personal curiosity. Do you play XboX or read Alan Ginsberg. Do you watch Ken Burns documentaries or do you watch How I met your mother reruns. Do you listen to Billie Holiday or Kayne? If you do not have a carefully curated list of interesting activities that resonate with your 5 senses you do in your free time, they will scrutinize that.
A work of advice to you and all 10th, 11th graders who have a top EA/ED college. Before you apply, do yourself a favor and fill out a detailed CV profile and run it through the Chancing Engine against your list of colleges. If you chancing probability for your top ED/EA school is above 25%, I would shoot my shot. If its in the 33-40% range that's a 1 in 3 or 2 in 5 odds, even better. Columbia only accepts about 650 students ED each year. They are one of the only top schools to hold the ED number a fixed number. The last 2 cycles the ED rate was about 10%, so 90% do not get in ED. Keep in mind that about 1/2 the ED pool admits are recruited athletes, legacies, donor kids, and kids of faculty. Also about 75 Questbridge match finalist get in ED round. So the net admit rate is about 5%, which is not much better than the RD rate of 4%. Therefore if you can really use the extra couple months to improve your GPA, show more course rigor, have better ECs and essay, it's to your advantage to apply RD and use that extra runway okay? Lots of HS students are not fully aware of what ED/EA applicant pools are made up of. They just look at the stats and think "hmmm ED is 3x higher acceptance rate, I'm going to do that!" But in most cases at Ivys and Elites, the real rate is only marginally higher. If you are going to apply ED/EA you get a much bigger boost with the 2nd or 3rd drawer schools like UVA, UNC, UMich, or liberal arts colleges like Colgate, Hamilton, Vassar, URichmond, Wake Forest. There you can realize a 2x or 3x boost for applying early.
Alright good luck
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This answer is not very good because absolutely NO ONE at Columbia U. will be distracted from 3.7 GPA because of a high test score. The only people getting in with a lower 3.7 are recruited athletes, kids of multi-million $$$ donors and some rare hook applicants. Even Questbridge match applicants have like a 3.9 Avg. these days.