What Are My Chances in Getting Into an Ivy League College?

Question by HeyItsBob: What are my chances in getting into an ivy league college?
I’ve always been told that I won’t be able to go to an Ivy league school. 7th and 8th grade I got straight A’s and received a Presidents award. However during 9th and 10th grade, my grades began to fall. Right now I am an upcoming Junior and currently studying for SAT in the summer.
9th Grade:
1st semester – All A’s no APs or Honors allowed
2nd semester – One B+ in English. Teacher gave out one A :'( I got an 89.
My grades started to fall 10th grade due to severe depression.
10th first semester:
AP world – B
Ap calc – B
hnrs chem – A
English – A
Ap Bio – B
Dance – A
First semester I went on independent study due to bullying and depression
Second semester I transfered but I couldnt adjust so I came back after a month. Because of that all my teachers gave me a 0 unfairly and my grades severly dropped
AP World – B
AP Calc-A
english – B
Hnrs chem-B
Ap bio – B
Dance- A
Extracurricular:
-hand in hand. I volunteered 9th and 10th to help special students
– Varsity Golf
– ContraBass won INPASS first place
– ContraBass won competition at Carnegie Hall
– Little prince all youth magazine editor/writer
– internship at SD Magazine
– Piano CM Level 9
—–
My Passion: I was always very sensitive. Due to bullying and recovery I found my passion. That I wanted to help the kids going through what I went through. If I did not have depression I couldve been valedictorian however I am thankful because I found something I can help others with and connect with others to. I wont use depression as an excuse my grades dropped but rather as how I recovered from it and found what I want to do. Because Junior year is very important I am planning to get all A’s and start a Psychology club at my school.
this is my “story” I know my grades are bad but I really do love helping people who are suffering. It makes me happy to think that I can being joy to another being. I really want to go to a good college in order to purse my dreams. Do you think if I work hard I can go to an ivy league?

Best answer:

Answer by Girl Next Door
Yes you can go to an ivy league if you start working really hard from now on. For a person suffering from depression, you’re doing pretty well. Just be the best you can be and keep your passion alive even if you don’t make it to any ivy league college. Wish you great luck 🙂

Answer by Anonymous
While your sophomore grades are definitely not ideal, they shouldn’t preclude you from getting into any school. In fact, the situation you went through might even turn things in your favor (admissions-wise). The bottom line is that “B”s, particularly in AP classes, aren’t going to harm your chances as long as you explain what led to them. The best thing to do might even be (although this might be a tad “risky”) to write an essay in your college applications telling your “story”. As I said, there is a risk that it may look like an excuse, but if you frame things correctly by, for example, not directly explaining your grades in the essay (they’ll put things together and you can put a note in the “additional information” section just in case), not trying to make it look like you’re trying to make someone pity you, and showing how your situation going through bullying and depression influenced who you are today (focusing on the positive ways), you could have a very unique, personal essay.

Another idea, though it seems that you’re hinting at it already, might be to try to start or join some kind of extracurricular to help those dealing with depression and/or bullying. It seems like this is a passion of yours, so doing so should be rewarding regardless of where you end up going to college.

As far as your chances at ivy league schools, it varies greatly from school-to-school. If you asked about your chances at Harvard, I would say that you probably won’t get in; however, that is true of virtually everybody who hasn’t cured cancer, invented the time machine, and gone back in time to kill Hitler. That said, several of the ivies, particularly UPenn and Cornell, are markedly less selective, giving you a potentially very good chance (better than 50%), provided good SAT scores. In short, it depends on the school you’re applying to. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia are crapshoots for almost anyone, but you still should have as good a chance at them as anybody. As for the other four, you can probably get into one of them if you work hard to turn things around. Still no guarantees in college admissions though; I ended up getting into Stanford and Princeton, while being turned down be the considerably less selective Brown University.

As a final note, don’t think that the Ivy Leagues are the be-all end-all of anything. While they are all very good schools, there are plenty of other comparably good schools. There are plenty of non-ivy league schools which I would regard as “better” (however subjective that may be) than many ivies (Stanford and MIT are the biggest examples). In short, don’t think the ivy league designation means much at all. While they are each good schools, you can likely find twice as many schools outside the ivy league that are every bit as good as ivies.

Sorry for the long response and best of luck!

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