Like many of the other people have said, those schools are very competitive and its not so much the #s that always get you into the school. The GPA, your highschool coursework, your extracurriculars, and your essays are all important and can make or break your application. I would emphasize the essays as they are the only portion of your application that is truely you…you can use your own words to describe yourself–SATs, GPA, etc cannot depict one`s personality. Most if not all of the applicants of those schools will have superb grades, so stand out from the crowd and write a memorable essay.

I would disagree with the idea that they only take a look at people who take hard classes relative to their schools + get good grades in those classes. The best of schools already get many of the country’s best and brightest applicants… what they want to know is… “are you more than grades? do you have a life outside of school & books? are you social? do you go places and do things?” Saying that schools only look at #’s is simply wrong.

When I called Johns Hopkins U to ask, they said they “look” at the 9th grade scores, but they don’t calculate those scores when they figure out your GPA. They look at your grades in only CORE ACADEMIC CLASSES (sciences, English, social studies, math, maybe foreign language, I’m not sure) for grades 10 and 11 and half of 12th grade when they decide who to admit. They add up all the grades for the core classes, take the average and that is your GPA that they work with. 90-100 is an A, 80-90 is a B, etc.

Want to know what else they said?

Only 21% of the applicants are accepted.

They look to see if you took the hardest courses offered at your school.

Did you have leadership roles in all of your after school activities?

75% of the kids admitted to JHU have a GPA between 3.7 and 3.8

They like to see volunteer work and good letters of recommendation from your teachers, but the high school transcript is the most important thing. If that doesn’t look good, nothing else matters. They don’t want to hear about potential, they want to see what you have done.

Typical ACT score of those students who are admitted: 30-34 composite (top score is 36)

Typical SAT score of admitted students: 1350-1500 in the old SAT (top score was 1600 then)(800 in math and 800 in English is top score on old SAT)

The lady in Admissions said that they don’t really care much if you made National Merit semi-finalist. They get a lot of applicants who made National Merit, but JHU is not so impressed with that. They care about how hard your classes are and what grades you got in them.

With those scores you can apply to those schools.

The truth? Many schools (lesser ones than the ones you named) are accepting students with a total of 1,000.

The scores you listed should open doors at better schools.

Nice job! Especially if you just finishing 11th grade.

– High School Teacher

But most colleges like to see a perfect score in math over the other sections.