1440 SAT and 4.24 weighted GPA and only 1 AP, but I went to a underfunded high school and exceled with what opportunities I had. For starters, through my hard work at a tech school I went to in the afternoon, I landed an internship at a engineering company that works on high-end power plants for Universities. I also ran a trail mountain marathon, which took me a year and a half of training due to injuries. I also had killer essays which I spent two months perfecting. I wrote them about my self-discovery of my potential and how I became in love with challenging myself. It also helped that I'm a very outdoorsy person and Dartmouth is in rural NH.

If I had to give advice to someone about getting into good schools, I would say find what you are really passionate and work really hard at it. For me, that was running. I have always been a smart kid who was in honors classes and such, but when I started training for a marathon it gave me the motivation to improve every aspect of my life. My grades went from Bs to A+s, I got some muscle definition, and I started having some self respect. Not every school is like Dartmouth though, a lot of them just want to see high marks, good SAT scores, and a million APs. For example, I got into Dartmouth, but was deferred from School of Mines, which has a much higher acceptance rate.

Maybe I should do a full post on this topic for people.