Advice for Ivies, etc.

Hello! I have a slight dilemma and I would love to get your input on what I should do.

Ok, so because my academics are very competitive even for the most selective schools, my mom seems to think that I don’t have any reason not to be accepted at the Ivy Leagues and other selective universities. However, I don’t feel that my extracurriculars are quite on par, especially with what I have seen from other people who have posted here. She doesn’t really seem to factor in the importance of ECs and essays and recs on acceptance and the fact that people more qualified than I am get rejected no matter how much I stress those. I don’t believe my essays are all that great either (if there is anyone here who would be willing to critique it I would appreciate it ;-;). I’m not sure how to approach this, and I guess I would like to know if there is any chance that I won’t have to let her down or what I could do to avoid disappointing her.

I am planning to apply to the likes of Stanford/Brown/Berkeley/CMU/GA Tech, perhaps MIT/Yale.

Here are my stats, and thank you so much in advance:

Overall:
Intended Major: Statistics or Accounting
Gender: Female
Demographic: East Asian
State: Florida
Income: ~120k

Testing:
SAT: 1590 (790 Reading/800 Math/18 Essay) (1st and only sitting)
SAT II: Math 2 (800), Biology M (800), US History (770)
ACT: 35 (36 Reading/36 English/36 Math/30 Science/9 Writing) (1st and only sitting)
AP: 13 total (ten 5’s, two 4’s, one 3)
National Merit Semifinalist
National AP Scholar

Grades
GPA: 4.00 unweighted, 4.84 weighted
Rank: 12/549 (competitive public school)
Senior year classes: 4 AP classes and 2 duel enroll classes at a nearby college (Statistics II and C++ Programming II)

Extracurriculars:

  • Mu Alpha Theta Math (9-12): competed and placed top 10 at reg/state/national levels, statistics co-coach (12)
  • FBLA (9-12): Historian (11), VP (12), 3x State/1x National Top 10 in Business Math
  • Piano (9-12): 11 consecutive superior ratings at FFMA festivals
  • Competitive Club/Varsity Swimmer (9-11): qualified for districts all 3 years and regionals 1 year (but not good enough for recruitment)

Et cetera:

  • Volunteer Math Tutor: taught classes of algebra 1 students over the summer (100+ hrs)
  • Humane Society Volunteer: led tours of animal facilities (30 hrs)
  • Volunteer Income Tax Assistance: prepared income tax forms (20 hrs)
  • Microsoft Office Certified
  • Intuit QuickBooks (accounting software) Certified
  • Was paid to write and edit tests for 2019 Mu Alpha Theta National Convention

Here are some links to share with your mother https://admission.stanford.edu/apply/selection/profile16.html, https://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/explore/admission-facts, https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/admission-statistics. These schools would be representative of highly selective schools.

What you will see is that the vast majority of students with perfect stats by particular categories get rejected. Now what percentage with perfect everything’s that get rejected is lower, but if we just look at Brown, which is less selective than Stanford and Princeton, we see that 72% of the perfect 36 ACT candidates got rejected. Hopefully, you can manage your mother’s expectations in this fashion.

Your stat’s definitely make you competitive, but you are right, at the end of the day you will be competing against thousands of other applicants with similar stat’s and it will be your essays, LoR’s and how you portray your EC’s that will be determinative. Good luck.

You could point out to her that the Ivys don’t have enough seats to take all the 4.0 valedictorians in the country, so expecting number 12 to be admitted is unrealistic.

“I am planning to apply to the likes of Stanford/Brown/Berkeley/CMU/GA Tech, perhaps MIT/Yale.”

I agree with both OP and @BKSquared. Your stats are solidly in the range for these schools. However, plenty of equally strong students get turned down from all of these schools (while a few other students with stats that are almost but not quite this good get accepted). Sadly being Asian is not going to help your chances.

You also should be aware that Berkeley is very likely to be full pay if you get in which might be painful with an income of $120. The cost of the other schools might be hard to predict although the NPC might give you some hint.

You need a safety or two. You are going to need to either apply to a slightly lower ranked school in the US, or consider somewhere such as McGill where great stats are all you need to get in.

“You could point out to her that the Ivys don’t have enough seats to take all the 4.0 valedictorians in the country,”

Good point. There are 36,000 high schools in the US. I am pretty sure that the Ivy’s in total don’t have 36,000 freshmen right now.

I think the reason ECs r so important is because they allow u to differntiate urself. there may be thousands of applicats with those exact same stats–but think abt why they should choose you over them.

The exam scores are really impressive.There aren’t 36,000 students with that record. I don’t mind applying to top Iyy / MIT. You should be able to get in somewhere top 20 or top 30 at least. Problem is ridiculous Asian quotas and emphasis on ECs.

Congrats on the GPA and SAT scores! Your mom should definitely be proud, but I would agree that your application is missing strong leadership within your ECs. That being said, I agree with @BKSquared that the rest is up to how strong of an application you can put together, and you’ll only be able to put together the best apps for schools you actually are interested in.

Edit: also… I don’t remember schools posting detailed stats like that back when I applied 10 years ago. Makes me wonder how I ever snuck in…

How good of a swimmer are you. Perhaps might be worthwhile to contact the swimming coaches of the schools you are interested and ask you can get admission support. Your swimming can potentially be your hook.

Great stats and solid everything else. Identify some good (but non-Ivy) private schools for your intended major that you would like to attend and apply, looking for significant merit aid.

I would apply to some top schools. Your overall scores are at least 90th percentile for top Ivies.