An asian needs some safety and match

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Ok, so, I'm one of your regular Asian dude with unusual expectations. (I came to the U.S when I was 14, dreaming that I would attend Yale one day. lol)
I'm taking a gap year this year, and am going to apply to colleges next year, plz give me some advices regarding to college selections and admissions. I don't want to take "chance" or "reach" anymore as I found out this year that all my reach schools have rejected me. aye..
Alrighty, here is my stats:</p>

<p>Gender: Male
Ethnicity: Chinese
State: Maryland
Current Grade: Graduated Senior</p>

<p>GPA UW: 3.8 W:4.1
Class Rank: Top 5 percent
School Type: Average Public school, send 1-2 kids to ivy per year.</p>

<p>Class Schedule:
A total of ten AP classes in junior and senior year, 2 honor classes in freshman-sophomore year. Depression in the end of my senior year; as a result, grade suffered. (Seniorities?)
Also took four classes in the local community college. </p>

<p>ACT:30
SAT I: The horror.
SAT II Math: 700 World History: 740 </p>

<p>EC: Environmental Club, Envirothon, NHS, Gamer's Club, and Student Page to the Maryland General Assembly </p>

<p>Award:
-a merit award from the state of Maryland.
-AP Scholar with Distinction
-Student of the Month</p>

<p>Gap Year Activities:
U.S Army Reserve: Linguist or Paralegal Specialist
Rank(projected): E-5 Sergeant or Specialist. </p>

<p>btw, recommendations are excellent, essays are going to be Okay. </p>

<p>Any school with an army ROTC program would be nice! I want to go to colleges that are more liberal art oriented with strong programs in East Asian studies, philosophy, and comparative literature. </p>

<p>Will Boston College or NYU be a match to me? If it is, then I will apply ED. Time and money are my greatest enemies! But with ROTC and my GI Bill, private universities are going to be ok for me, so long as their costs are not OUTRAGEOUS. I can get into my state university easily, but look, I don't really want to stuck in a massive student body of 25000, and living in a dorm like rat hole.</p>

2

<p>It looks to me like you already have your safety (UMCP), so as long as you have an admission there in the bag you can concentrate on matches. You already know what reaches are out of reach because of the rejections last time around.</p>

<p>My only concern is your reserve status. How long before your unit is called up for duty overseas? How long will you be there? You need to find out just what that is going to do to your academic program.</p>

<p>If you do get sent abroad, UM-University College has an extensive distance program (some with live on-site professors and some that are purely online) designed to serve the needs of military personnel. Read all about it at: [url=<a href="http://www.umuc.edu/index.shtml%5DUMUC%5B/url"&gt;http://www.umuc.edu/index.shtml]UMUC[/url&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p>

<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>

3

<p>Well, I rarely feel to ugh...brag or market my school but, Wow, I'm in Army ROTC cadet in the Johns Hopkins University Blue Jay Battalion. I'm Chinese as well and see how you are a Maryland resident with decent ACT and GPA averages, you should take a look and give JHU some consideration. Student body was is maxed off at around 5500 undergrad, great ROTC program, excellent cadets, I believe the program itself was ranked among top 3 in the nation at one point and we once even sported a cadet who was ranked 2nd in the nation. With that said, the ROTC program at JHU has a tradition and long history of competeing to be amongst the very best, and I can say myself that my experience here in ROTC has been life transforming.</p>

<p>We also sport one of the top 5 East Asian studies and languages program in the nation, excellent highly rated writing seminars and creative writing programs, and it could be an excellent fit for those in the know. </p>

<p>Good luck, NYU actually is an excellent choice for Comparative Literature btw.</p>

4

<p>^I applied to Johns Hopkins ED(but guess what? I choose the WRONG major:philosophy. lol I should have chosen East Asian Studies.) :( btw, do they let you choose MOS?
Deferred cuz my TOEFL scores.. They ask me to take TOEFL and I don't know why I didn't pass my speaking section. I got perfect on all sections except speaking... and that killed my chance.
I'm doing an ECS program, so they won't deploy me until I finish my BA.
My recruiter recommends me to use all my GI Bill for my first two years of study under ECS, and then use ROTC+SMP to pay for my junior and senior year, that way, I could get the MOS I wanted.</p>

5

<p>"Deferred cuz my TOEFL scores.. They ask me to take TOEFL and I don't know why I didn't pass my speaking section. I got perfect on all sections except speaking... and that killed my chance."</p>

<p>What are you doing now to fix this problem? I don't know anything about the TOEFL speaking test, but it seems to me that you need to find out exactly what went wrong. Do you think that spoken fluency is a problem, or do you think you need accent training? Fluency is easier to fix than an accent, but that is indeed fixable - just a lot of hard work.</p>

6

<p>I don't have a bad accent.. and I'm certainly fluent in English language, at least I'd like to think so. I think it is because of the test's problem, I never do well in standardized tests, hell, I took ACT three times, and the last time I took it, the score jumped like 5 points with a huge score drops in writing section(from 11 to 8 o_O), don't know why. haha</p>

7

<p>Yup, standardized tests are really hard for some people. My HS class valedictorian used to become physically ill, and would have to step out into the hall and walk around a while before she could finish the annual state exams. She graduated with honors from Notre Dame, went on to law school, and now is a law professor. So don't let this stuff worry you too much.</p>

<p>The thing is, if you need a TOEFL score of X for college, then you need to figure out how to get it. Maybe all you need is a bit of test strategy work. If you haven't tried it all ready, you could pick up the relevant Princeton Review books at your public library and read through them for ideas.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

8

<p>^Thanks! But is NYU a match or is it a reach? If I apply ED to NYU, how likely will I be able to get in?</p>