Australian Student, What are my chances?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

I would really appreciate if some people could give my some guidance as to the chances I have in applying to a range of schools. I am Australian and therefore am unsure about my acceptance probability, and I also haven’t done any AP courses as they aren’t offered here.

The school’s I am interested in are Harvard, UMich, UC Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, Duke and Northwestern.

SAT Score = 2270
790 Math
750 Reading
740 Writing

Class Rank 1/197
No GPA, but I am one of two students at my school to get straight As.
Currently Study very intense subjects offered at my school, the hardest math course, chemistry, physics, religion and English. I have also studied 3 years of Italian and a range of humanities in 9th and 10th Grades.

Most importantly, I am a competitive swimmer, training about 8 times a week and swimming at Olympic Trials etc. I have set state records and my swimming is on an upward trend so I am hoping this will help me in applying to colleges. A variety of college swimming coaches seem interested in me for my swimming ability :slight_smile:

Other Extra Curricular
Debating all years, In the school’s best team (top 3 speakers of the school)
Music (played viola and violin for many years)
Basketball
Water-polo
Surf Life Saving (conducted competitively at beaches)
Soccer
Community and Service 210 Hours last year
Peer Tutoring programs
School Leader (one of 6)
Swimming Club Captain

Thanks everyone in advance! Any tips for applications or anything I should do before its time to apply would be greatly welcomed.

2

What state are you in? Do you have the state tests (VCE?)

Your chances are okay, right now. Nothing is spectacular, but I suspect you have a better profile with Australian scores, which you may be able to use, or at least self-report.

As a swimmer and Australian, you may want to look at Liberal Arts Colleges. These are universities that no one on the street has heard of, but employers and grad schools will have heard of them. If you want to go back to Australia right after uni, however, you should avoid them. Otherwise, they’re really great. What do you want to study in uni?

3

If you’re THAT good of a swimmer, you should basically have no problem in getting in these universities. A recruited athlete with all A’s is a huge bonus especially a prospective Olympic swimmer.

4

Thank you. I was thinking of studying something in STEM, maybe engineering. As for Liberal Arts Colleges, I’m not sure that they have the athletic program that I am looking for to support my swimming. I was really looking at the bigger universities with well established swimming programs. I’ll have a look around though, thanks for the advice.

5

Times, rankings, academic info… http://www.collegeswimming.com/teams/

@swimmer11 How are your times compared to top D3 research unis like Johns Hopkins, MIT, Chicago? For LACs, Williams and Harvey Mudd have top shelf math/physics. WUSL, Carnegie Mellon… some excellent academic options in D3.