Can I Get In? (M&T ED class of '25)

Hi! I am a White/Hispanic female rising senior from NYC who is strongly considering EDing to the M&T program.

I applied to the HS summer version (M&TSI) but was waitlisted, probably because my physics background wasn’t that strong at the time. I also am involved in social justice work , tech, and entrepreneurship, and hope to combine all three in college.


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  • 4.0 unweighted GPA (94.14/100)
  • 35 ACT (32 Math, 34 Science, 36 English, 36 Reading)
  • 9th and 10th grade Honors wherever possible

11th and 12th (IB courses):

  • Math HL (96)
  • Comp Sci HL (98)
  • Lang & Lit HL (95)
  • History HL (97)
  • Chem SL (97)
  • Spanish SL (95)

Extra Classes:

  • UCSD (6 credits) Entrepreneurship + Leadership (B+)
  • Stanford (5 credits) Physics (Light + Heat) (in progress)
  • Dwight School (My HS) - Advanced Physics w/ Calc (in progress)
  • Harvard (4 credits) Law & Psych (A)
  • Harvard (4 credits) Business & IP Law (A)
  • Columbia (no credit) Intro to Quantum Physics
  • Columbia (no credit) History of New York
  • Columbia (no credit) Conservation Biology

<<<<extracurriculars +="" awards="">>>>
These are some of the top 10 that I will be listing, but not all:

  1. Founder/ President of a nonprofit that provides toiletries to NYC homeless (2 years)
  2. Co-Founder/ Co-President of Kids Who Code at my school (2 years)
  3. Spark Tank (startup incubator program at school) (5 years)
  4. Captain of Varsity Volleyball Team (4 years)
  5. Team Leader + Mentor for Global Issues Network (UN-esque global conference) (3 years)
  6. Google CodeNext Artificial Intelligence Program (3 years)
  7. National Honors Society
  8. Peer Tutor for Math and English (3 years)
  9. Class Head for Student Council (3 years)
  10. Math Team Starter

Awards:

  • Diamond Challenge Finalist (global startup competition - social innovation track)
  • National Hispanic Scholar
  • Spark Tank Level 5 (launched a startup through school’s Spark Tank program)
  • ACIS Volleyball Award (school league player award)

I would say I’m a very good writer, and for my essay I plan to focus on my ability to combine social activism with entrepreneurship. I’m concerned that I might need 1 or 2 more internships/ professional experiences in business. Please let me know what areas I can improve in! Thank you!!!

Hey Chloe, I am an M&T 2020 (just had our virtual graduation). Studied electrical engineering and OIDD (business operations). I’m working on a social impact company inventXYZ post-grad https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/presidents-innovation-prize-winner-wants-bring-high-tech-hands-learning-all-students

You definitely seem to have an interesting background.

A lot of the M&Ts I know have actually pretty wildly different essays. You should know that getting into college is a crapshoot, but it is also about aligning interests between the program and you, so in that sense, one who is specifically interested in business and tech has a better shot at getting into m&t than generically into a top college. Plus even if you don’t get into M&T but you get into Wharton or Engineering, you could always do an uncoordinated dual degree like my roommates did.

I actually wrote about establishing a company that makes inventions to improves quality of life and make life simpler and establishes a network of makerspaces in high schools so that students could do the same.

I think like any good marketing plan, you could think about trying to deliver a coordinated story through the course of your several essays. That said, all of my friends had applications that were thematically and stylistically very different. I think one commonality is we talked about Penn resources and specific people we thought could be helpful for us to achieve our goals, whatever they were.

Sounds like you’re very well-versed on the business side, but maybe you could explore more on the tech side?

If you’re interested in that I started a summer program for high school students to hone their Programming, Electronics, and Data visualization skills. You’d code and build 3 hands-on projects over 6 weeks and have video chats with UPenn engineers including 2 M&T students). Link is summer.inventxyz.com/

It’s also a tenth of the cost of M&TSI

The 32 on math may raise some red flags to the AOs because you are applying into a hyper-selective STEM-heavy program. Also the 34 on science contributes to an on average low STEM score of 33.

Other than that, you seem to have a solid profile.

Could high grades in Math HL and physics (stanford and HS) make up for it? I plan to take Math 2 subject test (twice just in case) but am worried that it will get cancelled.