Chance a junior at IMSA! (Special High School)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hey, so I know that I'm only a junior and that it can be kind of hard to tell what my actual chances are since I don't have all of my stats yet, but I'm going to make a few predictions as to the rest of this year and senior year. I apologize if I seem cocky or pretentious, that isn't my intention, I'm just trying to see what my chances would be if I am able to achieve the stats I post.
I go to IMSA, a residential, selective admissions based high school for 10-12 grade. All classes are taught at an accelerated/college level, and we usually send around 5-10 kids per year to HYPSM. IMSA is regularly ranked as one of the nation's most elite public high schools.</p>

<p>GPA: I received one B+ my sophomore year, but other than that all A's, and believe that I can continue this for the rest of my junior and senior year. My school doesn't calculate GPA but I think it would be around a 3.97 UW.</p>

<p>SAT Goal: >2250, ACT Goal: >32</p>

<p>E.C's:
Board member of school's Amnesty International chapter, will be applying to be a Student Area Coordinator
Cabinet Member on Student Council (Lead about 20 students on a committee to improve residential life)
Will hopefully be Vice President of Student Council next year.
Board member of French Club
co-President and Founder of Middle Eastern Culture Club: Founded to promote Middle East culture, shed stereotype of "terrorism" through music, food, fun, and awareness activities.
Peer Tutor and Writing Center Tutor
National Honor Society
Mu Alpha Theta (Math Honor Society)
Youth United For Darfur- Regional Committee Member
TALENT (Total Applied Learning in Entrepreneurship)- Will present business idea for web-based language learning software to investors in February, hopefully be able to start business.
Cross Country- Varsity for 2 years
Choreographer for school's Lunar New Year Show (requires months of planning, over 100 students participate in the show).
Conduct research at Northwestern University in Chemical Engineering, my professor said that I will probably published.</p>

<p>Volunteering:
Participated in a Habitat for Humanity trip rebuilding a home for a Hurricane Katrina victim in New Orleans
Peer Tutoring/Writing Center
Will be starting a program at my local retirement home for high school students to teach free piano lessons to the elderly (will be leading 3 or 4 other HS students in this).</p>

<p>Work Experience: Worked for two summers at my father's carwash fixing machines, assisting customers etc., currently a news writer for Gokpop.com, a Korean celebrity gossip site with over 4000 daily readers.</p>

<p>Other: Proficient in French, self learning Korean, Japanese. Applied to NSLI Summer Program in China, if selected I will spend 6 weeks in China on a full scholorship learning Chinese.</p>

<p>Race: White (Half Turkish, Half European, come from a mixed faith background, Muslim father, Christian mother).
Income <$40,000 per year</p>

<p>Passion for writing, learning languages/exploring new cultures, hope to pursue a career in global economics, international relations, or anything else that allows me to travel the world and address global issues.</p>

<p>What are my chances at schools like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, UPenn Wharton, Columbia and such?</p>

<p>Thanks so much, I'm really struggling to figure out what sort of schools I really have a chance at.</p>

2

<p>anyone? am I missing anything?</p>

3

<p>Your record sounds very competitive. Straight A’s except for one B+ at IMSA is an extremely strong academic record. If you can get the target SAT and ACT score you list, that’s competitive even for Ivies and Ivy peers. And your EC’s sound amazing, even compared to the kind of students who are typically admitted to Ivies and Ivy peers.</p>

<p>In fact, many of the Ivy League schools offer excellent financial aid. Given your family’s income, you might be able to attend these schools for little to no cost. For example, Columbia wouldn’t expect a parent contribution for your education at all because your parents earn under $60,000 per year (this assumes “typical assets”).</p>

<p>I’m surprised that IMSA doesn’t send more students to Ivies and Ivy peers. 2-4% of the graduating class attending HYPSM is actually surprisingly low given that students admitted to IMSA are among the best and brightest of an entire state. This could actually work to your advantage because universities often don’t want to admit too many students from the same high school, even if the high school is selective.</p>

4

<p>If you don’t mind me saying, I find it really extraordinary that when I’m looking for info about Business Schools and deciding b/t job offers, I am able to stumble upon a post from a fellow IMSA-er. :slight_smile: I was c/o 07, and I think you will have no trouble getting into the second half of the top 10. As for the first half, I know your resume looks really awesome, but just thinking back to my friends who go to Harvard/Stanford/MIT etc, they all had some type of national award that distinguished them from their peers. It’s sad that most people from IMSA are extremely competent, but since colleges compare us to our peers who apply from the same high schooll, what we have on our resume really loses its colors.</p>

<p>So if you can, work on the national award part, whether it is SIEMENS, Intel, chemistry, math etc (can’t think of many off the top of my head - it’s been a while). If you are curious, the student council president of my year ended up in Uchicago, premed.</p>

5

<p>@blemish: That’s interesting. IMSA is not the only high school where all of the students are extremely talented. Many other states have schools like IMSA which select from the best and brighest students among an entire state. Then there are schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science; one must be in approximately the top 1% of NYC students to be admitted to either of these schools. There are also extremely strong private high schools such as Andover, Deerfield Academy, Exeter and Horace Mann. Yet I’ve never heard that you have to win a nationwide award to get into HYPSM from any of these other schools.</p>

<p>I still wonder why it’s so difficult to be admitted to HYPSM from IMSA. It doesn’t seem plausible that these schools wouldn’t have heard of IMSA.</p>

<p>I maintain that the OP’s EC’s, even absent any national awards, are extremely solid.</p>

6

<p>I would have to agree with blemish. The problem when you attend an elite public or private high school is that you are first and foremost compared to your own classmates when applying to college.</p>

<p>While top colleges take a lot from these schools, the number is actually pretty small when you realize almost everyone attending would be a star at an average high school.</p>

<p>At a school like Deerfield or Bronx Science, every kid had to test very high to get in. So these schools are full of kids scoring 2350 who have significant achievements.</p>

<p>So to stand out in that pool, you need to be extraordinary. It could be national awards or a passion taken to high heights. But the bottom line, unfortunately, is that top high schools can make it much tougher to get into top colleges.</p>

7

<p>Take3: Yes I am aware of the fact that there are numerous top-quality high schools like IMSA all around the country. In fact, it is because there are so many of these schools around that colleges tend to put a “cap” on the number of students they can take from each of these schools, and will compare applicants to those who apply from the same school. </p>

<p>I’m not familiar with these other schools and what kind of relationship they have with the top-tiered colleges. I do know that with IMSA, a lot of students end up participating in and ranking in national competitions. In addition, students have similar academic records & ECs as the OP, though they are very strong here as stated. Again, I’m just saying that there are definitely ways in which the OP can boost his resume to stand out even more - I didn’t apply to any Ivy’s, so I don’t know what standards they are looking for these days.</p>

<p>MrKebap, would you say that you are amongst the top 10-15 people in your class? I’m sure you have a good sense of it by now. If you are, then you shouldn’t worry about it.</p>

<p>2college2college: Yup that is exactly what I mean, and how I feel even in college - it’s so hard to stand out while looking for a job & applying to graduate programs because many of my peers are so elite, and I’m more of a “I like to have a bit of fun but I will work hard even though I’m not a genius” type of person. :)</p>

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<p>I found hard numbers for how many members of the IMSA Class of 2010 are attending each university. This is available at <a href=“https://www3.imsa.edu/system/files/IMSA2192_bleed.pdf[/url]”>https://www3.imsa.edu/system/files/IMSA2192_bleed.pdf&lt;/a&gt; - the numbers are on the top of page 4 of the PDF file to which this link points.</p>

<p>Out of 178 members of the graduating class, 7 matriculated at MIT. That’s 3.9% of the graduating class. You wouldn’t expect any of the HYPSM universities to take the top 3.9% of the graduating class of a zoned public high school, even a truly excellent one like New Trier or Evanston Township. While I agree that universities don’t want to take too many students from the same high school, any “cap” is obviously somewhat flexible.</p>

<p>Another example is Northwestern, which accepted 12 members, or 6.7%, of the graduating class. Northwestern is an Ivy peer.</p>

<p>HYPSM as a whole accepted 11 members, or 6.2%, of the graduating class. (Note that my figure of 2-4% above turned out to be wrong. This was based on the figure of 5-10 matriculants provided by the OP and an estimate of 250 members of the graduating class. Just out of curiosity, did IMSA shrink? Or was attrition for the Class of 2010 especially severe?)</p>

<p>Also, I don’t think most parents would send their children to selective high schools if it dramatically decreased their chances of getting into the universities they wanted. If students really were competing against only others in their high school, then why would anyone apply to a selective school rather than being valedictorian of their neighborhood zoned high school? Conversely, it would make sense to trade a vastly superior high school experience for a somewhat lesser chance of getting into one’s most preferred universities.</p>

<p>Interestingly, none of the universities you list had more than two matriculants from the class:
Harvard - zero
Stanford - 2
Yale - 1
Penn - 2 (the document fails to specify whether they matriculated to Wharton specifically)
Columbia - zero</p>

<p>It doesn’t seem plausible that you’re going to have problems with a “cap” at any of these schools. Harvard and Columbia seem especially promising.</p>

<p>(I’m actually surprised there isn’t more interest in Columbia SEAS from IMSAns, given that it’s a solid engineering school which also provides a broad education. While the SEAS Core is not as extensive as the Columbia College Core, it’s light-years ahead of what most engineering schools offer in terms of becoming academically well-rounded. But that’s another topic.)</p>

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<p>This actually works in your favor. IMSA is, by construction, going to attract students who tend to be interested in math and science. These students will tend to apply to top universities like MIT which are strong in math and science. So if you apply to schools that are well-rounded or focused on the liberal arts, any competition with others in your graduating class is lessened.</p>

<p>As for the national awards, you have to strike a balancing act. To focus on the national award, you’d probably have to reduce the time you spend on your impressive EC’s. It’s also somewhat of a double-or-nothing strategy in that you could spend less time on your EC’s, still fail to win the national award and be worse off than before. Also, just because winning a national award worked for others doesn’t mean it’s your optimal strategy. Universities like well-rounded people. If someone has an intense focus on one area of interest, they’d better be truly amazing in that one area to counteract their lack of well-roundedness. You don’t have this problem.</p>

9

<p>I just talked to a Columbia alumna this evening. I asked her if you have to have won a national award to get into Columbia. She did not think it was necessary.</p>

<p>Moreover, I’ve personally known several dozen Ivy League students and alumni. I’m not aware of even one of them having earned a national award by the time they applied to university.</p>

<p>What these Ivy Leaguers do have, fairly consistently in fact, is well-roundedness and a highly developed personality. By contrast, they’ve tended not to be extremely well-developed in some academic area but otherwise not well-rounded. It’s plausible that someone in the latter category would probably need to have won a national award in their area of strength to be of any interest to the Ivy League.</p>

<p>@MrKebap, you strike me as the kind of highly intelligent and well-rounded applicant who would have a realistic chance at universities like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Wharton or Columbia. You don’t strike me as being someone who needs a national award to overcome being insufficiently well-rounded.</p>

<p>On a somewhat unrelated note, it would also be good to get university and career advice from people outside the IMSA bubble. If most people around you are interested in the STEM fields, their academic and career goals are probably different from yours. So what people around you are doing to select and be admitted to university and to prepare for an eventual career may or may not be relevant to you. The Internet has a lot of great information about universities and careers. This site is especially good.</p>

<p>Incidentally, more members of the IMSA Class of 2010 matriculated to MIT than to the entire Ivy League combined.</p>

10

<p>This post is a bit old but you have to remember that some of the parents of these kids would be expected to pay full tilt at MIT, etc and that the University of Illinois is an excellent science, math and engineering public university where they can get an excellent education for half the cost of the Ivies and their peers. 20% of the Class of 2010 went to U of I. My son is at IMSA now. He is my 4th child so I am well acquainted with how the financial aid system works (I’ll have 3 in college this fall-eek!!) and what we can hopefully expect in a financial aid package when he graduates. Some of the parents at parent’s weekend were very concerned about how they were going to be able to afford MIT, etc since they didn’t have the background I do (self taught!) in financial aid.</p>

<p>btw, I know several Columbia students who were admitted without any national awards.</p>

<p>momoffive</p>

11

<p>sorry to say, top 1% isn’t very competitive. IMSA’s got about 700-900 people applying each year (about 600-800 of whom are gifted) and only 240 accepted on average. This is why they continuously win different awards.</p>

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<p>@Take3, I’m an IMSA parent (d is finishing her junior year). I’d point out that the information you’re citing from the IMSA Profile document is enrollments, not acceptances. (I suspect you know that, but others may not.)</p>

<p>Some schools really value IMSA kids. In a typical year, 85% of the senior class applies to UIUC, and 96% of those are accepted. Case Western Reserve, for another example, over the three-year period 2008-2010 admitted 110 of 116 from IMSA (only 7 enrolled). (That admit % dropped this year, but so did CWRU’s overall admit rate.) This year (2011), 50% of IMSA applicants to Vanderbilt (overall admit rate ~15%) were admitted. [Information source: for 2008-2010, Naviance; for 2011, presentation to IMSA parents association made by the head college counselor last Saturday.] </p>

<p>Other schools, OTOH, look at the GPAs - typically lower than the same kid would have had at a regular HS - and that kills it. (That’s my opinion as a parent; nothing I say here is official from IMSA.) Harvard is the prime example, and some of the other Ivies are almost as bad. We did have three kids admitted to Princeton this year and two to Columbia; that’s 1-1/2% and 1% of the graduating class - not terribly shabby, IMO. None again to Harvard, however. For 2010, there was one admit to Harvard; he chose to go to Yale instead.</p>

<p>The answer to the question “does going to IMSA help you get into a better college,” IMO, is “depends on the kid … depends on the college.” And IMSA administrators will say flatly that their mission is igniting and nurturing creative and ethical scientific minds that advance the human condition - getting most kids into very good colleges is a byproduct of the mission, not the mission itself.</p>

<p>If you’d like more information on IMSA, feel free to PM me.</p>

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<p>If you achieve all that you hope to, I would say you have a very strong chance of being competitive for the Ivies. Good luck :)</p>

14

<p>You are very competitive, and your stats are very good, but nothing is unique about you. You’re a smart white kid applying to HYPSM, so your chances may not be all that great.</p>

<p>Try to focus on one thing that you are really good at and/or that you love. Hone your talent in that area and show a clear passion for it. That could help you.</p>