Chance a Junior for ED!

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
1

Pakistani Male (born in US)
Income: ~150k

Grades (note the upward trend):

9th (3.75 UW):

Algebra H B+
Biology H A
English H B+
History H A
Health A
PLTW A
Gym A+
Spanish A

10th (4.0):

Chemistry H A
English H A
Gym A+
Band A+
Pre-Calculus H A
Spanish A
AP World A
Baking A

11th (4.0 UW):

AP Biology A
AP Calculus AB A
AP US History A
AP English Lang A
Band A+
Spanish H A+
Physics H A+

12th Schedule:

AP Economics
AP English Literature and Composition
AP Statistics
Band
AP Spanish
AP Government and Politics
AP Physics B

SAT I: 2310 (770 M/760 CR/780 W) one sitting

SAT II:

World History (680)
Biology E (770)
US History (760)
Math II (800)

GPA (out of 4.0): 3.92/4.54

Rank: 10% of 430 students

AP (place score in parenthesis):

World History (5)
English Language and Composition (5)
US History (5)
Calculus AB (5)
Biology (5)

Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.):

AP Scholar with Distinction
National Merit Commended

Minor Awards (Local/School etc.):

High Honor Roll
Honor Roll
Scholar Athlete
Runner-Up General Knowledge Contest
several other various ones…

Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):

8th:

Youth Symphony Orchestra

9th:

Youth Symphony Orchestra
Debate Club JV
Club Baseball
Writing Novel (self-published Junior Year)

10th:

Youth Symphony Orchestra
Debate Club JV
Marching Band
JV Baseball
School Weightlifting
Writing Novel

11th:

Youth Symphony Orchestra (Section Leader)
Marching Band (Section Leader)
Debate Club Varsity
Varsity Baseball
School Weightlifting
Science Olympiad
Moody’s Mega Math Challenge
PUBLISHED Novel!!!
Feminist Club (Secretary)
NHS

12th (Predicted):

Youth Symphony Orchestra (Section Leader)
Marching Band (Section Leader)
Debate Club Varsity
Varsity Baseball
Science Olympiad (Captain)
Feminist Club (Secretary)
NHS (Webmaster)

Job/Work Experience:

About a month working in fast food restaurant

Volunteer/Community service:

Various hours logged for NHS
Helping elderly neighbor with housework and chores
Volunteering in temple
see below
~ 80 hours in all

Summer Activities:

9th:

Baseball on competitive team
Traveled to Pakistan to help improve education for children living in impoverished areas

10th:

Baseball on competitive team

11th:

Traveled to Pakistan again to continue to help improve education for children living in impoverished areas
Columbia Summer Program

Teacher Recommendations: 9/10, teachers I am planning to ask love me and I can only ameliorate these relationships
Counselor Rec: 7/10, he doesn’t really know me and vice versa

Other

Intended Major: Economics

Hooks: Baseball? Not recruited by any of these schools but still…
Also I speak 4 languages (Spanish, Hindi, Panjabi, English)

Damn, that took a while to write! Anyways, I hope you guys appreciate the effort I went to in writing this at 2 AM lol . I will chance back, but chance me for the following schools using the x% Y/ x% N method. For example:

Harvard 10y/90n
Stanford 5y/95n

2

Your GPA, SATs, and course load are all strong points in your applicant, and undoubtedly they will help your application. Most of your ECs are typical, but publishing a novel is a pretty impressive accomplishment. The only thing holding you back, in my opinion, is your lack of major awards (AP scholar and National Merit don’t really count.) Assuming your essays and letters of recommendation are good, if you apply ED I’d say you probably have a 50y/50n chance. That’s pretty much as good as it gets for any top school.

Best of luck!

3

Tman, what is the basis for your statement that the the SAT and GPA here indicate chances of about 50:50? Inside information, or something in the public domain? If the latter, can you post a link?

What is the basis for your statement that lack of major awards holds back any candidate, or an intended Econ major in particular. Again, inside information you have, or something you can show us?

4

I think Brown will be a low reach for you. You have an advantage (SAT, languages, novel), but you don’t have that many community service hours or work experience. I think you have a 60y/40n chance. What is your novel about?

5

@amelia1212‌

If I were to obtain more community service hours, do you think my chances would increase, to say, 70y/30n?
The novel, to be vague for privacy reasons, is about the adventures of two men who received a secret message

6

9penn9, I think your chances would be closer to zero if you think that the opinions of others…who themselves are so unsure of the process that they have asked others to chance them here on CC…have any validity based on fact.

What are you going to do when you get to college somewhere and have to do research? Just ask around among people who don’t know?

Let me ask you this. Have you seen the SAT and GPA admissions stats that Brown publishes?

7

Yes @fenwaypark‌

8

So you know that for the Class of 2018 Brown admitted 11.6% of applicants with SAT Math 750-790, and 13.7% of applicants with CR between 750-790.

And you know that the 75th percentile for Math was 780 and for CR was 760 according to the 13-14 Common Data Set.

Therefore you knew you are in the SAT mix before you posted.

Sure, SATs are far from being the whole picture. Better grades are better than lesser grades. Deeper ECs are better than shallower ECs. Meaningful recs are better than generic recs. Showing good fit is better than showing weak fit. Thoughtful, insightful essays are better than cookie cutter essays.

But you will take the opinions of others who are so clueless about these things that they started their own chance threads here? Not sure what that shows about your analytical thinking ability.

Is non-recruited baseball a hook, as compared to being just another EC? Let’s figure it out ourselves right here. Brown admits about 200 recruited athletes each year…for all sports. Baseball typically has 6-8 recruits. I am going to guess now, but maybe there are about 100,000 boys playing high school baseball in their senior years? (Anyone please correct me because this is a guess). Brown entering classes are about 1500-1600 students. What is your conclusion about non-recruited baseball being a hook?

9

@fenwaypark‌

Nobody except those on the Brown admission committee has an objective way of predicting a person’s “chance” of being accepted. The only concrete data I have to suggest 50/50 is my school’s naviance, where nearly 50% of 2300+ applicants were accepted. I was merely speculating based on looking at years of posts related College Confidential Early Decision for Brown. I know that my opinion isn’t worth much if anything, but I don’t think it’s wrong to give it.

10

Again, I’m not trying to be scientific about it. Everything is pure speculation, but I think that’s what the original poster is looking for.

11

Well, that is helpful, might have been useful to state that up front. If the OP really is Brown material, I think he/she can evaluate the validity of extrapolating a conclusion for the entire Brown applicant base from the results of one school’s Naviance, or from CC results threads which are heavily biased toward the good-news results.

I’m not sure about that. Is that what you were looking for when you started a chance-me thread about your own prospects?

But let’s say you are right. What does your 50:50 speculation mean? It cannot mean that the OP will be 50% admitted, because everyone is either 100% admitted or 100% denied eventually. If it means 50% of the applicants with those SAT and GPA scores will be admitted, well, bingo, you hit it…because whether there is a denial or acceptance you can say you were right!! (Same with any prediction except 100%)

This is the Brown forum. Maybe when subsequent chance-me threads inevitably pop-up, some of us can advise the OP–and the many people who are reading but not posting–that our opinions aren’t “worth much if anything” as you said. And that responses are “pure speculation”, as you said.

Or that really important things such as essays and recommendations that we do not see here, are essential parts of an application’s strength or weakness. Or refrain from saying things such as “lack of major awards are holding you back”, when there is no reason to reach such a conclusion…errrrr I mean speculation.

Otherwise, people might fall into the trap of looking to the Brown forum as a source of reliable information instead of mere speculation

12

@fenwaypark

I agree with basically everything you said.And I think that most people would recognize that any “chances” thread is just slightly-educated speculation (at best), so I feel comfortable giving my opinion. I understand that an applicant’s decision is a factor of dozens if not hundreds of variables, and that a text-post on CC can only give a very limited picture of an applicant. Still, I feel as if the original poster’s achievements would put him towards the top of Brown’s applicant pool.

On the topic of major awards, here’s my reasoning for saying a lack thereof hurts: Awards help applicants stand out in ways that scores and grades can’t. In my opinion, winning a national competition is more impressive than getting a high SAT score or 4.0 GPA.

Take, for example, the AMC, AIME, and USAMO math competitions. Every year, thousands and thousands of students get perfect 800s on the SAT Math section, and on the SAT II Math II test. If Brown wanted, I’m sure it could accept a class consisting entirely of perfect math scorers. To help differentiate past the level of the SAT IIs, these math competitions can help. Every year, approximately 1000 kids applying to college have taken the American Invitational Math Examination (AIME). So, an AIME qualifier probably looks “better” than a student with a perfect math SAT II score. Even fewer kids are invited to take the USAMO, and so on. Taking the AIME or USAMO helps applicants stand out a little bit better in the overwhelmingly talented applicant pool. So do other awards and honors.

13

Winning awards is better than not winning awards.

And as a poster has already said in this thread:

Everybody knows that.

But here is what you posted to the OP and the many readers who come to this forum for reliable advice and guidance:

Memo to all applicants and prospective applicants: If you have not won an award, such as AIME, AMC, or USAMO (especially for humanities and social science majors) you should not believe that this is somehow “holding you back” in your candidacy at Brown…unless someone can show you proof. If you have the qualities that Brown is looking for–which have been discussed here ad nauseum–your lack of a major award will not “hold you back”, as far as I can tell by looking through publicly available information.

Check out this thread from the MIT forum, and especially the comments from poster “Molliebatmit”. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/408694-is-it-harder-for-people-without-flashy-awards-to-get-into-mit.html

She is an MIT grad and a contributor to MIT admissions blogs. She is familiar with the MIT admissions process. In particular she says:

Can anyone find data or statements (besides Tman’s opinion) showing that the opposite is the case at Brown, or that lack of awards will hold an applicant back at Brown, even though this is not the case at MIT?

14

Sounds interesting! I don’t know how much your chances would increase, but I believe it will help, especially if it’s something obscure that not many people do.