Chance a semi-clueless soon-to-be-senior?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

People probably get annoyed with chance me threads but I couldn’t help it ^ . ^ I tried to resist, I swear :slight_smile: So thanks for just clicking on this haha.
My dream school is Princeton, but the top tier schools I’m thinking about applying to are also: MIT, Stanford, Columbia

S T A T S :
ACT - 36 composite (35 reading) & 8/8/8 essay
SAT - 1590 (790 reading/writing) & 6/6/6 essay
PSAT - 1520 (not sure if colleges even see your psat score though?)
APs - Mandarin, APUSH, Stats, Bio, Chem, Lang&Comp, Psych, Calc - all 5s
[Will be taking AP Mech, E&M, Micro, Macro, French, CS next year]
GPA - weighted 4.90 / unweighted 4.0

A W A R D S :
(Is this the same thing as stats? I don’t really know lol…)
Freshman year - Le Grand Concours (French contest) 10th in the nation
Sophomore year - NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Award Ohio Runner-Up
Junior year - NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Award National Runner-Up; Scholastics Art Contest Regional Gold & Silver Key recipient; National AP Scholar (lol)

E X T R A C U R R I C U L A R S :
Science Olympiad - all 4 years, event leader, multiple state-level medals, team ranked 3rd overall (consumes literally half of my life, I love it)
Volleyball - 3 years, co-captain of freshman & JV teams, Varsity team was GMC (conference) champion
ILC - local organization dedicated to helping students interested in tech; on the leadership council, helped organize TechOlympics (largest tech expo for high schoolers in the nation)
TEDx - organizing a TEDx event at my school w/ a friend
NHS - 2 years, but don’t do much
French Honor Society - 2 years, but again, don’t do much
Art - just something I do in my free time, I go to a studio once a week, trying to put together a portfolio for an art supplement, I’ve won some Scholastics awards (but just at the regional level)

O T H E R :
I’ve had internships in tech-y areas all 3 summers so far. Freshman year - Singtel (in China, Singaporean telecommunications company - wasn’t very legit though); sophomore year - interned with the school district IT dept.; junior year - a Fortune 500 company but its like 400-something on the list haha (shouldn’t disclose the name on here probably?)

A general concern of mine is, will my underwhelming essay scores on my ACT and SAT affect my chances? I got a 5 on AP Language and Composition, but I guess I goofed pretty hard on the ACT & SAT ones and I don’t want to retake just for the essay score…Also, what’s considered a solid set of extracurriculars? I feel like I don’t actually do much - SciOly and volleyball are basically my entire life

Any feedback/opinions appreciated!!

2

Wow, you say you’re clueless, and yet you are doing way better than I, who has my entire future planned out basically down to what outfit I am going to wear on the 2nd Monday of October 2030, am. If this is clueless, I want to be clueless! Columbia is my top School ;). How did you get those internships?

3

Your grades and test scores are very good and will definitely be a plus. However, your extracurriculars are kind of average compared to many of the other outstanding students applying to top ivies and stanford. You should work on emphasizing your experiences and passion in your essays, especially how you enjoy scio and volleyball. The part that stood out to me the most is your interns (i’ve only managed to get a super low-level intern at a financial company this summer lolol) so you should highlight that on your essays too.

Again, these schools are very difficult to get into and have extremely low acceptance rates:
Columbia - accept/waitlist
Princeton - waitlist
Stanford - reject/waitlist
MIT-reject/waitlist
However, if you make your essays and recs look really good then you will definitely have a better chance. IMO, you should be able to get into at least one of these.

Chance me too!
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/2002581-chance-me-for-mit-stanford-yale-columbia-harvard-uofm-upenn-and-uchicago.html#latest

4

We have a pretty similar profile! My dream school is Princeton and the two big things in my life are cross country/track and TEAMS (science thing). Besides that, hardly anything. I have a 36 ACT with an 8 essay (bombed) but my SAT essay was 8/7/7 (much better), and SAT scores are 1500(essay) and 1560(no essay). I switched schools in the middle of high school but have basically the hardest classload with an upward trend.

Anyways, I have come to realize that I have a small chance of getting in; maybe like 10 or 15%. This is mostly because of my subpar extra-curriculars. The people at my school accepted to Princeton in previous years have done a lot more than I have, e.g. started a mentoring program with middle schoolers to help build stuff for science projects, regional science awards in multiple subjects, leadership position at award-winning school newspaper, state/nationally ranked musicians, and more. I feel like I just don’t have enough in my application to make me stand out from the applicant pool and my classmates.

If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your ethnicity? I ask because it’s no secret that Asians are screwed over in this process. If you’re white (like me) or literally any race besides Asian you have a much better chance of acceptance. To go along with that, if you are Asain, you can stand out by saying you want to major in something besides math and science, although your extracurriculars suggest you might want some kind of STEM.

If you apply to Princeton, it’d be interesting to keep in touch and see how things end up for us. I will most likely apply REA to Princeton and for the best chance I suggest you do the same. Best of luck!

5

@ams355 Lol I am Asian (unsurprisingly, I guess :D), so rip college admissions. I’m probably going to apply REA as well…we’ll see what happens. I hope we both end up at Princeton!

Do you mind if I ask what school (or state!) you’re from?

6

I’m from Missouri and I go to a public school. Historically we’ve had one or two people get into HPY every year and I am the only person in my grade to get a 36 so far, so I guess that’s good for me.

I wouldn’t give up hope, though. I know 2 asians who got into princeton and you are just as competitive as them. It could just be a crapshoot like everyone says but you never know what will happen! I hope we both get in too :3.

If you want to talk about anything or have a question, we can exchange direct message (I think) through this website (“inbox” feature). :slight_smile: