<p>Hi all!
I'm an international applicant from India. I'm currently taking a gap year. Not applying for aid at every school but Cornell.
I'm applying ED to Cornell, and EA to all other schools
Stats: SAT- 2260( 800M, 760W, 660CR-one sitting), superscore of 2360<a href="800M,%20800CR,%20760W">/u</a>
SAT Subject tests: Math-II-800, Chemistry-780, Physics-770. This was one bad day. </p>
<p>Decent school grades (won't mention because it is not in American system). My final grades of junior year were a bit lower due to some medicinal reasons. Counselor has written about it in her LOR. My senior year grades were very good, and my senior final grades were very good too (No senioritis!! All straight As).</p>
<p>Indian Schooling is very challenging (colleges know this). No AP/Honors classes are offered in my school. My class rank was 1/97. My school has no culture of extracurricular activities. Therefore all my activities happened outside of school.</p>
<p>** Science Achievements**:[ul]
[<em>] National level quick calculation winner (rank 1. Grade 10)
[</em>] 99+ percentile in a national exam conducted by India's education board CBSE (aka PSA) (almost all high schoolers from India appeared for this exam). (grade 11)
[<em>] 99+ percentile in a national exam which is known worldwide for its difficulty (1.5 million people appear for tests; close to 10k people are deemed qualified). Its name is JEE, by the way. Kind of analogous to Gaokao but covers more advanced Physics, Chemistry, and mathematics (grade 12)
[</em>] Winner of India's North Zone Science fair (grade 12). Came 2nd in another national science fair (in this gap year). It was covered in the local newspaper as well :)
[/ul]</p>
<p>Non-Science Achievements[ul]
[<em>] State level English Debate winner in 12th, district level winner in 11th.
[</em>] This gap year I took pushed into an EC I never could've imagined-Writing Short stories, and poems
I was runner up in a national poetry competition and came 3rd in national short story competition. My short stories have also gained massive online attention. They got close to 3 million views. (kinda felt like adding it to my app. Whatca think?).
[<em>] 4 of my short stories were published in newspapers<a href="They're%20in%20Hindi%20language,%20though.%20Their%20English%20translations%20got%20the%20views%20I%20talked%20about%20in%20previous%20point">/u</a>. Not in any teen column or Readers column. In proper newspaper. This all happened in this gap year.
[</em>] District level Badminton winner (not a major award. Only 40 people participated!)
[/ul]</p>
<p>** ECs**:[ul]
[<em>] I teach physics and mathematics to students. Did this for 4 years (3 of high school and one gap year).
[</em>] Was Vice president of environemental club-- organized a total of 14 rallies on environemental awareness (for all 4 years of high school. Not doing in this gap year as the club has been dissolved :()
[<em>] I write. Though I have picked up this activity in this year, I have done substantial work in this. Please see my non-science achievements for that. I'm currently working on 3rd draft of a mystery novel. Sending snippets to colleges.
[</em>] Did an internship at a motorbike showroom. I did this to test some of my ideas of devices (have mentioned this in essay) and to learn more about motorbikes. My work was pretty menial, but I did the internship just because I wanted to see how bikes are repaired, how engines worked etc. This too was done in this gap year.[/ul]
As you can see, I did just 2 activities throughout high school, and the rest 2 activities in this gap year. I don't know if this will hurt me or not.</p>
<p>Subjective factors:
[ul]
[li] Essays: I'm a pretty bad self-critic. So I got them read by an ex-admission officer at a very selective university. According to him, my essay grabbed attention, had nice details, overall it was pretty good, but not at the top of the top. He gave it an 8/10. Also got it read by couple of other students at MIT(they don't know me. I just requested them and they agreed!) who said my essay was pretty humble, personal, and conveyed a sense of person. One of them said it was one of the best essays he'd ever read :). I couldn't have done it without @MYOS1634. She has helped me tremendously. I can't thank her enough. She basically helped me edit almost all of my essay. My supplements are also equally good.[/li][li]LOR: They basically say that I'm one of the best students they every taught. My techer verbaly summarized what she'd written in her LOR. Same for Counselor's LOR.[/li][/ul]
There's one thing that's been bugging me for a while- I come from a not at all recognized school. I'm the only one to have applied to US colleges, and I think this can hurt me. In my locality, no one reallly applies to US schools. What do you think? Do you think that coming from such school can hurt me?</p>
<p>My college list:
1. Cornell-ED: Applying to Arts and Sciences. Intened major is Physics/Chemistry+ Creative writing. Applying for aid.
2. Gatech-EA- Applying to College of Computing. Intended major is CS with a physics/chemistry bent (aka compuational physics/chemistry)
3. UMich-EA: Letters and sciences- Intended major same as Cornell.
4. Purdue: Intended major CS with physics/chemistry bent
5. UW Madison: Same as Cornell.</p>
<p>What do you think? Do you think I can get into any of these schools? Is any of them a safety? Please provide detalied chances if you can.
Give me your link and I'll try my best to chance you back, I promise! :)
Thanks beforehand! :) :D</p>
