hi! i’m a rising senior in a state underrepresented at top schools.
demographics – asian (malaysian + filipina) female, middle class, competitive public school. i’m also an immigrant and one of my parents didn’t attend college.
stats –
gpa: 3.83 uw | 4.19 w | uc gpa: 4.36 | (not sure what my class rank is)
act: 32 (retaking, likely to get a 34+)
i plan on taking sat bio, math 2, and lit this summer.
extras/awards –
debate: policy debater for 3 years and counting & team leader/captain for my team. i've gotten octofinalist and semifinalist at state along with winning other smaller tournaments. i'm also a volunteer debate coach at a local middle school with 40+ members in the club.
science olympiad: 6 years in scioly and i was build team captain for our school's A team this year (it's a competitive tryouts process) and our team has won first at state and second x2. i've gotten several awards at HS state, all ranging from first to third.
model un: club officer on our school's board senior year and like scioly, 6 years of participation.
volunteer research assistant: i'm working on three internships/projects this summer. one is in a virology lab. the second is helping a local professor w/ her summer research on justice-impacted youth w/ an emphasis on parental incarceration. the third is with another local professor studying chinese foreign policy with the US.
non-profit board member: i'm on the board for a medical nonprofit and i manage media presence (website, social media, etc) and help organize our events, like hosting workshops to raise funds.
national history day: i'm the president our of school's nhd club and have qualified to nationals a total of 3 times, winning several state awards and one at nationals.
schools –
harvard, brown, uc davis, berkeley, ucla, ucsd, nyu, johns hopkins, michigan, texas-austin, northwestern, maryland - college park, usc, university of washington, uiuc.
i intend to major in microbiology or anthropology. i’d also appreciate any suggestions for good match schools to consider!
What is your college budget since the California UC’s offer little to no financial aid for OOS students, so expect to pay full fees at around $65K/year? They also do not consider race/ethnicity and you are not considered 1st generation since one parent did attend college.
You have competitive stats, some great EC’s so if the UC’s are affordable, really spend some time on your personal insight essays. Best of luck.
My honest assessment is that you have the same, or slightly lower, odds of gaining admission to a top college. Remember that you’re competing with thousands of students with high stats for a limited number of places. Here’s what I see:
—You have a great GPA provided you’ve taken the most rigorous classes your school offers.
—Your ACT score is a little low (definitely try for that 34 or 35)
—Having one parent not attend college won’t make a difference and won’t qualify you as a 1st gen college student.
—Being an immigrant won’t make a difference. However, you could make this a compelling point in your essay.
—Coming from an underrepresented state is likely to have a minimal impact; if you’re from Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, Nebraska, or a state that sends 0-2 students per year to any given top college, you might have a slight boost when weighed against another candidate with the same stats. It won’t make up for a deficit in stats.
—Your EC’s are impressive but your interests are all over the board.
Top schools like to see demonstrated passion. I recommend you tie together your debate and model UN activities with the research in Chinese foreign policy and/or the research in youth impacted by parental incarceration. It will have more authenticity if one of these issues has impacted you personally. If your passion is more for the sciences, per your science Olympiad award and your intended major, it may make more sense to emphasize the research in the virology lab. In other words, I don’t think it will help (in fact, I think it will hurt) to take on three research projects this summer. I believe you should focus on just one, perhaps two research projects and focus on being able to tie the research to your interests and extra curricular activities. If you do all three, particularly if your role is somewhat insubstantial, my concern is that an admissions committee will view this as a student trying to build an impressive resume rather than a student with a strong and demonstrated passion.
To recap, here’s what I recommend:
—Raise the ACT score if possible.
—Confine research to an area that ties in with your extracurricular activities
—Focus on writing compelling essays and short answers on your application
—Confine future volunteer work to areas that tie in with your research and extracurricular activities
I hope this helps. Best of luck!
@Gumbymom I don’t see my parents being able to dish out more than 30k a year for tuition. I have smaller scholarships but they won’t nearly cover the remaining fees, we’re ready to take on loans since unfortunately, our household doesn’t seem to qualify for very much financial aid. Thanks for your input!
@GoldPenn Thank you for your input! Yeah, I hope to get the ACT score up soon. I totally see where you’re coming from – my passions are certainly diverged. I honestly am really interested in both fields (anthro and microbio) and as of right now, I’m not sure which I will apply into. For schools where I apply into microbio (or conversely, anthro), do you recommend only mentioning the activities relevant to that study? Should I even bother writing about debate in my application into a microbio program?
Edit; oh yeah, do you basically mean all the reach schools when you say “top schools?” Do you think my lack of concentration would still hurt me at less competitive schools, like UIUC or UW?
In short –
–You have done very well in HS but I think your application list is too aggressive. I don’t see any true safety schools (safety schools must be ones you absolutely should get into and that appear affordable)
–I don’t know if all the schools will be affordable. Have you run the net price calculators? Taking on a ton of loans to finance your undergraduate education is not a good idea.
–Have you included your own state flagship on your list of applications?
@happy1 The schools I mentioned aren’t my entire list, I have two state schools as my safeties (I just didn’t disclose on the slight chance it’d give away my identity.) Not to sound arrogant, but I know I qualify for auto-admit into a state school and I didn’t think it was worth mentioning considering I’m more interested in gauging chances for OOS/matches/reaches. I’ve run the net price calculators on some schools and assuming they’re accurate, there are a few schools mentioned that would be affordable on the list but overall, still expensive, haha.
Oh, I meant to clarify that advice was really for the reach schools.
I think you should include all of your activities in your application, regardless of declared major. In terms of what to write about, different schools are looking for different things. For what it’s worth, here are some thoughts:
—When writing for Brown, UW, and any CA state schools, emphasize personal growth. Ideally tie this to something on your resume but make it really personal and in-depth. This would be my recommended default position for all schools.
—When writing for JHU, NYU, Michigan or Penn, include personal growth but add something about goals or career aspirations.
I can’t emphasize the personal aspect enough. The admissions people want to know who you are as a person. They already know you’re smart just as everyone at their school is smart. Your stats will show them your smarts. What they want to know is how you’ll contribute to their school. Show them how you think and feel, how you overcame failure—show them your human side.
The best thing you can do to research your chances is look at the ED and RD results threads for each school you’re interested in. CC has the schools listed alphabetically in the forums. People post their stats and tell if they’ve been accepted, rejected or deferred. This will give you the data you need to make decisions about where to apply and what your chances are.
Lastly, I’m no expert on financial aid but I believe you’re likely to receive better aid at private colleges. Your list is quite state heavy. Princeton, hands down, gives the best aid packages I’ve seen. According to my number crunching, you’d have a better chance of admission statistically to Princeton than you do Harvard. Actually, the same is true for all of the ivies. Be sure to learn about each school as the ivies all have quite different cultures.
I completely agree with GoldPenn, having three internships in one summer honestly is not necessarily better compared to another applicant focusing in on only one internship in their summer. I forgot which video, but if you look at AO videos rating people, they question if people have too many things. I believe it was a video of a former Stanford AO who questioned a person applying with like 4 President positions of clubs.
Also, the most important thing with getting into top schools is having a “spike” in some field or topic you really enjoy. Definitely try to tie your EC’s to one passion you enjoy.
@pieguy54321 Got it. I’ve always been super split between the humanities and STEM but I’ll try to concentrate on one passion for now and on essays I appreciate the input!
I appreciate the input!