I have average “stats” that I believe fall into the average, or just slightly below average sections of those admitted to Wisco.
White Male from CT
3.5 unweighted
1270 on SAT 1 (710 math)
Captained 3 varsity teams(soccer, ice hockey, baseball)
AP: Calc, Physics, Lit, Bio, Psych (most my school offered, 80 kids in graduating class)
I grew up on a full time beef farm and had a ton of jobs on the farm, at local markets, etc.
All of this is fine and dandy but I believe my linchpin is the business that I established during my high school career. I coded a video game server that generated a player base through my YouTube channel. Not to go into too many specifics but the server profited a little over $90,000 in 3 months. I went through all of the business establishment steps any adult business owner would’ve pursued, as a teenager. The business served as a perfect topic for the first essay and the element of the second essay where I had to mention any factors that could’ve impacted my academic and extracurricular performance. I have record of logging over 3,000 hours online during a 2 year period, so I believe the endeavor is a worthy impacting factor on my grades, compared to other reasons. Not to float my own boat, but I feel that I am extremely brilliant and wrote 2 kick-ass essays. I talked in depth about the business, engineering, and real world skills I developed, aswell as the way I matured emphatically. I took a gap year after graduation to continue the business but now that my interests have changed and business has slowed down I want to pursue an engineering degree.Do you think this EC will prove me worthy of acceptance?
The university would not admit you directly to engineering - you would likely be assigned to College of Letters and Science as a pre-major and then apply to College of Engineering during your freshman year. However, while your EC/life-experience has been truly spectacular, they are going to have some questions about your EBRW score from the rSAT. By my calculations, that’s about a 560, correct? Well below the 25th percentile for both CR and Writing once you convert to the old test. Your Math is ok because it corresponds to about a 680 (old) which is within the 50% range of math scores. College Board says your composite rSAT is around a 26 ACT which is below the 25th percentile for admitted students. In-state enrollees average about a 28 meaning the average OOS score is going to be higher than that.
Not sure what happened on the verbal section of the SAT if you were able to produce two “kick-ass” essays. So 1) make sure they truly are “kick-ass” and 2) make sure they are from YOU and not from another source. Adcoms can tell.
You will need a letter of recommendation as well.
Your GPA is well below the 3.85 uw average for UW. Around 94-95% of enrolled students have a GPA of at least 3.5.
Expect UW to be a reach based on your SAT and GPA and have some additional schools in your back pocket in case you are not accepted. Your EC’s will play a large role in any decision to admit.
@ChristianStuart3 One EC will not prove anyone worthy of acceptance to a university anywhere. You already know that UW evaluates the applicant holistically, so you should present yourself holistically. Just by virtue of your question, you seem to want to focus on one business project yet you don’t seem to realize that just makes you one-dimensional. You said you grew up in CT on a beef farm AND you are an entrepreneur with a heavy technical bent. Hopefully, you conveyed all that in your application in a creative way, because that juxtaposition/combo is rich material for an essay.
It can’t hurt for you to apply to UW, but look at other options as well. If you haven’t looked at RIT and Northeastern, you should. Not only do they like that gap-year, business/entrepreneur dimension, they have generous merit aid as well. Also, their admission criteria might be more accommodating.
Hate to tell you, but you are at all that “brilliant”. There are many students with better grades and test scores. Plus those more intelligent. Some are too busy doing things other than starting a business- in fact, many have no interest in the business world. Most will write excellent essays as well.
Any time a student claims a top anything- self/HS… they need to realize there are many, many others out there who are at least as competitive for college admissions. Take out the opinions of self and school students- you are never as great as you think.