Chance at Yale for an Asian "Failure"?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>I'm going into my juinor year in the fall. As you all know, GPA is beginning to solidify and I'm not sure how much damage-repair I can do. My school is fairly competitive and although my grades might look okay, comparatively they are not on a HYPS level (of those four I'm only interested in Yale, but still).</p>

<p>I want everyone to give me a fair opinion of how my chances look so far. Traumatic things have happened that dragged me down, but I'm ready to start afresh. I'm only asking you guys to give me an idea of how much I need work harder to attain my goals.</p>

<p>Will apply to,
Yale (Impossible dream...)
Duke (Second choice)
New York University (Realistic, I think)
Emory
UChicago
UCLA
UC Berkeley
University of Texas (Austin)
Rutgers
Brown
Cornell
Dartmouth
UPenn</p>

<p>GPA: 5.5 / 6.0 (Regular 5.0, PreAP/Honors 5.5, AP 6.0)
Rank: 30 / 848
PSAT: 217 (Sophomore)
SAT I: 2270
SAT II Chinese: 800 (Just ignore that)</p>

<p>AP Courseload (so far, does not include senior year; almost everything else is Pre-AP/Honors):
AP Human Geography
AP Biology
AP World History
AP English Language
AP Calculus BC
AP Physics C
AP US History
AP Psychology
AP Spanish Language
AP Art IV 2-D Design</p>

<p>Extracurriculars / Awards:</p>

<p>Freshman Class Council President
Nominated Most Involved Freshman Girl
Business Professionals of America Member
-Human Resource Management (Regional 1st Place, State Qualifier)
-Video Production Team (Regional 2nd Place, State Qualifier)
Youth Orchestra (Concertmaster (For like, 1 season because I was never there, haha))
All-Region Honor Orchestra (10th, 9th Chair)
Duke University Talent Identification Program Grand Recognition (Top 1 percentile; 7th grade, but would this win any points with Duke? Probably not.)
Heritage Club Historian
Teen Court Program (Attorney)
Mock Trial
Visual Arts Scholastics Event (4 being highest rating)
-Regional 4 (2 pieces, 1 State Qualifier), State 4 (Superior Rating)
-Scholarship workshop winner
-DallasSymphony Orchestra Creativity Award
National Art Honor Society Treasurer
Shutterbugs Photography Club Secretary
Founded music group which performs for charity purposes
National Honor Society
National Spanish Honor Society</p>

<p>Work Experience:</p>

<p>Camp Invention counselor
Violin private instruction (self-employed)
Intern at Shanghai Trademark and Patent Law Office (paid, albeit not well...oh well, it's the experience, right?)</p>

<p>...That was tedious. Thanks in advance.
I'm noticing that my title wasn't "Chance...something" in my last post and so no one gave me the dissection I was looking for. So, sorry for becoming a troll :&lt;/p>

2

<p>What does a 5.5/6.0 correspond to on a 4.0 scale? </p>

<p>And is that weighted or unweighted GPA?</p>

<p>Other than that, the app looks great!</p>

3

<p>I think your app looks great. I would call Yale a reach, but not impossible!! My only advice would be to continue getting all A's in all the hardest classes you can take. This will bring up the low class rank, which is really the only weak part of your app. Also, you are going to need to take a couple more SAT IIs before you are through with Highschool. </p>

<p>BTW, I am involved with Teen Court as an attorney as well. What state do you "practice" in? </p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

4

<p>Wait, is your 5.5 GPA basically equivalent to a 3.5 out of 4 regular GPA?</p>

<p>Your school is set obviously on a 5 instead of a 4 scale...so weighted your GPA in a normal AP GPA scale would be 4.5 out of 5 correct? So what is your regular unweighted GPA?</p>

5

<p>azngod1992, Jman21: There's a translated GPA on my official transcript, but I put that somewhere and now...uh, who knows where it is. :P But I don't think you can just say my 5.5 is a 3.5 out of 4.0 since our scale is really at 5.0, since if you take all regular you can't get past a 5.0. If you take Pre-AP, you can't get past a 5.5. If you take AP, the limit is a 6.0. So...3.5 out of 4.0 would be like saying everyone in my school takes 6.0 so the cap is 6.0, but it isn't. I don't know how the translation is calculated, exactly, sorry...:&lt;/p>

<p>ivyleaguewannabe: I "practice" in Texas. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, my grades aren't so hot right now, so I'm hoping for the best this year...Where do you "practice"?</p>

6

<p>wow, how are you an asian failure? if you are a failure...wow what does that make me? despicable? lol :D</p>

7

<p>I don't think the TIP thing gets you any points with Duke-- it would be nice, though!
Just out of curiosity, did you go to the TIP summer camp?</p>

8

<p>What's up with posting chances when you haven't even finished your junior year yet?</p>

9

<p>I agree w/Invoyable</p>

<p>Anyways, I strongly believe that your nomination for the Most Involved Freshman Girl will win those Yale admissions officers over. Outstanding job!</p>

10

<p>w t f ... you're NOT AT ALL a failure -_-
honestly I mean maybe you're ACTUALLY concerned but to other people it just looks like your bragging. HONESTLY - STOP WORRYING. If you worry and think you can't do it...YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO.</p>

<p>Just CALM DOWN. I know people who've gotten in with lower stats, who are also INTERNATIONAL e.g. my friend, who's Chinese applied from my schoolo in Hong Kong with 2100 on SAT, 3 A's and 1 B on A-level and EC's similar to yours, a little less in fact. She got in for IR class of 2012.</p>

<p>Just one thing...I don't think you should take another language apart from Chinese, or just not submit Chinese, because it seems like you took the easy way out with that.</p>

11

<p>Btw, what's up with the 13 university choices??? Maybe narrow down from your 5 Ivies to 2 or 3, because you have other great universities up there too. What do you want to major in??? Use that as a guide. If you're going undecided then maybe Dartmouth/Brown, Cornell and Yale from your Ivies</p>

12

<p>Thanks for all the replies, y'all.</p>

<p>coffeeicecream: Haha, no...believe me, I procrastinated a lot this year. I didn't start homework until 11 every night. I was consumed with bitter thoughts and uh, Asian dramas. Thinking, "Why do these people who are not as smart have better grades?" when I knew for a fact that they were hard-working and completely deserving. I was (maybe still am) an idiot.</p>

<p>Elanorci: I know, I know...one can hope though! I wanted to go to the summer camp but it cost too much for my family to handle and well, uh, I missed the deadline. :\ See? I have serious character flaws.</p>

<p>Invoyable: I'm having commitment issues (in several areas, haha) and I regret having neglected my schoolwork the past year. I know it looks alright when I put it into numbers like that, but I've never heard of someone going into Yale ranked #30 without having been a major contribution to society or something. I would like to believe that I'm worth more than a rank, but...</p>

<p>Well all that was just to say, I want to make sure that despite the slip with the grades, I'm still in the running for my top choice (and that is Yale).</p>

<p>qwerty999: Are you serious, or being sarcastic? If you're serious, thanks. It's just that...I've had a friend who looked at my resume and snorted, saying, "You're including Most Involved Freshman Girl? How impressive!"</p>

<p>ilovebabypink: It's just that there's a lot of talented people that apply, so sometimes they don't reject you because they don't want you...it's because the applicant pool is too big to do otherwise. I'm a failure in that I don't stand out from those talented people. That's very good news to your friend though! Congrats to her! By the way, I am taking Spanish in school. I never took Chinese, just the SAT and AP test in order to possibly be exempt from introductory foreign language in college. Next year I'm continuing Spanish and taking AP Spanish Language. Oh and, I am planning to go to law school to study corporation/business law. So I will major in Finance or Economics, and Pre-Law in universities that have such a major (like NYU).</p>

13

<p>BTW...I was talking about unweighted not weighted GPA.</p>

<p>In weighted GPA sense your GPA would be the equivalent of 4.5 out of 5 since a full weight in a normal GPA raises the maximum from 4 to 5...and yours is raised from 5 to 6. That's why I asked what your actual UNweighted GPA is. B/c that would then be equivalent scaled down to the 4.0 unweighted GPA.</p>

14

<p>Then, probably. I haven't been doing well in school sophomore year, and that's what I want to fix the most. I think I'll have a fairly-decent shot at my colleges of choice if I do that.</p>

15

<p>Yale (Impossible dream...) - reach
Duke (Second choice) - reach/match
New York University (Realistic, I think) - match
Emory - match
UChicago - reach (depending on essays)
UCLA - match
UC Berkeley - instate = match, OOS = slight reach
University of Texas (Austin) - instate = match, OOS = slight reach
Rutgers - match
Brown - reach
Cornell - low reach
Dartmouth - reach
UPenn - reach</p>

16

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>One thing though. Can anyone give me a brief description on what reach/match means? I haven't been here long, so I've only gathered so far the scale is somewhat like this,</p>

<p>High reach
Reach
Low reach
Match</p>

<p>Are there other notches in the scale? And does reach imply that's it's "reachable" but difficult, or "reach but you'll probably never grasp it"?</p>

17

<p>Update:</p>

<p>AP scores are out!
I did well this year,</p>

<p>AP Biology - 5
AP World History -5
AP Chinese -5</p>

<p>Last year,</p>

<p>AP Human Geography - 3</p>

18

<p>Very good chance. I hope you were kidding about being a failure. Either that or you're way too stressed and need a vacation. lol</p>

19

<p>first of all, if you haven't even started junior year, what are you doing on CC?
second of all, you've got potential. and definitely not a failure.
third of all, relax. colleges look beyond grades. focus on what makes up you.
lastly, have fun. you're only young once :)</p>

20

<p>xybciba: I guess I'm not a failure, but I don't stand out either. Just another shiny apple in the market, I guess.</p>

<p>junieloo15: Being on CC the summer before junior year is not THAT early...besides, I want to know what I need to do before everything crystallizes. Thanks for the comforting message though. Don't worry, there's still a month of summer left!</p>