Chance me 2022

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Demographics
US domestic

  • State/Location of residency: NJ
  • Type of high school (current college for transfers): Public
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity (optional): Asian
  • Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.): Legacy to Purdue

Intended Major(s) Biology/ molecular biology

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: school doesn’t do unweighted
  • Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 4.45/4.0
  • Class Rank: School doesn’t rank but estimated to be too 5% in class of 500
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1500 SAT (720 RW, 780 math)

Coursework
(AP/IB/Dual Enrollment classes, AP/IB scores for high school; also include level of math and foreign language reached and any unusual academic electives; for transfers, describe your college courses and preparation for your intended major(s))
13 honors classes
5 AP classes (all junior year)
Biology 5
Calculus AB 5
Lang 5
Seminar 4
Physics 1 4
Senior year classes: AP Chemistry, AP Computer Science Principles, AP Calculus BC, AP Literature, AP Research, US History 2 Honors

Awards
2 international robotics awards, 2 national robotics awards, 3 1st place state championship awards, finalist in MIT Lemelson competition
2 1st place piano competition awards (both with carnegie hall performances), 1 2nd place piano competition award
AP Scholar with distinction

Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)
Robotics (team leader, main builder, design lead, application lead)
Created a new robotics outreach method
Violin (chamber orchestra, candidate for concertmaster)
Piano
Sciovirtual (regional director of communications, regional interviewer)
Started a club at school
Started a project in SNHS and coordinated the inductions ceremony
Served as a member representative for the international committee for Key Club
Participated in school’s sciencebowl club
Peer tutor in school’s organization of student tutors
Participated in the Kean GSSRP research program
Did independent research with hope to publish paper

Essays/LORs/Other
(Optionally, guess how strong these are and include any other relevant information or circumstances.)
Commonapp essay ~8/10
LOR ~7.5/10

Cost Constraints / Budget
(High school students: please get a budget from your parents and use the Net Price Calculators on the web sites of colleges of interest.)
None

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below)

  • Safety (certain admission and affordability)
    Purdue EA
    ASU EA
    Rutgers EA
    Penn State RD

  • Likely (would be possible, but very unlikely or surprising, for it not to admit or be affordable)
    Purdue Honors College EA
    ASU barrett EA
    Rutgers Honors College EA
    Penn State Honors College (also applying for 7 year bsmd) RD

  • Match
    Case Western Reserve RD
    Carnegie Mellon RD

  • Reach
    Stanford (REA)
    Harvard RD
    Yale RD
    Upenn RD
    Brown PLME RD
    Rice RD
    Rice/Baylor BSMD RD
    CWRU PPS (BSMD) RD
    Cornell RD
    Georgetown RD
    Duke RD
    UCLA
    UC Berkeley
    Wash U RD
    Johns Hopkins RD
    Northwestern RD

2

I like it - but put CMU to reach.

This is going to be a lot of work. Why four safeties? areyo uchasing merit?

I’d reduce the # of reaches - for example, few of those have merit. The UCs and Gtown have their own apps - so you can’t share with Common App - are you sure you want them…just think of the work. UCs won’t give you aid and GTOWn is need only.

Is money important? Do you have cost constraints? You say you have none - but you are majoring in something that pays poorly - and it seems like you want to go to med school so that’s many hundreds of thousands after you spend $320K on undergrad. And many//most that want to go to med school don’t…and being left with a bio degree…not good.

So if the lower cost schools - your safeties - are where you end up due to - your parents facing $700, 800k in school bills - maybe light up your reaches and add more mid tier merit schools.

Union College, for example, strong in pre-med.

Good luck.

1 Like
3

What is your intention with a biology major? Are you thinking of premed / medical school down the road?

Do you have nothing but A’s through high school? You should be able to compute your unweighted GPA fairly easily with A=4.0 and B=3.0, C=2.0, figure the average.

Purdue and Rutgers are both very good universities, which along with your great grades puts you in a solid position.

Among your many reaches I would encourage you to think about which of these would be the best match for you.

4

I think regardless of stats (and yours are great here) and ECs, reaches are going to be “super” reaches. There’s a profile they’re trying to fill each year with each incoming class and there’s no way to know. I’ve seen kids with a resume not as great as yours get in to Stanford and last year saw an Asian male app with stats that I thought would be a slam dunk for Stanford early app (at least deferred to reg round) and got flat out rejected (he did get ucla and Berkeley regents).

My son did apply to Brown PLME (he got in reg UGrad) ED because he loves Brown no matter what. I assume you want to be a doctor. My son had more healthcare-related ECs than you have here but not sufficient shadowing. I feel (my guess only) that PLME would want you to at least know for sure at your age and shadowing is seems to be a common theme. Even more so than research experience. That’s just something to watch out for and to manage expectations.

5

Do you like your safeties enough to go there is you aren’t accepted into honors college? I don’t think honors can be considered a likely at Purdue. Not sure about the others.

Also agree that CMU is another reach.

If you like Case, take a look at Rochester.

IMO you have too many reaches and need more matches.

Curious as to why you choose Penn State as a safety over Pitt.

1 Like
6

Also, Purdue is not a “safety” for an OOS applicant; and your status as a Purdue “legacy” is irrelevant, because Purdue does not consider “alumni/ae relation” as an admissions factor (check out Section C7 of the Common Data Set).

1 Like
7

If cost is not a significant issue, definetly do not REA Stanford. Unless you were a legacy, URM or an application that blows your breath away, none of which are the case here, there is basically no chance that you get into Stanford.

Additionally, are you retaking SAT?
1520 is okay but for the reach schools on here, it won’t cut it.

Also confused by the biology major. Do you want to be pre-med? Seems to me that Robotics are your strongest EC and maybe trying to have that be the focal point of your application with biology being a side is a good move. Robotics seems to be the only EC that is unique. Also, if you go big with an ED or REA, consider JHU for a potential ED2 as that seems like the type of school that will be a reach but not an extreme reach if done ED1 or ED2.

8

Robotics isn’t unique anymore. It’s very popular, particularly among kids interested in CS or engineering. The good news here is that the OP has earned awards in robotics (and piano). It’s just too bad those awards aren’t related to biology. Maybe the Kean GSSRP was a biology project, or OP did something related to biology through Sciovirtual. Otherwise, OP has a great resume - for engineering or music.

9

Will you submit a music supplement?

The schools may expect to see a supplement with two Carnegie Hall performances. It’s also a tacit statement that you will continue with your music once on campus and contribute to the community in this way. I think it also sets you apart from others who don’t submit a supplement, showing that you took the time to record just for them.

10

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