Chance me please! I know these schools are reaches. I really just need to gage if I should even be hopeful for these schools: Columbia (ED), Princeton, Brown, Georgetown, NYU
Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of my scores back for major tests as I’m just now finishing up my junior year but I have estimates based on practices etc.
School Type: Public about 1400 students
Location: Washington state
Race/Gender: black female (ethiopian immigrant parents)
Prospective Major: Political Science and possibly CS but leaning more towards government now that i’m finishing up high school
UW GPA: 3.95
Weighted GPA: 4.3
Rank: School doesn’t rank
ACT: unknown but likely a 31-32 (will test again)
SAT II: TBD but I have a good feeling about them
Courses: Just look below but 7 APs in total with 4 honors classes and 1 university course. I took all the honors courses they offered each year but they hardly offered any.
Transcript (School reports both semester grades):
Freshman year:
Honors English A/A
Honors Life Science B+/A (required)
Geometry A/A
World History A/A
French I A/A
Choir A/A
Sophomore year:
Honors English A/A
Honors Biology A/A
Algebra II A-/A
AP World History A/A
French II A/A
Choir A/A
Junior year: (not done with junior year yet but these are estimates considering there’s only a week left)
AP English Lang & Comp A/A
University of Washington Precalculus A-/B
AP US Histoy A/A
Chemistry A/A
French III A/A
AP Psych A/A
Senior year classes:
AP Lit
AP Calculus AB
AP Environmental
Senior Civics (required)
PE course (2 semesters) (required)
Choir (been doing choir since the sixth grade but dropped it junior year bc it didn’t fit my schedule. glad to be going back.)
ECs:
-Volunteering for Four years at animal shelter as vet assistant
- Created a summer course at local ethiopian community center to teach young kids how to do basic code (voluntarily)
- Summer volunteer at food bank non profit as community organizer and helped create program for people to feel safe and secure at the location and get social work help if they need it
-Interning this summer at this same non profit but will be paid this time
-Student Council Representative 2 years
-Site Council Representative 1 year
-Model United Nations president (helped grow the club after it fizzled out)
-Black Student Union president (grew the club from 10 members to 40 in a year)
-Seattle Youth Commission Co-Chair (consulting the mayor and bureaucratic processes)
-founded a blog that i grew to 14 thousand educating people on feminism, racism, and political/social issues in current events. Some posts would have up to 50,000 likes and 1,000,000 impressions.
-During the summers I also did Girls Who Code where i got to build my own website for online fact checking due to “fake news” and will be attending the ACLU summer institute
-Been playing classical piano since I was 8
-Apart of the National Youth Choir and my own choir is a competitive choir winning first in every festival we’ve competed in. Sang at Carnegie Hall last year.
-Won the National Center for Women and Information Technology Aspirations in Computing award
-won first place in a statewide biotechnology exposition (my project was on enhancing photosynthetic processes with technology to mitigate the effects of climate change)
-Won my school’s challenge and tenacity award
-three time honor recipient at the Pacific Northwest Music Hall for piano
-Dean’s list
-National Honors Society
For fun I’m an avid writer, reader, singer, and public speaker.
Hooks: i was the only black kid in my grade growing up because I went to extremely small schools. Had a far too many identity crises due to my family life being far from the typical American + understanding my blackness on my own + never feeling black enough. Somehow still became the school’s black student union president. I’ve worked really hard in high school to give people that look like me a space where they can be understood because so often I’ve felt misunderstood for what I look like. I’be also worked really hard to give back to the south side of seattle where so many black people and immigrants have been pushed away from their homes due to gentrification and homelessness and the housing crisis is one I prioritize as co chair of the Seattle Youth commission. I even try to give back through computer science through my Ethiopian community facilities where kids who may not be exposed to these opportunities early enough can see if it is the path for them (and a lucrative one at that). I see myself as someone who is determined and empathetic. My biggest weaknesses are probably my SAT/ACT math scores but my verbal scores are good (770). Another weakness could be that I don’t have enough APs or honors but this is mostly because my school doesn’t offer it (concerning the honors courses) or it simply could not work into my schedule due to graduation requirements (concerning the question if I could add more APs to my schedule).
My last bit of information is that I’ll likely fine tune what I intend to major in by the end of the summer. Thanks for reading!! My dream school is Columbia so I’m applying ED. What colleges would be best for me? Are there others not on my list that I should consider or are there colleges on my list I should drop? Chance me please and thanks!