Chance Me! Duke, Brown, Wash U, Johns Hopkins

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi. I’m applying to Georgia Tech, UNC Chapel Hill, NC State, and Emory in addition to the ones listed in my header. I consider everything in my header to be a reach, so it’s most important that I can get an idea of my chances at those schools. Thanks!

General Info: White, Jewish, Female, from North Carolina

ACT- Composite: 36 (English: 36, Math: 35, Science: 36, Reading: 35, Essay: 8)
SAT Subject Tests- Math II: 800, Biology: 800, US History: 770

GPA (Weighted): 4.0
GPA (Unweighted): 5.125
Class Rank: 19 out of 425

AP Exam Scores:
Biology- 5
Chemistry- 5
Calc BC- 5 (AB Subscore: 5)
US History- 5
Physics- 3 (Also let me know if I should report this one?)

AP Courses for Senior Year:
AP Computer Science Principles
AP Computer Science A
AP Statistics
AP Psychology
AP Microeconomics

Extracurriculars:
Science Olympiad (Member 10th and 11th grade, Officer 12th grade): 2 Regional gold medals, 1 Regional silver, 1 regional bronze. 1 State bronze medal.
Science National Honor Society (Member 10th and 11th grade, Officer 12th grade)
My friend and I started a club at our school which is an extension of a nonprofit organization. I am the Vice President of this club.
I am also a member of Mu Alpha Theta, Key Club, and National English Honor Society.
Community Service- I work with my local Jewish Family services by participating in a program which stuffs backpacks with food/other necessities for children in need. I also work with the Senior Outreach program.

Work:
I worked at a Jewish day camp before my junior and senior year. I had a group of first graders to look after. I wrote my Common App about one of my experiences, so I think I made it seem meaningful.

Awards:
National Merit Semifinalist
AP Scholar with Distinction
Junior Marshall (Top 5% of class at the end of junior year)
National Science League (Member of the team which placed first in the nation) Note that this is based on my score on one Biology test. The top ten scores at my school were all placed on one team, and the team as a whole got first in the nation.
Academic Excellence in AP US History (Highest grade in APUSH)
Honor Roll (All semesters)

Thank you for reading this! I understand that my test scores/awards are strong, but I don’t feel very confident in my extracurricular activities. Please let me know what you guys think!

2

WashU is a low reach, but be careful. Given your grades/scores they may think it’s a backup school in case you don’t get into your other choices.

The Jewish community at WashU is very active-Hillel has a major presence on campus.

What are your potential majors?

3

Oops, forgot to list that. I’ve got a pretty wide range of majors that I like right now. Pretty much anything related to biochemistry or chemistry in general is a possibility. I don’t know if I would necessarily want to do chemical engineering. Pre-med is also an option. And to throw things off a bit, I am really enjoying Computer Science so far! I don’t think I’ll list it as a major for any of my October 15th schools, since I’ve only been in the class for a month or so. But right now, it definitely looks like a potential major. So yeah, I’m pretty much all over the place. I am applying mostly to STEM schools. Thanks for replying!

4

Given your AP scores, I see you as a Biology/BME major. In that case, you’re best bet schools are JHU and WashU, although Duke is pretty good at BME as well.

With your high stats, I might suggest Rice and Vanderbilt as well as potential target schools.

I wouldn’t worry about the 3 in Physics. My son is a WashU freshman and got all 5s on his AP tests except for the 3s he got for Physics 1 and 2.

Duke and JHU would be more of a reach just because of their close to single digit acceptance rates while WashU is around 17%. If you have a favorite school among the 3, you should ED. Use your ED on either JHU or Duke and RD to WashU.

5

@Dana1233 Consider adding an RD application to Yale. They have a program called YES-W where they go through the RD round applicants, pick out the top 100 or so STEM kids and issue them likely letters (admissions offer) by late January or early February. While many of the kids who get the likely letters are RSI, Intel and Siemens alums, a significant number are just very bright STEM kids with stellar stats. Yale also has one of the highest Jewish student populations (by percentage) of any school in the country.

6

Di you mix up wGPA and uwGPA?

7

Whoops, looks like I did. Surprised no one else caught that.