Chance me ED?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
1

<p>About me:
1. Ethnicity & Gender: White male (First generation immigrant? Born in Ukraine.)
2. Income Bracket > 150k?</p>

<p>Stats:
1. Unweighted GPA: 3.91 - 4.0 (Top 1% - Top 3%); 1 A-, 2 A+s, 1 B, and the rest are all As
2. PSAT: 207 & SAT: 2160 (750 M 720 W 690 CR) - Aiming for a 2200+ on my third try...
3. AP Tests: 5-US History; 5-English Lang
4. Subject Tests -Math L2 - 800; History - 740 (probably no re-take)</p>

<p>Extra Curriculars:</p>

<p>Sports-
1. Tennis (JV - 2 years, Varsity - 2 years)
2. Soccer (JV - 3 years, Varsity - 1 year)</p>

<p>Leadership-
1. Vice President of UNICEF Club (2 years)
2. Peer Leader (2 years) (Help 10 freshmen in their first year of high school)
3. President/Co-Founder of PascackVolunteers (2 years) (A club/organization/liaison service my friend and I started at our school, which is the main conduit for all other volunteer clubs in the district, which covers two high schools. The principal loved our idea, which is the main reason why he decided to make it district-wide).
4. Application Administrator (2 years). I was part of a programming team that helped to design and program an iPhone application for our entire high school (available on the App Store). I now filter posts that are made to the application. </p>

<p>Ordinary ECs-
1. Investment Club (3 years)
2. Debate (All 4 years) (Undefeated JV season junior year; won 3rd place team award @ the last debate)
3. Math League (4 years) (Invited to dinner meet 2x; only top 10 people at the club)
4. Science League (2 years - As a freshman and sophomore) (Top 5 students in the grade); is this worth mentioning?
5. National Honors Society (2 years) (of course, lol)
6. Science National Honors Society (2 years); is this worth mentioning? Didn't do much here...
7. Habitat for Humanity; is this worth mentioning? Didn't do much here...
8. Environmental Club; is this worth mentioning? Didn't do much here...</p>

<p>*The science clubs have nothing to do with my intended major, so I'm not sure if I should mention them...?</p>

<p>Volunteering (kinda lacking here?):
1. 125+ volunteer hours at a local blood bank by the end of the summer (telerecruitment and data entry and canteen)
2. I'll obviously get a few hours from NHS and tutoring before I submit my application. </p>

<p>Side passions-
1. Intermediate Programmer. Learned Javascript, HTML (and of course CSS), and I am in the process of learning Python, Java, and jQuerty (obviously not a whole new language, but it might as well be for what I'm gleaning). I will be skipping CP Java and going straight to AP. I highly recommend codecademy (an online learning website - FREE).
2. Own and manage an equity fund (with the supervision of my parents of course!).
3. Fluent Russian and conversational Spanish...</p>

<p>Summer activities-
1. TENNIS TENNIS TENNIS ALL THE TIME!! 1-5/1-6/1-7 almost everyday during the summer. I am also proud to say I was a part of the best tennis team in school history this past season.
2. Intense soccer training
3. Moved up from CP Spanish to Honors Spanish
4. Learned Java and moved up to AP Java, skipping CP.
5. Shadowed + Interned for Ferrari North America (the lawyer there is a friend's dad).
6. IT administration at my mom's company: Hardesty & Hanover for 1 week...
7. Cultural/learning experience/vacation (lol not at all) in Russia for 2 weeks.
8. SAT prep (obviously won't put this on my application).</p>

<p>Awards:
-Excellence in History - 9th Grade (Only one given out for the entire student body of 350+)
-Excellence in Foreign Language - 10th Grade (Only one given out for the entire student body of 350+)
-New Jersey Scholar's Program Nominee (Top 2 Students in the grade, based on GPA; kind of slid since then, have done badly in physics).
-Minor mathematics scholarship in 9th grade from Raytheon</p>

<p>Most rigorous curriculum senior year (probably will have to drop some classes unfortunately..):
-AP Statistics
-BC Calculus
-AP Lit
-AP Spanish IV
-AP Java (Skipping CP Java; taking a summer course)
-AP Euro/World History (Whatever it will be called)</p>

2

<p>My core classes (foreign language,spanish,math, science, and english) have been Honors/AP since the beginning of high school (only Spanish II freshman year was CP).</p>

3

<p>Based on what you’ve presented there I definitely think you have a fighting chance in the admissions pool. You’ve definitely put yourself into close to the best position possible, but sometimes that isn’t enough. When a school has a 7.4% acceptance rate like Columbia does it really boils down to the essays and the finer nuances of the application. Your resume looks a lot like the valedictorian of my classes resume. He is white, 2380 SAT, 4.51 cumulative GPA, captain of 2 sports teams, and a leader in a lot of service organizations. Yet he was rejected from Cornell, Penn, Yale, Princeton, and Brown. My point in telling you that is because there are so many applicants with those kinds of stats that the admissions boards place a lot of weight on your essays and other intangible (and creative) ways of making your application stand out. </p>

<p>The best advice I can give you is to apply ED. The acceptance rate for EDers is around 19% which is way higher than the rate for RD applicants (even though it’s a little skewed by the recruitment applicants most of which apply ED). Early decision really proves to a college that you love them more than any other college so much so that you will put all of your marbles in their basket, and that confidence really helps out in admissions. My second piece of advice would be to get your SAT scores up particularly in CR. Your scores right now are sort of in the “average” range for Columbia which isn’t necessarily bad, but its not great either. I would focus 85% of my effort on raising my CR and math scores because they count for a lot more in the admissions process than does the writing score (unless you are going into English).</p>

<p>Overall though you seem to be doing great and keep up the good work.</p>

<p>If you have any more questions you can PM me.</p>

4

<p>thank you for a phenomenal “chance me” post…I really appreciate it.</p>