Chance Me: FL South Asian Senior Applying for Mat Sci In Most Top Colleges [Rank 1/872, 4.0 UW, 36 ACT, NMSF ]

Yes. As I noted above, these 4’s and 3’s put you below the top 20%-50% of test takers. It looks like a real head-scratcher, tbh. Breadth vs depth is not generally believed to be a good message to send. Yet you have a perfect high school GPA in rigorous courses. You may want to explain the causes of this very obvious discrepancy in your applications.

Now, I won’t feign knowledge of the inner workings of adcoms, but to put some awards above in perspective:

  • AIME qual puts one into approximately top 6,000 math competitors nationally: 4/10 on the crowdsourced CC list below
  • USNCO qual = approx. top ~1,000 chemistry competitors: 5/10 on list below
  • UF SSTP is what is considered a “regional award”: 3/10
  • NMSF adds little for someone with a perfect ACT