Chance me for Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford & MIT (reach)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

MY CREDENTIALS

Test Scores & GPA:

SAT I: 2250/2400 → 770M/730CR/750R
SAT Subject Tests: 750 Math II, 800 Physics, 800 Chemistry
IB (Predicted): 43/45 → Math HL (6), Physics HL (7), Economics HL (7) // Spanish SL (7), English Language SL (6), ITGS SL (7) + Core (3)
GPA: 3.95 (Unweighted)

Extracurriculars/Work Experience:

Editor and Creative Director of School Magazine/Newspaper (since 8th grade)
Won Print Media Award for School Magazine Design
Co-founder and CTO of a web startup allowing students to connect to charities and student-led projects (approximately 800 monthly users)
Published 2 apps on the App Store, one reached Top 200 free apps
Apple WWDC Scholarship Recipient (one of 350 selected to go to Apple Scholarship)
Co-founder and CEO of a web startup that allows students to find mentors and tutors in the local metro area (approx. 2,500 monthly users)
Volunteered, teaching English at an elementary school (60 hours, not a lot LOL) and at a local refugee camp (120 hours)
President, Founder of accredited school programming club
2nd place in city-wide geography competition
Assisted with research at local QS university
Production, Marketing, and Web Developer at school TEDx conference
Head of Advertising at school fair that raised approx. $50,000 (USD)
Student Council (class representative 8-10th grade, house representative 11th grade, and president in 11-12th grade)
Built the website platform (CMS) for the former editor-in-chief of the AFP’s new media organization
Yearbook, 1 year
Interned at Cisco, a Fortune 500 company and designed a hiring strategy that has been implemented in their supply division
Interned at Vox Media, and pitched a few feature articles for their technology culture website, The Verge

Other:

Essays: Decent I guess
Major: Computer Science
Race: Indian (Asian)
Income: 100,000+
Financial Aid: Yes
School: Competitive, but lets anyone with enough money in
US citizen abroad, studying at British institution
I’m a junior starting next year.

Hook: none?

I was really hoping to make up for my crappy academics with my ECs. Are they good enough?

2

Berkeley - low reach
Mit and Stanford - mid/high reach
Ucla - safety

3

Wow, your ECs and academics are very impressive. I’d say you have a pretty good chance at UCLA. Berekely might be a bit of a reach, as well as MIT and Stanford.

4

EC’s don’t make up for “crappy academics” and test scores. The adcoms will say that you sacrificed academics to do the ECs.
Majoring in CS, with non-competitive scores for that major, will be difficult.
Berkeley and UCLA will not provide financial aid to OOS students. Costs are $55K per year.
Stanford and MIT see these kinds of apps from your compatriots, so the competition with thousands of your high GPA/perfect SAT peers will hurt you.

Do not list any ECs before 9th grade. They don’t count unless it has continued into senior year.
Find some schools that you can afford and would be willing to attend.

5

Berkeley - low reach
Mit and Stanford - mid/high reach
Ucla - safety

6

Oops posted twice my b

7

Agree with @“aunt bea” in regard to CS difficulty.

UCB/UCLA - low reaches
Stanford/MIT - reaches

@yoyohi if you don’t know much about chances, please don’t mislead.
Here is the status from a waitlisted to UCLA ( @fellowfromla) this year:

" I got accepted off the wait list today! Whew I thought I had to settle for ucsd
4.0 UW GPA
4.3 UC GPA
2360 SAT/35 ACT
SAT II Math 2/US History/Physics 800/750/800
4’s and 5’s on 16 AP exams
Full IB Diploma Candidate
Computer Science

My extracurricular activities weren’t exactly stellar (joined 3 clubs, volunteered at a local organization, won several awards state/nationally in debate, no solid leadership position whatsoever); my essay was pretty good (enough not to keep me from getting rejected) "

8

@uclaparent9 I know tons of people with worse stats than him that got into UCLA.

9

Ucla - match/low reach
Ucb - low/mid reach
Stanford and mit- high reach