Chance Me For Ivies + Stanford + UChicago and more

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Demographics:

  • Indian Middle Class (<40K & applying for financial aid wherever applicable)
  • Gender non-binary + LGBT

Intended Major:

  • Economics/PPE

Academics:

  • ACT: 35C (35E, 35M, 34R, 35S)
  • SAT (Super-scored): 1450 (710M, 740ERW) + 21 essay (Also please tell me if I should report this score or just do the ACT)
  • SAT IIs: 800 Math II; 730 English Litt
  • CBSE India: 9th - 10.0 CGPA; 10th - 10.0 CGPA
  • 11th GPA: 86.4
  • 12th 1st Quarter GPA: 90.4 (Class 1st)
  • School doesn’t properly rank but counselor put me as top 10%
  • Subjects: Accounts, Math, English, Economics, and Business Studies
  • Academic Honors: Nothing much but many school level prizes (Allrounder Prize, Top 5% Honor Certificate, Proficiency Awards in Subjects, Honor Award in Econ, English, and Business Studies, etc.)

Extracurriculars: Pretty amazing ECs. Tl;dr: represented India in debating for the past three years and highly ranked speaker in the world, a lot of leadership and school reform stuff, and feminist activism along with a couple nerdy things.

  1. Debate: Represented India all three years of high school so far; most notably, captain of the Indian team in 2016; current World Championships quarter-finalist and world's 8th Best ESL and 36th best open category speaker. Huge spike from this. Aside of internationals, I've won a few tournaments for the school, captained the school team, won Best Speaker awards and made finals in intervarsity national level tournaments, etc.
  2. Debate coaching: 2 batches of teams coached; 2 kids made the national team after I coached them; I also founded and currently run the women's debate program in school.
  3. Social Justice: founded and run-edit my Facebook feminist page; it has 2.2k+ followers, a gross post-reach of 1.25 million and 13000 total responses.
  4. Student Government: Elected Cultural Secretary; previously MUN Secretary
  5. Cultural Event: Organized one of the largest interschool cultural festivals. Created the first equity policy for a cultural fest to set standards for speech and redress harassment. Also donated 30k.
  6. Paper: Wrote a paper on demonetization
  7. MUN: 12 MUNs, 5 Best Delegate awards out of total 9 awards; once Secretary-General and once Guest Chairperson

8, 9, 10: Some soccer, Editor of the math magazine, some comedy/speech prizes

Essays:

9-10/10 (reviewed by some great overachievers)

LORs:

  • Counselor - 9/10
  • 1st Teacher - 10/10
  • 2nd Teacher - she likes me but completely blind about this one; probably 6-8/10
  • 2 10/10 optional recos from debate coaches one of whom is at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship rn after graduating from Harvard (if that matters)

Schools:

Ivies (minus Dartmouth & Brown) + Stanford + UChicago + Northwestern + Pomona + Vanderbilt + NYU

Chance me and also please also tell me which of these are reaches/matches/safeties

THANKS A TON IN ADVANCE; SORRY IF THAT WAS TOO LONG.
<3

2

All reaches except maybe northwestern (Low reach) vandy (Low Reach) and NYU (Match), especially as an international student. You need a more balanced list

3

HYPM each typically enroll about 5-6 International applicants from India per year, Upenn and Columbia are probably a bit higher, with Cornell probably having the highest enrollment. Stanford and UChicago are probably more in line with HYPM. All together that probably works out to something around or under 60 or so spots for Indian students per year at those 8 schools combined. Given the daunting numbers, all 8 have to be considered high to extreme reaches for every applicant regardless of qualifications.

4

you are really amazing but like everyone said, getting into Yale as an international is hard for everyone.

5

I agree with @Jeanvaljean123 . I think they are all a reach(but definitely not impossible), but feel confident you’ll get into nyu and vanderbilt.

6

@AdventuresAbroad @HolyCheeseballs @tdy123 @Jeanvaljean123 can you please recommend safeties/matches that I will definitely get into that also have good aid programs for internationals

7

@kiran2510

Some other schools to look at: Duke, Tufts, Amherst, Carleton, Davidson, Macalester, Boston University (easy), University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

Considering schools in the UK?