<p>Hey,</p>
<p>Your stats are impressive overall. You’re clearly strong academically and your music sounds like it could help you. When it comes to Yale though, there are really three problems that I see. First of all, Yale (in comparison to the other top 5 schools) is considered similar to Stanford (that is, they tend to pick many “strange” candidates - ones that are not necessarily well-rounded students but either have an odd backstory or are very focused on one study). The latter is actually true of all top five schools, but especially so of Yale and Stanford. I think that what is going to hurt you the most in admissions is that you do not really have a clear focus (you have written music, but you do not have an extensive list of musical programs listed that you have enrolled in) and though you are strong academically, you are probably not strong enough to beat out the many people across the nation who have 5.0 GPA’s junior year, etc. An instance of well-rounded students that would make the cut in these cases would be ones like a few from my school. One especially. He had a 5.0 junior year, 4.5 sophmore year, played varsity tennis three years, and earned a 2400 on the SAT - all at a very competitive high school. Obviously, making the cut as well-rounded is nearly impossible but the problem is in your case that you also have no clear focus. The third thing that will hurt your chances that I see is that you are Asian. Racial profiling (sadly) plays a huge role in admissions - that is, you are not competing with Caucasian and African American or Latin students - you are competing with other Asian students (who tend to perform in the highest bracket academically). Sorry for sounding pessimistic, but it is better that you do not get your hopes up than that you do. In your case, I would say admission to the 9/10 ranked schools seems realistic, but beyond that (top 5) would be a hard bargain. Yale especially, as I said, is unlikely. I would say that you have far better chances of admittance to Columbia or Harvard (as Columbia is not as demanding and Harvard tends to choose more academic students than the other top four), Harvard being a rather vast stretch, and Columbia being a possiblity.</p>