Any responses will be highly appreciated!
I am an international student from Hong Kong and now study in a private school in NY…
Last month I applied early action to the School of Kinesiology at UMich with an intended major of Sport Management. I currently have a GPA of 3.73 (Upward trend), an old SAT (2016 January) of 1960, a math ii subject test of 760, and a Toefl of 102. I also just took the December new SAT last weekend, and it went pretty well, expecting a 1450+, and I wish they could accept this score. (I know the December score is probably not helpful for the early action)
I have shown strong passion on sports and especially soccer. Most of my Extracurricular activities are sport-related.
- Team captain of varsity soccer team (Awarded Scholar Athlete of The County in my junior year)
- Participant of Wharton Sports Business Academy (2016 summer)
- Player rater and evaluator at www.footballdatabase.eu (One of the biggest soccer info websites)
- FIFA 16 (E-sport) semi-pro player (I was globally ranked the 21st in the world while there's about several millions of players in total)
- Fan representative of Manchester City Football Club Supporters Club
- Water Polo and Swimming (Played water polo and swam competitively in Hong Kong, and received several awards)
- Market analysis intern at Honeywell (2 weeks, 80 hours, 2016 summer)
- Turkey intercultural field trip (The topic was intercultural-ness and sustainability, 2015, 3 weeks)
- Saxophone player in school jazz band and orchestra
- Member of Mathlete
- Team captain of political debate team
- Students peer tutor
For my common app essay I talked about how much I love FIFA, the fact that I employed FIFA tactics into real life scenarios, how I developed my interest on sports business from FIFA, and my personal insights into the great prospect of Chinese sports industry.
Please chance me for UMich EA Kines school, and if possible, Ohio state and syracuse as well.
Any responses will be highly appreciated! Thank you!
My son was accepted as a direct admit to the Sport Mgt program last year during EA. His GPA was a bit higher than yours and his ACT was 32 composite (which I think correlates to the 1450?). I can’t remember his specific common app essay but the supplemental ones for MI were top-notch and directed totally towards the program. the one on “community” he wrote about being a member of his cross-country team from 7th-12th grade and his growth and the other one (can’t remember the topic, but want to say it was something like “Why Michigan?” he wrote about the Sport Mgt degree, how it exactly fit his entire life and how he wanted to be on campus in Fall of '16 as a freshman. It worked. So, I think you have a good chance, but worst case, maybe a deferral (which is what we expected). If so, contact Admission and show more demonstrated interest - find an article about the program or something and write a letter expressing this is why you want to be there! Good luck!
Your Old SAT is decent, but being OOS will hurt along with your below average GPA. I’m assuming your GPA is due to rigorous courses and being international though, so they will keep that in mind (which is good)
HOWEVER, I think your ECs are very impressive and relate to your passion–which is a huge bonus. I think you’ll get accepted, especially if you showed interest in UMich in your essays
good luck tehhe
Scholar-athlete winner for HK? Have you talked to the Michigan soccer coaches about recruitment, even as a preferred walk-on?
Thank you for replying! For the why UMich essay, I wrote about my actual school visit during the thanksgiving vacation last year, my desire to experience the tremendous sports culture at UMich, what I like about the Kines school, and my prospect to the burgeoning Chinese sports industry. My counselor said it was good as I demonstrated strong interest on both about the school and the major. Thank you for your advice! I will see what I can do to impress them before the end of next week.
Thank you for replying! That was my first try and it was long back in January. It was something like a 92 percentile and I didn’t quite understand about how that score was for top-ranked schools for UMich, so I was like cool I am done and I had never taken another SAT test until this December. I am really happy that it went quite well. This testing thing just naturally comes to me; I didn’t really study for it but still got OK scores. If I knew how important it is and the fact that 1960 is not really that great a score, I would have studied more and taken more tests. My GPA is below average but within the middle 50% range for Kines School, according to Mich’s website. I really had a hard time adapting to this completely new environment in my sophomore year and got a 3.2 GPA, but later on in Junior year and this year I caught up a lot and squeezed out a 3.73… Hopefully they will accept me! Thank you for your insight again!
Thank you for replying! As I said in my post, right now I study in a private school in New York. I got the Scholar Athlete from the Suffolk County last year for my consistent performances and 3.92 GPA. I actually have thought about contacting UMich for recruiting until my coach told me I am not good enough for D1, but good for D3 and maybe bench in D2. I definitely would like to contribute to the Blue and to be a statistician or a tactician on the team though.