<p>Not copied at all!</p>
<p>Hi, I was wondering what you all would think of my stats. I applied for Caltech/MIT/Chicago early, results come out in mid-December. I'd appreciate if you could read my whole post before forming an opinion, if you would. :) If I were to use (somewhat) the normal formatting for results:</p>
<p>School
[ul]
[<em>] Unweighted GPA: 3.89. Post-freshman year, 3.96. (oops 9th grade)
[</em>] Weighted GPA: I have a bunch of these. 4.152 (max AP = 5) or 4.41 (max honors/AP = 5)??
[<em>] Rank (unweighted): barely top 10% (see below)
[</em>] SAT I: 800 math/760 critical reading/730 writing
[<em>] SAT II: 800 math/770 chem/740 physics
[</em>] APs: Calculus (9th), Physics C (10th), Comp sci (11th), Biology (11th), Chemistry (11th), Statistics (11th - exam only), US History (11th). All are 5s except for CS (class only) and Biology (4).
[<em>] Senior course load (1st semester): AP English (1), AP Government, two college CS courses (one 100-level, one 200-level), independent study (differential equations/self-study MIT's 18.03), a bunch of Coursera stuff (available upon probing)
[</em>] Senior course load (2nd semester): AP English (2), Economics, two college CS courses (both 300-level), more Coursera stuff (undecided)
[<em>] School type: top few public HS (9th grade), above average rural public HS (10th grade), 1600-1700 students
[</em>] Awards: USA Math Talent Search Bronze (2011, 12), AIME qualifier (2011 - 13), Indiana math league first place (2012), AP Scholar with Distinction, National Merit SF
[li] Other: My class rank is kind of skewed by going to a school with harsher grading in 9th grade. I've taken all the honors/AP courses possible, except for AP World History, I believe. That is all![/li][/ul]</p>
<p>Extracurriculars
[ul]
[<em>] Competitive programming: Topcoder/Codeforces/HackerRank competitions or just doing problems; mostly college students/professionals competing. (some other friends have since joined which makes it even more fun) More specific results available on request but I doubt too many are very familiar with these.
[</em>] Online coursework: mainly CS/math courses from Coursera and MIT OpenCourseWare self-study
[<em>] Math competitions: sometimes preparing, other times just doing olympiad problems or discussing with others
[</em>] Research/independent projects: research assistant and some ongoing CS projects that I discuss a little
[<em>] State ARML team (spring)
[</em>] Member/moderator on Art of Problem Solving. (see below)
[<em>] Volunteer work: Mathcounts coaching assistant/grader
[</em>] Summer: AwesomeMath 2011, Canada/USA Mathcamp 2012 (120 selected)
[<em>] Sports: school tennis (12th) and club tennis out of season
[</em>] School-related: Academic Super Bowl, Math Club, Science Bowl
[/ul]</p>
<p>Writing (so far)
[ul]
[<em>] Recommendation 1: math teacher I had in 10th graded and assisted for in 11th, will be good but not sure how good
[</em>] Recommendation 2: US history teacher that likes me; no idea on how her recommendations are in general
[<em>] Counselor: very good
[</em>] Additional recommendation: professor and coach (separate) that I assisted
[<em>] Interview (MIT): meaningful conversation about my ways, though there are some things I wished I had remembered to add
[</em>] What you do for fun (MIT/Caltech): messing with people's electronic devices
[<em>] Best personality trait (MIT): my desire to learn from anything that I do (and trying to get others to do the same)
[</em>] World I come from (MIT): Art of Problem Solving online community. Don't judge :)
[<em>] Significant challenge (MIT): failing to qualify for the USA Math Olympiad and eventually stop using formal credentials to judge/guide myself
[</em>] Common App: deeper version of above
[<em>] short Caltech essays: would rather not share
[</em>] Chicago #2 (books/blogs/films/other): a pretty cool chess book, a pretty cool book on Watergate, Quora
[/ul]</p>
<p>Reflections
This is pretty silly before I get admitted/rejected, but anyway :P</p>
<p>Strengths: passion that I think I reflected pretty well, less formal/more independently-driven extracurriculars</p>
<p>Weaknesses: slightly low grades/rank (although explainable by my school change) and less formal/more independently-driven/not-school-related extracurriculars</p>
<p>Early schools: Caltech/Chicago/MIT/my safety
Later and regular schools: UC Berkeley/Stanford/Princeton/Cornell (A/S, Engineering)/CMU (SCS/MCS)</p>
<p>Sorry if that was really incoherent. I'm a little tired right now.</p>