Chance me for my Dream Schools (UMich, UVA, UChicago, tOSU, Dartmouth, UC-Berkeley)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Objective
ACT (breakdown): 33; 36-English, 33-Science, 30-Math, 32-English, 36-Writing
SAT II: US History (800), World History (800) //not entirely sure if it’ll hurt me to send two histories
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.85
Weighted GPA (if available): 4.85
Rank/percentile (if available): Top 10% of ~350
AP (place score in parenthesis): World History (5), U.S History (5), Statistics (4), English Lang. (5), Euro History (5), English Lit (5), Calc AB (3, not sure if I’ll send this one), Enviro Sci (5), Spanish Lang (3), US History (5); Plan to take - Microeconomics, US Govt, Biology, Calc BC.
IB: Enviro SL (5); Plan to take Math SL, History of the Americas HL, Spanish SL, English HL, Biology HL
Senior Year Course Load: IB Math, IB History of the Americas, IB Spanish, IB English, IB Biology, AP US Govt, AP Microeconomics, Art History Honors
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): 3-time appearance in State Championship for Forensics, Represented State of Florida in National Competition in Forensics, AP Scholar with Honor, AP Scholar with Distinction, Duke TIP honoree

Subjective
Extracurriculars:
-Captain of Speech and Debate team (4 years in club, 2 years as President)
-Started Environmental service club (7th Generation club), hopefully will be associated with Sierra Club by end of the year (VP)
-Model UN (3 yrs, member, mentor)
-National Honor Society (2 yrs)
-SGA (3 yrs, Sophomore Treasurer)
-Aiding North Korean Refugees (2, Secretary)
-Spanish Club (4 yrs)

Job/Work Experience:
-Internship at University of Florida Biochemistry Dept (Summer 2013)

Volunteer/Community service:
-Volunteered at Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (200+ hrs)
-VounTeen program at Shands Hospital (100+ hrs)
-Docent program at Natural History Museum (100+ hrs)
-Started Gardening Group in senior home (100+ hrs)
-Seventh Generation club acitvities (80+ hrs)

Essays: 10/10
Teacher Recommendation: 10/10
-2 History teachers
-1 English teacher
-1 Math teacher
Counselor Rec: 10/10
Additional Rec: 10/10
-1 Peer rec
-1 Rec from Principal of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences

Other
Applied for Financial Aid?: Yes
Intended Major: Business or Finance
State (if domestic applicant): Florida
Country (if international applicant): n/a
School Type: Public School
Ethnicity: Asian
Gender: Male

Notes:
-Taken four MOOCS
-Principles of Microeconomics: UC-Irvine
-History of Capitalism in the United States: Cornell
-Understanding the Federal Reserve: New York Institute of Finance
-Understanding Global Trends: UPenn
-Have gone to South America, Europe, and Asia for cultural exploration
-Bilingual: Bengali, English; Taught Spanish in School
-10 Years of playing Piano

2

A couple of tips:

-Admissions officers have 12 minutes to read your entire application. Submitting 6 recommendations will just force them to skim-read both those and your essays, and that’ll only hurt you.

-Send the 3 in calculus - if you don’t send an AP score, schools assume a 1 or a 2, and a score like that in math could stand out like a sore thumb (especially as your ACT math score is the lowest of any section).

Your stats make you qualified for all these schools (depending on your UC GPA, which I’m assuming is in range for UCB). Self-rating your essays and all your recommendations 10/10 is not being realistic. As I do with most students who take this view, I’m going to assume everything is 8/10, because there’s nothing here which suggests that you’ll get a 10/10 recommendation (“best student I’ve taught in a decade” is a 10/10), and none of us have read your essays.

The main issue you could have, so far as I can tell, is that there’s no real focus to your extracurricular activities. Most applicants for business/finance will have awards from FBLA, internships at major companies, and in some cases a small business of their own and/or a blog where they discuss economics and finance. You have debate, environmental work, MUN, SGA, and aiding North Korean refugees, and Spanish club. I’m having trouble finding any coherent narrative there.

You’ll likely get into OSU, and your odds at UVA aren’t bad, but I don’t feel confident putting your chances far above or below the other schools’ acceptance rates. Yours is a rather confusing portfolio IMHO, and you need to hope the people reading your application won’t get the same impression.

3

Thanks for the feedback! For the recs I forgot to mention that I’ve been mixing and matching the recs for each school so there is reasonable amount for each school. I concur about my ratings for recs and essays, I was Student of the Year for those teachers so I still expect greats recs. I’ll probably downgrade my essays as well. I can definitely center my portfolio, I just kinda put everything I did on here LOL. Are there any advantages of just saying “undecided” if they ask for intended major?

4

I don’t know how colleges will perceive an “undecided” major (I’d imagine it won’t matter - many kids major in something they didn’t expect to be interested in). The lack of a theme in your ECs will still be an issue - when an admissions officer needs to sell your application to the full committee, it’s easiest if they can summarize a student as “A biologist who already authored 2 papers in the New England Journal of Medicine,” “An international relations major who attended 10 MUN conferences,” or “A writer whose debut novel been reviewed favorably in The New Yorker.” You unfortunately won’t have that element.

The best recs do more than highlight your academic abilities - most applicants to schools of this selectivity will have such an element to their recommendations. The teachers will “show, not tell” using anecdotes to illustrate their claims about the traits you possess. They’ll give some insight into your personality. They’ll show a college how you would fit in on their campus. Even for exceptional students, a rec like this is by no means guaranteed. So I mentally rate recommendations (including my own) conservatively as 8/10 even for the best students, and 7/10 in many cases. Due to FERPA, nobody can see their recs anyway, so the only way you or I will ever know if they were any good is when decisions come out.