Chance me for NYU ED1, and ED2 for UoM, Emory, BC, BU

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Hello my daughter applied ED1 to NYU and would like to know her chance to get into NYU which is her dream school. Also would like to know her chance for her other schools where she’s planning to apply ED2 and RD. She’s interested in Prehealth program

Demographics ORM (East Asian)

  • US domestic *US citizen
  • State/Location of residency: Reno/Nevada
  • Type of high school: small Catholic private high school
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity * Asian female
  • Other special factors *none

Intended Major(s) for NYU, Global Public Health/Science (CAS) Communicative disorder (Steinhardt), Liberal Study Core (LS)
For other schools: kinesiology, communication disorder, public health

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.98
  • Weighted HS GPA *4.09/4.18 (0.125 for Honors, 0.25 for Ap)
  • Class Rank: 20/350 6%
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 33

Coursework
AP: world history, us history, chemistry (10/11th)
AP taking now (12th): gov, biology, calculus AB, physics 1, Spanish, psychology
Honors English 1-4

Awards
Lack of academic awards (only principal’s list, NHS)

Extracurriculars (Avg ECs)

  • played club volleyball for 7 years (National travel team) due to injury quit in 11th grade
  • volleyball coach for youth team (paid job)
  • school vb team (jv/9,10th). She didn’t try out for varsity because then she would have had to play all season
  • hospital volunteer 260+hrs
  • food pantry/homeless meal service 100 hrs +
  • NHS (officer) 11,12th
  • tutor math/Science at school
  • church choir flutist/teach flute at Sunday school
  • concert band (2nd chair flutist) 9,10th
  • DR shadowing 35 hrs
  • recognized as a student with top most service hours from school
  • lack of academic awards (only principal list)

Essays/LORs/Other

  • Essay: pretty unique and unusual but NYU supplemental doesn’t stand out.
  • LORs: 8/10 (from her Eng/chem teacher) 10/10 (hospital volunteer team director) 9/10 (counselor evaluation)

Cost Constraints / Budget
*no budget constraints

Schools
*Applied ED 1 to NYU.
CWRU (EA), Northeastern University (EA), University of Miami (ED2),

  • Safety *(UNR)
  • Likely *Univ of Miami
  • Match* Pepperdine, Chapman,
  • Reach* Boston College, Boston University, Emory

Does she have a chance? I would very appreciate your insight/comments on her chance of being admitted to her dream school. She’s being super nervous these days and hope this can ease her mind or help her move on to focus on her ED2/RD schools.
Also her not taking Ap Lang/ Ap Lit would affect her admission chance?

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Other than the ACT score, my daughter had a similar academic profile, and similarly diverse ECs. From your list, she was offered admission to NYU (with a small merit offer), Northeastern (with big merit scholarships), and BU - all resulting from regular decision!

Based on that I think your daughter fits the profile of well-balanced, academically strong students that NYU does admit every year. Of course that doesn’t mean admission is guaranteed, because there are not enough spots for a large percentage of students also fitting that same profile.

I suggest she can have confidence in being a definite contender for “space limited” NYU - but also to remain realistic and see that it’s in her own best interest to be prepared; spending time in earnest about learning to love the various Boston colleges, as it’s entirely possible one of them might be her eventual destination.

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@DigitalDad, Thank you for your feedback! Yes it’s all about competing for that limited spot :frowning: I will tell her to forget about NYU for a while and start preparing for her other schools. Thanks!!

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@DigitalDad, congratulations to your daughter!
For additional context: what year did your daughter apply in? And did she have any hooks?
Thanks.

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Certainly no hooks, sports or other exceptional performance talents. Caucasion, middle class, from nice suburbs - pretty much “as bad as it gets”. :wink:

Good point - she had applied RDs to the class of 2018, at the time when SAT/ACT scores were still broadly required, and available to AOs.

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@DigitalDad, congrats to your daughter as well!
It seems the competition gets worse every year :frowning:

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Well the picture is also getting more distorted in the recent years - I’m not sure if the competition has really changed.

Because of test-optional, students don’t even submit OUTSTANDING 90th percentile results to T20 schools, because they feel it won’t help them. Consequently, the scary-looking, published college admission averages only represent the small percentage of top scorers who are the only ones who still do report. The ACTUAL score averages of the admitted group of students would be a LOT lower than what it appears to be.

Even worse, those small percentage of students with the tippy-top scores will have 10 offers from other/better schools - so their figures upward-distort the application stats of 9 schools where they never even attend. So the (mostly unsubmitted) averages of ACTUALLY ATTENDING students will even more drastically less than the numbers one can look up.

Finally, because tests are optional, and because of automation, FEWER students are self-selecting not to bother to apply - so the bottom of the pool is deeper.

As a result it SEEMS as if things are MORE competitive, with HIGHER averages - when in all likelihood the individual probability of a high-achieving student, like your daughter, has not really changed from pre-Covid times. It’s mostly effecting the students on the lower range of a college’s bell-curve who now “give it a shot”.

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GCs at our local high-performing high schools are telling us that the landscape at the top schools has indeed shifted for high-stat unhooked applicants since 2020 due to test optional/test blind policies. So, not just a perception but a real change. TO allows schools to craft their incoming class more flexibly.

In the words of one of the GCs: kids with profiles similar to those who were getting into Princeton 3-4 years ago, are getting waitlisted or rejected these days.

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@digitaldad, It’s so true… my daughter was hesitating to submit her act score because of her being Asian, she thought her test score was on the lower side. She said only 34,35,36 are safe to submit these days for ORM :slightly_frowning_face:

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D21 applied to three of the same schools with an almost identical weighted GPA and a lower unweighted GPA (no test scores though b/c her SAT was cancelled 3 times).

She got into Northeastern (EA) and NYU (RD), but was rejected from BU (RD — offered a guaranteed transfer spot though).

Good luck!!

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I can’t comment on whether scores are being looked at in relation to race - but a composite score of 33 puts your daughter in the 98% percentile:

She (and her parents) should be super proud of what she has accomplished already during high school, and she brings a lot to the table for making college a success, wherever she ends up enrolling.

And her unweighted GPA and her class rank are definitely great factors in her favor! But again, among high-achieving students of her caliber, it becomes somewhat a game of chance on who else happens to apply in the same year and what “bins” a particular college is still seeking to “fill” - e.g., my daughter was admitted to quite a few reaches, but also rejected at a number of “fits”.

For that reason it’s best to keep an open mind, hope for the best, but also invest time and spirit into having an equally happy “Plan B” in place for oneself.

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@DadOfJerseyGirl, yes that’s why those students who qualify for single choice HYPS now shifted to apply ED to lower tier ivies or other T20 schools. As a result, those kids who normally qualify for T20 schools are now forced to apply to T30-50 schools. Per my daughter’s Naviance data, students who applied ED were tripled than last year. My daughter said everyone at her school thinks ED is the only way to get admitted this year. College admission has gotten out of control for postCovid

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That’s a reflection on how our social circles target a very few brand names (I plead the 5th :wink: ). In reality, of course, a large selection of very good colleges with great career outcomes are available to great students during RD, just might not get the same reaction by peers and the neighbors.

But yes, if one DOES feel very certain about a certain T20 school, then ED can improve chances by an order of magnitude at some colleges. Per example a particular college admitted 8% of overall applications in 2022, but had already filled >60% of their spots with EDs.

Do the math and the 7-time-more RD (vs. ED) applications were left with a truly MINISCULE admission chance.

So yes, ED is probably the most important factor in improving one’s individual probability among otherwise equally excellent peers. In the above real-world sample, ED were accepted at 29%, vs. 2.5% for RD.

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Do you think not taking Ap Lang/Ap Lit will affect her admission chance? My daughter has been so stressed about it :sob:

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I was secretly hoping someone more authoritative, especially with regards to NYU, might have any insight.

Foremost: there really is no point for her to stress out about a course decision made a year ago. After all, there are many factors that are combined when assessing totally different candidates.

In one ideal scenario, your daughter is being admitted due to other factors, so that the English level factor never needs to be used to differentiate.

In another scenario, so many other candidates happen to be already chosen on a combination of other factors, where even having AP level would still not have resulted in an admission.

So yes, one could imagine a scenario where 15,721 applicants had already been accepted, and your daughter had everything else perfectly equal to another applicant, except for AP level English to fill the very last spot - but it’s not reasonable to obsess over that one hypothetical scenario.

Having said that, I don’t want to skirt around the facts: Your daughter seems to have a strong STEM-leaning focus, with chemistry, biology, physics and calculus - for some majors that might help. She also has foreign language covered.
A year ago I would have counseled her to also pursue the “most rigorous course of study” in English, instead of adding yet another STEM AP. But sometimes scheduling just doesn’t work out.

What I don’t know is, how your HS guidance counselor’s letter described her academics - e.g., will it state that she had pursued the most rigorous coursework? If not, how important that assessment might even be to NYU on the outset (or not), and otherwise, how important not having pursued a highest-level English might be to NYU in light of some of her intended majors.
After all, earning great grades during 4 years of Honors English is an accomplishment.

I do know of liberal art colleges at Ivy’s, where having pursued the highest-available level in all major areas of study is expected, while for their engineering schools it is not.

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Thank you for your insight! She even took regular anatomy/physiology class instead of taking Ap Eng courses because she couldn’t pass up the courses she loves to learn. Her counselor actually assured her that her courses are more than enough to be rigorous and told her to be a kid and enjoy high school :joy: so I’ll tell her to relax now lol

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Actually, that would put me at ease on the issue!

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Too funny - the same class my daughter took, instead of “I-forgot-which-other” AP class. Came handy when she decided to spend the following summer vacation to become an EMT before HS senior year, which resulted in 5 years of “patient contact” on record, especially intensely throughout the pandemic, that apparently must have looked good on grad school applications.

Amazing how sometimes things just work out at the end.

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Omg my daughter will be 18 next month and is also planning to get certified for EMT or CNA by next fall so she can start accumulating her direct patient hours while in college!

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OP’s daughter is from Nevada. That has to count for something.

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