Chance me for RD Computer Science: Princeton, CMU, University of Chicago, Caltech, Duke

Stats:

SAT: Highest in Single Sitting: 1510 (740 RW/770 Math) (meh); Superscore: 1540 (740 RW/800 Mah) (less meh)
SAT II: I don’t have my results yet, but my best guesses: Math II: 800, Chemistry: 720 (meh)
ACT: Didn’t take
GPA: Weighted: 4.29 (meh); Unweighted: 3.82(meh)
Rank: School does not report; If I had to guess, definitely top 10 percent
Other Tests (AMC, AP, IB): APs: World History (4), Calculus BC(5), Calculus AB subscore (5), U.S. History (5), Physics 1 (4), Computer Science A(5); AMC12: 68 (pretty bad); no AIMEs or USACOs (very bad); IBs not offered at school.

Subjective:

Essays:

Common App: 6.5/10 (Well-written in terms of style, structure, and grammar, but just bland and boring to read; not whimsical or absurd enough; currently rewriting)
Caltech Supplements: 6/10 (Finishing them up, but I probably won’t give them the ‘right’ answers)

Teacher Recs:
I don’t know for sure, but here are my guesses:
Calculus BC and Honors Algebra II teacher: 8/10 (Had her for 2 years; one of her favorite students to turn to; probably had many decent things to say about me)
AP US History teacher: 5.5/10 (Good relationship; demonstrated well-thought-out arguments as well as strong intellect; probably gave me something generic though)

Counselor Rec: Told me that her letter was “glowing”; I’m presuming it was at least somewhat decent; 6.5/10

Supplementary Material: I’ll probably attach some excerpts from one of my mathematical modeling submission papers; maybe some code from the operating system I developed

Hooks: White upper-middle-class male with a parent who graduated from college. About as un-hooky as you can get.

Personal:
Location: Irvine, CA
High School Type: Large public (~2300 students; class size ~600)
Ethnicity: White
Gender: Male
Income: ~90,000 (Upper middle class)
Intended major: Computer Science

Other:
Extracurriculars (I copied these word for word from my common app; a bit lengthy ):

Recognized Vice President of Coding Contest Club
Grew club to 30; coached members for regional contests and USACO, won 1st in regional, hosted Hour of
Code and other events for females and minorities

Courtesy Clerk at Albertsons
Packaged groceries, cleaned floors, collected carts in parking lot, helped elderly customers to their cars,
managed front-end of the store when very busy
Academic

Mu Captain of Mu Alpha Theta: Math Honor Society
Grew club to 80 members; directed weekly training sessions; coached members in Number Theory, Calculus,
Advanced Geometry; won 14th in Log 1 regional

Senior Linux Operating System Developer
Developed my own operating system made for easy penetration testing, recruited and lead other programmers
on it, taught me C and Python

Senior Patrol Leader in Boy Scouts Troop
Organized meetings and camping events for the whole troop, mentored young scouts, coordinated service
projects with local charities and schools

Senior Developer of Video Game Development Group
Lead development of and published 3, 4-star year-long games on Steam Greenlight; collaborated with other
game developers; taught members C++ and Java

Recognized President of Mathematical Modeling Team
Organized weekly training sessions, taught modeling classes, spearheaded modeling papers, won meritorious
in modeling contest internationally

Senior Contributor to Brilliant.org
Authored articles explaining complex math concepts, developed curriculum for Calculus course, tutored
younger members; created challenge problems

Highly-Ranked Calculus Tutor in High School
assisted peers in advanced Calculus concepts; introduced Calculus to ambitious younger students, created
online forum to stay in touch with clients

Experienced Chess Player on chess.com
Competed in online Blitz and standard tournaments, taught me strategies and tactics, formed group on
website forum for rules for chess beginners.

Minor/Common Awards:
1st in a regional programming contest
7th in another regional programming contest
Meritorious (Top 20%) in High School Contest of Mathematical Modeling at International
14th in school in log 1 regional
AP Scholar with Distinction
Medallion Award in Mathematics (Top 1% in School)

Other Achievements:
Knowledgeable in 7 programming languages
Eagle Scout (only ~5% of all scouts achieve it)
Developed own operating system?

Major Awards: None as far as I know (I don’t have published research papers nor am I a semifinalist in Intel or Siemens; not from RSI or TASP)

Strengths:
Strong focus with ECs and lots of commitment to them

Weaknesses:
Essays(by far the bigges as of right now)
SAT
SAT II Chemistry
No major awards or publications (I only learned about Siemens on CC at the end of Junior Year; could not fit it into my schedue for summer)
Letters of Rec (Potentially)
Low AMC 12 score; no AIME or USAMO score to show
Too few APs
GPA

Sorry for the length

Correction: Should be Supplements, not just Caltech supplements. My bad.

I was recently (class of 2021) admitted to U Chicago, Princeton, CMU, and Duke and you’re close but not that special. It’s a long shot, nothing about you really stands out but if you can write good essays its possible. Hopefully you had realistic target schools

These are all reaches. You do have safeties, right?

It’s simple - as a well qualified unhooked candidate you have a 5% chance. As @ucbalumnus noted, make sure you have matches, meaning schools that accept 20-25%, as well as some safeties.

@appleapple123 Thanks for the honest and helpful evaluation. What would you suggest to help stand out? I can definitely write pretty decent essays. I do have backups, though that is all they are.

Unless you will be truly happy at your backups, you need to include schools where your scores are in the top-25% AND the acceptance rate is in the 20-30% range as that’s a potential match.

CC is full of stories from highly accomplished students like yourself that got denied or waitlisited/denied at every top-10 school they applied to - unfortunately this makes sense when the non-hooked acceptance rates are 5% or lower.

The match schools where you would profile are all great schools so if you get into one of your reaches celebrate and if you don’t you’ll be really happy as well.