Chance Me for Top Colleges

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi,

I am currently a junior attending a small public school in northern Texas (less than 1000 students), and I am planning on applying to Stanford next year (my dream school), as well as Harvard, Brown, UCLA, USC, and a few schools in Texas.
I was hoping you guys could chance me with my current profile:

State: TX
School Type: Public
Race: White
Gender: Male
Income Bracket: High
Hooks: Military Brat (I’ve lived all over the world)

SAT:
1420 (M710, R+W710, E18)
These scores are subpar to me, so I am retaking the SAT in March, hopefully to improve on all portions.

SAT II:
Haven’t taken any yet, but plan on taking:
Chemistry
Math II

ACT:
December: 34 (35E, 32M, 34R, 36S, No Essay)
February: 34 (34E, 33M, 34R, 33S, Waiting on Essay Scores)
Will retake if Essay Score is less than an 8.

Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.9, Weighted: 4.56

Rank: 7/211

AP:
No AP Tests taken yet, but classes include:
AP Chemistry
AP Statistics
AP US History
AP Language and Composition

I intend to take these classes next year:
AP Physics
AP Biology
AP Calculus AB
AP Government
AP Literature and Composition

(By the time I graduate, I will have taken all AP classes my school offers. I have also taken advanced/honors course for all other core classes prior to this year, such as Pre-Calculus, Algebra I & II, etc.)

Major Awards:
3 National Awards in AFJROTC
No more that I can think of :frowning:

Extracurriculars:
Cross Country every year, hopefully Varsity next year.
AFJROTC (my main focus. I’m one of 8 officers in our unit, and intend to be the Group Commander (basically the president) next semester)
National Honor Society (also hope to be the president next year)
3 UIL Teams (UIL is a Texas-based academic competition): Literary Criticism (9th), Science (10th-12th), Computer Science (10th-12th, advanced to regionals 10th grade). I’m trying to advance to the State level in both Science and CS either this year (preferably), or next year.
In a band with some friends (does this count as an EC?)

Job/Work Experience:
Grocery Store Bagger (10th)

Volunteer/Community service:
AFJROTC has provided a ton of community service opportunities in to many places for me to list. I’d approximate the total hours to be 100+.

Summer Activities:
Last summer I attended a week-long leadership camp (CSLC) for ROTC in order to become an officer (and graduated 4th out of 181 cadets)
This summer I will return to CSLC to be a camp “counselor”, and I also plan to go to the Naval Academy Summer Seminar

Recommendations: AP Chemistry & AP Statistics/AP Calculus Teacher. Also will get supplemental recommendation from one of my AFJROTC Instructors.

What (hopefully) makes me different: Strong focus on AFJROTC, which in turn shows off my leadership abilities, as I want to be the commander of my entire unit. Also very specific focus on science (specifically chemistry, but doubling up on Biology and Physics next year will hopefully help show that). Like detailed in my personal details, I am a military brat, which means I’ve lived all over the world, and I’ve seen different states, countries, etc. Hopefully I’ll be able to weave all three of these factors into my essays.

Strength: Stellar grades and test scores (so far), with a very rigorous coursework. Strong participation in AFJROTC, and lots of leadership abilities.
Weakness: Not a huge amount of extracurriculars compared to other applicants.

Essays: See above

2

Like anyone else applying to those colleges, your chances are slim. I mean that in a literal way. Except for your Texas schools (I assume,) they all have acceptance rates below 20%. As an OOS for CA schools, assume the chances are lower than the published acceptance rate. Those colleges are reaches for everyone.

Your ACT is much better than your SAT. I would not bother submitting the SAT 1 and I see no need to retake, unless you are trying for NMS. Of course if you get a better score, submit.

You should rethink taking two difficult lab sciences in a year. You risk compromising high grades for little gain. 8 APs is a good number for top colleges. If you do it anyway, you should seriously consider not taking five APs next year.

Your ECs and the like are good, but not exceptional. Your strong leadership focus is probably good though. Being a military brat is not a hook. You may want to bring your various experiences into your essay. Be sure to apply to safety schools. You need a college you are certain you can get into. Be sure you like it, can afford it, and would be happy to attend. Express interest (unless you are auto-admit.) High stats students are often unpleasantly surprised when they are denied from what they consider safety schools. Good luck!

3

Thanks for the advice! The reason I didn’t list any specific schools in Texas is because state law requires public colleges to auto-admit students in the top 10% of their class, so I don’t particularly need to worry about that. I was planning on taking those 5 AP’s because that’s a pretty common schedule for seniors at my school, and if I can pull them off it’ll look good (and even getting a B or two is OK because of the rigor, or so I’ve been told). I wasn’t aware that being a military brat wasn’t a hook (now that I think about it, it’s actually pretty common), so I’ll get to brainstorming an actual one. At this point, I think it may be too late to improve on my ECs, even if it would be beneficial (there are very slim amounts of ECs available at my school).
Once again, thanks for the advice, and hopefully I’ll be able to improve by the time applications open.

4

I say you got a good chance at all of them without submitting your SAT. You’ll probably get into USC and UCLA for sure and got great chances at the rest. Have you considered adding several more schools such as Rice, Cornell, Tufts, WashU, JHU, NYU. These could be your match to low reach range and I would say you could get into most (4-5) of them as fallback schools.

5

I agree with Bjklw2a There are some amazing schools on the east coast that you might love. Those schools they listed are all amazing. In addition I think that Columbia, and UMichigan. I applied to WashU and tufts as more upper reaches. Just recommend not narrowing yourself too soon. UCLA and USC seem to be schools you should be able to get into and are competitive at your other schools especially Brown. I wish you the best of luck

6

I agree that I would not retake the SAT if I were you. I do think that many things can be a “hook” if you frame it right, just maybe not in the sense that you think – you might not get an application boost by nature of being a military brat alone, but writing a genuine, heartfelt essay about it will only help.
Stanford: Reject (EC’s are not quite strong enough, imo, and your class rank could be a bit higher)
Harvard: Reject (Ditto)
Brown: Waitlist (Though they’re very much about fit – it depends greatly on your essays)
UCLA: Accept/Waitlist
USC: Accept/Waitlist

Best of luck! :slight_smile: Chance me back? http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1966406-chance-me-upenn-ed-yale-brown-princeton-etc-will-chance-back-p1.html

7

You can’t brainstorm a hook, my friend. You have one or you don’t. Hooks are being a URM, or an athlete, or the president’s daughter, and so on. A hook is something an institution needs.

8

@Lindagaf Yes, I agree – I was just saying that it doesn’t mean that experiences outside of those categories cannot help your application. I was playing with the word “hook.”