Chance Me for Top CS Schools! (MIT, Carnegie, etc)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

I know it’s extremely difficult to get into these top schools, and hence it’s extremely difficult to really “chance” people. I’m mostly looking for advice or comments on my general ranking among applicants at these top schools. Any advice or comment is highly appreciated!

Dreams: MIT, Princeton, Caltech, Stanford
I have no hooks, and I’m an Asian male :frowning:

I’m currently a junior in high school, and I go to a rather competitive charter school.

Intended Major: Double major in math and computer science
SAT: 1540 (740 RW, 800 M), 20 Essay
SAT Math II: 800
SAT Chinese with Listening: 800
I’m taking SAT Chemistry in June and SAT Physics in August
APs: Chinese (5), World History (5), Calculus BC (5, AB subscore 5), Computer Science A (5).
Current APs: Capstone Seminar, Chemistry, US History, Literature, DE Statistics, DE Multivariable Calculus
Schedule for next year: AP Capstone Research, AP Spanish Language and Culture, AP US Government, AP English Language and Composition, AP Biology, AP Psychology, Economics, Multimedia Art, DE Linear Algebra, DE Discrete Math
GPA: 4.0 (UW), 4.3235 (W)
Class Rank: 1 or 2/110 (I think I have the same GPA as another person, so idk who’s 1st and who’s second). Also, note that my school doesn’t allow APs for freshmen, which is why my WGPA is not very high even though I’m rank 1 or 2.

ECs:
I’m the founder and president of our school’s first math club for 2 years now. I’m also the founder and assistant coach of our school’s first MATHCOUNTS team. We participated for the first time this year and we were able to place among the top 25% at chapters, but no one made it to states.

I became interested in math competitions in my sophomore year, around the same time I started the math club. I started studying for them in the middle of 10th grade and got 120 on the AMC 10 (I think I got around 80 in freshman year) and 5 on the AIME. I continue to study and prepare for math competitions, and I got 100.5 on the AMC 12 this year (made a ton of calculation mistakes). I’m hoping to do better on the AIME and hopefully qualify for USAMO, and maybe MOP as well. I’m also active on popular math websites, such as Art of Problem Solving, where I’m currently taking WOOT (Worldwide Online Olympiad Training) and I help test-solve mock AMC 8/10/12 competitions. That’s also where I met my team for the 2018 Fall OMO (Online Math Open), which we placed 36th in worldwide.

I do math research occasionally in my free time, mostly through the program CrowdMath. I’ll probably spend more time on it during the summer when I have more free time. I’m also probably going to reach out to some math researchers at my local state college and hopefully we could come together and do some research that way.

I also recently got into Computer Science competitions. I attended my first Hackathon last fall, where my team and I placed 3rd. I’m going to be attending my second Hackathon in a few weeks. I competed in USACO for the first time in December, and I’m currently at the Silver level. I’m hoping to make it to the Gold level at the next competition. Prior to doing these competitions, I made a 3-D graphing and calculus (partial derivatives, tangent planes, integrals, etc) calculator in Java as my AP Computer Science final project, which was voted as most creative in the class. I also created my own personal website last summer, which I’m planning on launching some time this summer.

I’m currently in the Web Design club at my school where we’re learning HTML, CSS, and Javascript. We’re going to start redesigning our school website before the end of this year, and I’ll be leading that throughout my senior year. I’m not sure if this club will last since there are only 3 non-seniors in it right now including me. Hopefully I could get some of my CS buddies to work on the club together next year.

I’ve also been a Boy Scout for 2 years now. I’m currently a Star Scout and Senior Patrol Leader of my troop. I’ll be an Eagle Scout some time in early December of this year. Boy Scouts has really helped me stay active in my community and in my house. I was also a WEB Leader in my Sophomore year, but wasn’t accepted in my junior year. I’m going to apply to be a LINK leader my senior year.

I’ve actively played at several school intramurals and jogathons over my years in high school (soccer and volleyball intramurals freshman year, volleyball and dodgeball sophomore and junior years), but I’ve never played on the school team before. I’m probably going to join volleyball this year though. Even though I haven’t done sports, I’m still physically fit. I work out for at least half an hour every day. The only reason I haven’t done sports is because of family issues.

There are also several other things I do for fun, but not formally. I do martial arts, play piano, trumpet, guitar, make my own song covers, make graphic designs, chess, and a few other stuff.

Summer Activities:
During the summer of my freshman year, I went to my first Boy Scout Summer Camp, which was a lot of fun and also very productive (I got 7 merit badges there). After that, I visited my relatives who recently moved to America from China for about a month, and helped them get accommodated to life in America. I volunteered at a food bank for the remainder of that summer, and had WEB leader training at the end.

In my sophomore year, I took a cruise through Britain, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Russia, and Sweden, which was absolutely amazing. I learned to surf and ice skate on the cruise, and I toured several famous attractions and learned a ton about them. For the remainder of the summer, I volunteered at the same food bank and studied for the SAT.

I’m going to be visiting my grandparents in China for most of July this summer. I’m hoping to make MOP to fill in June, but otherwise I’d be doing math research in June, or possibly attending the AwesomeMath Summer Program. I might do volunteering at the same food bank at the end of the summer, but I doubt I’d have time since I come back from China 2 weeks before school starts and I’d have LINK leader training then if I get in.

Comments:
You might’ve noticed it seems I did nothing my freshman year based on what I’ve written above. I spent most of freshman year focusing on my grades and exploring clubs I might like. I had paid little attention to my grades and academics prior to high school (I was a B student then) since none of that really mattered for college. I was able to gain a lot of important skills, such as time management, how to study efficiently, etc during my freshman year, which helped me focus on ECs while keeping straight As for the rest of high school. I also competed in FBLA, Science Olympiad, The Tech Challenge, and attended Interact meetings that year, none of which I enjoyed very much.

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http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/2095312-generic-chance-answer-for-super-selective-colleges-p1.html

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You’re going to be an Eagle Scout having been In Scouts for just three years?! What Troop is this?

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You’re from the Bay Area. The Tech Challenge is the one at the Tech Museum I presume?

I haven’t done a detailed chance me in a long time. I guess it would be good to do one now!

Stats: Great job, definitely at the higher end of the spectrum. As for the subject tests, just take one of the science ones. There is really no point doing two of them.
ECs:

Math:

Qualifying for AIME as an asian male is not an outstanding achievement. It’s good for the resume but as you know, USAMO and such would be better. If you scored 100.5, you’ll need 13 questions right on the AIME to get USAMO. If you need any help, PM me. I would be more than happy to help! Good luck! I believe in you :slight_smile:

As for the MATHCOUNTS, this is where I think there is something off. MATHCOUNTS is for grades 6-8. Why would your school need a MATHCOUNTS club then? The only reason I can think of is that you go to a private school or public school that is from k-12 or something like that.

Computer Science:

Webdesign Club will only take you so far. By the looks of it, your club seems fairly generic and does not really have a goal in mind. For example, I run the engineering club at school. While the club name itself is fairly generic, we focus on building useful projects for the community. This year, we are focusing on adding vision tracking for special needs students in order to give teachers feedback on how much information is being retained. As for you club, I would recommend doing some sort of community outreach. If I were running the club, I would reach out to local businesses and offer to build websites for them for free. It’s just something to keep in mind!

USACO - USACO silver will not boost you at all. I would say shoot for plat if you can but gold is fine. PM me if you want to discuss this further!

Boy Scouts:

As stated above, it’s quite surprising that you achieved the Eagle Scout rank in three years. The hastiness of the rank may make colleges very skeptical of you given that it takes people 6-9 years to get that rank. I would say be very cautious about putting this down.

Summer Stuff:

I know that people don’t have to go to summer programs and what not. However, the field of CS is super competitive and you will be facing the top dogs. Your past two summers haven’t really been all that great. While I do strongly believe in taking vacations to relax after the school year, I think it would have been better if you incorporated something productive after your vacations, such as research or an internship. Colleges want people who are passionate about what they do. By not really delving into CS, there’s no way for colleges to tell what you are truly interested in.

Final Words / Official Chance:

I think you’ll be able to get into a lot of the mid tier CS schools like Purdue and UMD. As for the top ones like MIT and CMU, I think the chances will be low as they are for everyone else. Without anything super special, you will be part of the college sweepstakes and getting in will be like a lottery. I wish you the best of luck my dude :slight_smile:

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How long have been a Star Scout? You will need six months of leadership as a Star in order to earn Life. Then 6 months of leadership and being active as a Life Scout as one of the Eagle requirements.

3 years to Star/Life is pretty quick, but about right. My son earned Life 2 1/2 years after joining his Troop, but took another year and a half to finished all of his Eagle requirements. And another 6 months before he got/passsd his Board of Review.

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I noticed that you added that you were mostly a B student all of freshman year. How could your UGPA be a perfect 4.0? Otherwise, great stats. You definitely have a shot.

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  1. Going on a cruise doesn’t really count as a summer activity. This is a minor point. But it shows me that perhaps you may not be very aware of what colleges are looking for.

  2. You are worried about being an Asian male, yet you are mainly participating in math and CS related activities outside the classroom. Try to do something that will make you stand out more from other Asian male applicants. Think: as is, what separates you from most other Asian males? Is there any compelling reason as to why they should take you as opposed to one of them? Find a compelling reason and focus in on it. If it it some other interest you have, work on cultivating it. Make sure you stand out.

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I think you’ll be competitive at any school you apply to. The key word being competitive. Many on CC will say that you wont be competitive without a long list of big awards from various competitions, research and publications. But if you research CC you’ll find that while many with such accomplishments do get admissions, many others actually do not. Additionally, you’ll find many posts from students with stats just like yours that are admitted to all the schools you mention.

Summers are important, but here again, there are more ways to approach them than just more competitions, research, etc. In the case of my S, his summers were spent traveling the world and volunteering at the local food bank (OK, one summer he took MV Calc at Cal). When he explored Mayan ruins in central America he learned about how Mayans approached math and astronomy - when he went diving in Australia he learned about the threats of warming to the the worlds coral reefs. I think his travels were actually a plus in some of his essays because he could tie life to science. In the end he was accepted to virtually all the colleges he applied to (for CS) including 4 out of his top 5 choices.

So, short answer is I think you’re on the right trajectory. You’ll be competitive, but the acceptance rates are low. My best recommendation to you is to research CS programs and develop a list of schools to apply to using the reach/match/safety approach. Also, plan on investing significant time to writing some great essays.

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Bottom line, kids with better stats than your have gotten rejected from and kids with worse stats than your have been accepted to the schools you mentioned. Barring winning a gold medal, performing open heart surgery, or some other major hook, there is no sure magic formula to getting into these schools. Best that can be said is that you have as much chance as all the other over achieving kids.

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To be honest, you need to expand your college list to add safeties and matches.

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@vhsdad @GoBears2023 I was actually a Boy Scout in 6th and 7th grade (if I remember correctly) too, so I had a good deal of camping requirements done, which are usually the more time-consuming ones (since you actually have to go camping for a certain number of nights). I lost most of my progress due to a new book and requirements being adopted, which is why I didn’t mention this. But is achieving Eagle Scout in 3 years really that crazy? I know it takes at least 15 months to go from First Class to Eagle Scout (3 months as First Class, 6 months as Star, and 6 months as Life), but it’s rather easy to go from nothing to First Class (especially if you take a Trail to First Class course). It’s certainly not hard to go from nothing to First Class in 21 months.

@Hamurtle I became a Star Scout at the end of last November, so at earliest, my Life Scout Board of Review would be at the end of May. The only requirements I still need are from community service, and I have those set up in the coming month, so I’m definitely on track to get a board of review at the end of May. I believe I have all but 4 Eagle Required merit badges (including Family Life and Personal Management), so it wouldn’t be hard to finish up on all my Eagle required merit badges.

@GeorgetownDude Sorry for the misunderstanding. I meant I was mostly a B student in middle school before freshman year, not during.

@GoBear2023 Yes, the Tech Challenge is at the Tech Museum. My school includes middle and high school combined, which is why MATHCOUNTS is in there.

Yeah, I know qualifying for AIME isn’t very good at top STEM universities like MIT. The cutoff for 12A was actually 84 this year, so I’m guessing AMO cutoff will be around 210 or less, so 11 or more should do it for qualification. Nevertheless, I’m not gonna let my guard down.

And that’s true that USACO Silver wouldn’t really get me anywhere at those top schools. I’m planning on reaching Gold by the end of this school year (at the US Open), but definitely no guarantees. Also, the main goal of the Web Design club is to redesign our school website since it’s pretty glitchy and hard to navigate at the moment. I know we haven’t really started on this yet, but that’s mainly because not everyone’s familiar with web designing yet. Is that goal too generic?

@TheSATTeacher Yes, I’m aware going on a cruise doesn’t really help with college apps. I just mentioned it in my post since that’s what I did. I know a good deal of Asian males are good at math and computer science, which is really a bummer, especially since those are actually what I’m interested in. I’m not exactly sure how to make myself stand out, but I’m hoping to reach a higher level of achievement in those areas. The main thing I see that could potentially help me stand out are my willingness to help out my community (with teaching in the math club, tutoring friends, creating documents to help people improve, etc).

@Rivet2000 Thank you so much for the advice! I was actually going to include some of those things about my travels, but I figured it would make my post a bit too long. I definitely learned a lot from my travels, whether it be learning a new language, actually seeing life in a third world country, learning the history behind countries, and many more. I was actually planning on writing one of my college essays (if it is relevant in a prompt) about one of these experiences. Also, thank you for the new perspective from many of the others, focused on research and competitions.

@Riversider I do have a list of safeties and matches. I just didn’t include them in my post since I doubt I’d need advice on those.