Chance me for UChicago, Brown, Columbia, Pomona and Northeastern

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

SAT I (breakdown):1500(770M/730ERW) Might retake and try to get a 1560+

SAT II: Physics(780) US History(770) Math 2(780)

Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.7

Weighted GPA: 4.6

Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 13/170

AP (place score in parenthesis): AP Comp Sci-5, AP Environmental Science-5, AP Physics C-4, AP Euro-5 Will take only 3 more because our school doesn’t offer that many.

Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): *High Honor Roll, Principal’s List, NHS, Won an MUN award at a regional conference, AP Scholar Best AP Comp Sci student, and Best AP Environmental Science student

Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):

  1. Waste Management Chapter (Founder and President)

I started a local waste management chapter in our school. We used Oklin food composter machines to re-purpose food into fertilizer. This ended up becoming much bigger than just in our school as 8 countries around the Middle East started participating in this with us. We are still working on expanding this to South Asia so hmu if your school would like to become a part of this. 25 schools from the Middle East had become a part of this. Spent a lot of time on this, initially started this in 8th grade.

  1. MUN (VP) -

Will be President of MUN next year but currently I am the VP. Attended around 9 different conferences and organized 1. The conference I organized was regional and around 8 schools attended from 3 countries.

  1. App -

Currently working on an app that tracks your impact on the environment and how you can become better at managing waste. Have developed other apps in the past but none of them really took off, most downloads I’ve gotten on 1 app was around 400 but I’m positive this one will get a lot more. Planning on starting a coding club aswell.

  1. Law Club(Founder and President)-

Nearly 60 members and 50 of which are very active. In this club we hold biweekly meeting, one meeting in which we have a mock trial and in the other we discuss legal affairs. We often also get lawyers to come and speak about their experiences.

  1. Member of the Robotics and 3D Printing club.

Nothing too unique here, entered a few local competitions and haven’t won anything significant.

  1. Student Council (Secretary) -

Organized various fundraisers. The biggest one was for our trip to a Syrian refugee camp, raised about 10k dollars. But I’m total I have raised about 25k for a variety of causes.

  1. Summer Program -

Attended a prestigious summer program based on STEM in my home country. To get accepted you need to be in the top 40 in the entrance exam.

  1. Food Club (VP) -

Lol this club is pretty gay and inactive but when it was active we ran a food blog and critiqued local food. We even had a bit where we would critique or cafeteria and give suggestions.

Job/Work Experience:

  1. Might work as an intern at a law firm that one of my dad's friends owns. Not sure if this will happen.
  2. Working as a freelance graphic designer. Didn't make much money doing this but i loved doing it. (100-150 hours over 3 years)

Volunteer/Community service:

  1. Volunteered at a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey as a part of a community service trip our school holds yearly. (1 week for 6-7 hours daily)
  2. Volunteered at the biggest autism center in my region. We shadowed therapists, played with kids and worked with assistive technology. (6 weeks for 3-4 hours daily)
  3. Volunteered at a mosque during Ramadan to give out free food to poor people. (30 days for an hour daily)

Rec Letters

I will definitely get stellar recommendations as I’m close to almost all of my teachers. I’m family friends with some of them aswell.

Other

Applied for Financial Aid?: Yes, can only afford 40k but i will also get a job to pay for personal expenses

Intended Major: Computer Science or Environmental Engineering but I am planning on going to law school afterwards.

Country (if international applicant): Saudi Arabia

School Type: Private and very competitive

Ethnicity: Pakistan

Gender: Male

Income Bracket: 90k

Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): None that i know of

2

Everything looks solid but ur SAT score is low for these schools. Get it up to a 1550+ and ur set for life.

3

Colombia and Brown are extraordinarily different schools. Do you want a super rigorous core or not?

Also–don’t call a club “gay” anywhere on your application.

4
  1. As an international student, you have ~10-15% chance of whatever the admission rate is for domestic students. In other words: your odds are teeny tiny. Your stats put you more or less in range, but…

2)…your list of stuff you have done is all over the place: you need a coherent story of you. All of these places will want to see some sustained interest, evidence of growth & development, etc…

  1. If your family income is 90K and you can pay 40K, there must be other money somewhere. The schools don’t care at all what you think you can pay: they add up all of your family’s resources and tell you how much they expect you to pay.

  2. what @awesomepolyglot said

5

ditto ^. don’t even think about doing that.

6

I’ll repeat what others have said - If you want to succeed at any of those school, or even be accepted, you better get rid of homophobic attitudes right now. Also, I sincerely hope that your screen name does not mean what I think it means.

If you want to get into a top school, and your parents don’t have about $3 million dollars to donate, you’d better start acting a bit more mature.

Your stats are solid, though 3.7 UW isn’t that great, but since you’re in the top 10% it would be OK, as long as your school is known, by the admissions people, to be rigorous. That being said, UChicago (8%), Brown (9%), Columbia (7%), and Pomona (9%) (acceptance rates in parentheses) are all reaches for just about anybody, especially for international students, and even more so for those who are not full pay. Northeastern (29%) is somewhat better, but still a reach for international students (only about 9% of international applicants were accepted in 2016). So I would suggest that you go and start doing some research into which schools have these majors, AND that you have a realistic chance of acceptance. That’s not to say you shouldn’t apply - but assume that you won’t be accepted to any school which would be considered a reach, which is every school on this list.

To be honest, CS is one of the most popular, and therefore most competitive, majors in the USA, so even lower ranked colleges have relatively low acceptance rates in CS. So, if you really want to look at doing your undergrad in CS in the USA, you should check out colleges and programs with higher acceptance rates, especially for foreign students who are not full pay.

7

MWolf just for accuracy sake, Browns acceptance rate last year was 7.2%. Total applications are up 9% while ED applications were up 21% for 2023 so acceptance rate likely to gravitate towards 6.5%.

http://www.browndailyherald.com/2018/03/28/university-admits-record-low-7-2-percent-applicants-class-2022/

https://news.brown.edu/articles/2018/12/admit

http://www.browndailyherald.com/2019/01/22/goldstein-applicant-pool-profile/

Otherwise @Collegemom3717 is spot on in her comments and advice.

8

If you mean in the US while you are studying, be aware that the types of jobs you can undertake on a student visa in the US are extremely limited. You can’t rely on this to help fund yourself, and you’ll have to show proof of sufficient finances before your visa will be granted.

And will echo others to lose the discriminatory attitude.

9

Do you mean Northwestern? Northeastern is an outlier in that list of 5 schools.

10

Annnnd, continuing that accuracy thing, last year’s rate for Columbia was 5.6%, Chicago was 7.3%, Pomona was 7.6%, and Northeastern was 19%, which means the observation @MWolf made about them being reaches for just about everyone is even more accurate.