I know USC is a reach for anyone, but I am just looking for an idea of if I stand as good a chance as most applicants…
Info:
White middle-class female from the midwest :
Income bracket: ~100k
Private parochial school of about 600 students. College prep, rigorous course load, nationally recognized.
GPA: W 4.23 (My school only reports our GPAs at the end of every semester, and they don’t report UW. For last semester alone it was 4.56. My freshman and sophomore years there were only a few honors courses offered. Hopefully I can raise my cum. to ~4.3 by the end of first semester next year…)
Rank: My school doesn’t report, but I’d say top 10%
ACT: 36 (36 English, 35 math, 36 science, 35 reading)
APs: my school doesn’t offer any until senior year… but I will be taking AP Calc, AP World History, AP Chem, AP Lit – so basically all of the courses offered
Courseload: the most rigorous offered all 4 years (all of my classes this year are honors-level besides religion, the same will be the case next year). This may be a big disadvantage because while my school is a college-prep school, even the ‘most rigorous’ courseload doesn’t look very rigorous on paper compared to a lot of other schools since there are no APs
Grades: Basically I’ve gotten As throughout the past three years with a few B+s here and there.
Senior year courseload: AP Calc, AP World History, AP Chem, AP Lit, H Innocence and Evil, H Humanities, H Politics
ECs:
-played piano 11 years, part of my school orchestra 9, 10, 11, 12
-recipient of a (semi-)selective government scholarship (NSLI-Y) to study Korean in Korea this summer for six weeks
-class president 11, 12
-school service club 11, 12
-school quiz bowl team 9, 10, 11, 12
-Volunteer at an art studio for artists with disabilities, I hope to have about 150 hours total logged by this time next year. also founded the service site for this place at my school if that matters.
-Chinese club president 11, 12 (didn’t exist before then)
-winner of my school’s essay contest all 3 years (not that big of a deal b/c not many people enter but it could look good on paper)
-young democrats club 11, 12
-school literary magazine club 9
Job: don’t currently have one, but worked at a local pizza place for about 6 months between sophomore and junior year, during the summer I worked ~25 hours/week. I’d like to get a job again senior year but I’ll be out of town almost all summer so it’ll have to wait until fall.
Recs: Haven’t been written yet obviously, but I would expect them to be pretty strong as both of the teachers I plan to ask know me well/like me