Hey guys! I’m a senior that has finished college apps and now awaits the long journey towards decision releases. Just wanted to know what you CC’ers think about my chances to USC (specifically for merit scholarships since I applied before the Dec. 1 deadline)
GPA (out of 4.0): 3.96 UW, don’t know my weighted but I’m top 10% at my school (school doesn’t go below decile)
SAT: 2310 first sitting (800 M, 800 W, 710 CR), 2330 second sitting (800 M, 750 W, 780 CR), superscored 2380 (800 M, 800 W, 780 CR)
SAT II’s: 800 USH, 760 Math II, 730 Bio M
PSAT: 218 (weak, but the SAT more than makes up for it)
AP scores: 5’s in APUSH, AP Calc. BC, and AP CS. Under my senior year courses, I have a note explaining why I can’t take many APs)
Course History:
Freshman Year
Biology (A/A)
French 2 (A/A)
Alg. 2 Trig (A/B)
PE 9 (A/A)
Lit Writ (A/A)
Band (A/A)
Sophomore Year
Chemistry Honors (A/A)
French 3 (A/A)
Pre-Calc Honors (A/A)
PE 10 - 12 (A/A)
World CORE Lit (A/A)
World CORE History (A/A)
Teachers Assistant (A/-)
Junior Year
Physics Honors (A/A)
French 4 Honors (B+/A)
AP Calc. BC (A/A)
American Lit Writ (A/A)
AP USH (A/A)
AP Computer Science (A/A)
Senior Year (my school only offers a limited number of APs, and only to juniors and above, I have taken the most AP and honors classes compared to the other high performers at my school: this info will be included in a school profile that gets sent with my transcript to each school)
AP Gov. (A)
AP Econ (second semester, in progress currently)
AP Stats (A during 1st semester)
AP Biology (A during 1st semester)
AP French (A during first semester)
Voices of Modern Culture (A during 1st semester)
Teacher/Counselor Recommendations:
Am. Lit Teacher (she loved me, assuming great)
AP Calc BC teacher (FBLA advisor, also pretty fond of me, assuming great)
AP Comp Sci teacher (assuming great because I excelled despite not having taken JAVA and was constantly a high performer, as well as the fact that I went to many hackathons. Even though I didn’t place, he was impressed that I even attended and put effort into something I didn’t know about (programming) in the first place)
Counselor: At first, I thought it’d be crap. When he started talking to me, however, I could see that he truly believed that I would be extremely succesful. Won’t say its as great as my teacher recs, but maybe a 9/10)
Awards: FBLA 1st place in CA, FBLA 13th/14th nationals, DECA 7th in Silicon Valley, DECA 11th in states, AP Scholar, Top 15% in the National French Exam, National Merit Commended
Extracurriculars:
- Intern at Stanford Dept. of Radiology as a Bioinformatics Intern, helped to publish a research paper under a professor detailing the correlation between brain tumor growth and the failure of various tumor suppressor genes / proto-onco to onco conversion
- Intern at the Cardiothoracic Surgical Internship at Stanford, learned about surgical procedures, replaced valves of the heart and abdominal cavity, even designed a prototype of a medical device to “solve” the ASD (which is, for all practical purposes, a hole in the heart)
- Stanford Hospital Biomedical Engineering Mentee, was mentored under a couple of biomedical engineers on the processes that go into making medical devices and the research that goes behind it, as well as specifically how dialysis machines and blood thinner inputs work
- Founding Officer, PR, and Exec. Director of a Science National Honor Society chapter at my school, worked to create events for the club to attract research-minded students to compete and refine their ideas for Google Science Fair, Intel fairs, and local Synopsis fairs
- FBLA member, theorized a business plan and wrote about it in the state and national competition. From this, I created an educational nonprofit that helps to improve some of the deficiencies in the modern online education system, tailored towards high schoolers
- DECA member and entrepreneurship committee officer, worked to refine the ideas of newer members in entrepreneurship events specifically, and competed in silicon valley and california entrepreneurship events myself. The nonprofit education idea stemmed from a business plan I wrote here as well
- Event Organizer for French Honor Society, as well as intradistrict event organizing officer. I help to organize fun events for the FHS members in our school and within the entire district!
Volunteering (not a real strong suit)
~150 hours at a local hospital working with seniors and elders, mainly escort positions but in a friendly environment
~100 hours at various FHS events before I became an officer
~50 hours at a local farm
Essays:
Common App Essay was about an autoimmune disorder that my dad had, and that I have, and how it influenced me to pursue medicine and specifically BME as an outlet of relieving suffering. Was filed under Prompt #1 (tell us something that makes your application complete, 9/10 rating)
USC essays were probably the best of all the college app essays I wrote (especially the Viterbi-only prompts and the first of the 2 general USC prompts)
Interviews:
USC interview was awesome (spent an hour with Mr. Ledesma, the director of Viterbi, he was so frickin cool)
Hooks / Strengths (?): solid research, high scores, high GPA, consistent achiever, decent EC’s with research paper, published, and essays also explore other dimensions of myself (such as my heavily invested entrepreneurial “career”)
Weaknesses (?): Lowish SAT II’s for what I want to do, but I feel like the rest of my app makes up for it (could someone confirm / deny / explain)
School Type: Public (2000 students +)
Class Size: 508
Decile: Top 10%, school doesn’t subdivide ranks any further than deciles)
State: CA
Gender: M
Ethnicity: Indian
Income Bracket: $250k +
Intended major(s): Biomedical Engineering
I’m new to the whole CC thing (was introduced by a friend who randomly showed me the USC CC a couple days ago), and I will chance back (etiquette!). Thanks for the USC + scholarship chances!