Hi, I’m an international student applying to Harvard RD 2020. Can you chance me?
Languages: Speak French, English and Arabic very fluently
SAT I (breakdown): 2240 - 780M/770CR/690W
ACT (breakdown): no taken
SAT II (place score in parentheses): 800 Math 2/ 800 Physics / 800 French
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4.0
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): Top 5%
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): 1st Place at 2 National Science Fairs, Winner at Expo-Science Asia 2014, 1st Place at Seoul International Invention Fair 2014, 1st Place Math Olympiads in Middle East, I own a patent for my own invention
Extracurriculars: Piano (9 years), Guitar (6 years), Scouts Leader(6 years), Computer Programming, Robot designing, Filmmaking(3 years)
Job/Work Experience: Paid Job as iOS Software Developer for 1 month, Internship representing my country at the United Nations in New York (1 month)
Volunteer/Community Service: I do community service throughout the year through scouting
Summer Activities: Camping (a lot), Traveling, Composing music, playing piano
Essays: CommonApp essay talked about my experience in robotics, how I invented my own machine… 9/10 - Supplemental essay talked about the leadership, social and playful skills I gained through scouting
Teacher Recommendations: 8-9/10 Physics, 8-9/10 English (both teachers love me)
Counselor Recommendation: 10/10 - knows me really well and knows what to write
Additional Recommendation: One from my tech professor 8/10, One from my employer 10/10 (he was harvard educated too)
Applied for Financial Aid? Yes
Projected Concentration: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Country: Lebanon
School Type: Religious, but most prestigious in my country and most Harvard students from Lebanon come from it
Ethnicity: White/Arab
Gender: Male
Income Bracket: 100,000-150,000
The most anyone can say from your post is that your test scores and GPA make you a competitive applicant. However, as Harvard receives more applications from competitive applicants than they have room for in their freshman class, Admissions uses a student’s teacher recommendations, guidance counselor’s Secondary School Report (SSR), interview report and essays to select one high performing applicant over another. As you haven’t posted that information (nor should you), no one can say what kind of chance you have.
That said, your chances as an international applicant are not the same as a US applicant. Please go to: http://www.hio.harvard.edu/statistics and from the pull-down menus select STUDENTS, HARVARD COLLEGE (the undergraduate school) and YOUR COUNTRY, and then elect GO. The number that appears is the total number of freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors enrolled at Harvard from your country. Divide that number by four to get an idea of how many students Harvard admits on average from your country per year. Harvard doesn’t publish the number of applicants from each country, so you have to ask your guidance counselor for their estimate and then gauge your overall chances. As an international student applying in the RD round, I would think your chances are less than the overall chances for RD applications, which last year was 3.23%.
Thanks for the help @gibby . When you said 3.23% were you referring to the total number of international applicants admitted from Lebanon or from the world?