Hi Everyone! I am a rising senior at an international school in Hong Kong hoping to attend a US institution to continue my education. My grades and test scores aren’t the greatest, and I know it’s astronomically more difficult for international students to gain admissions to top schools, but I was wondering if I had a shot. Below are my stats:
Intended Major: Engineering (most likely undecided)
Objective:
SAT I (superscore): didn’t take
ACT (breakdown): C: 34, E: 34 M: 35 R: 31 S: 35
ACT superscore (breakdown): C: 34, E:35 M: 35 R: 31 S: 35
SAT II (subject, score): Math II - 800; Physics - 770.
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): IB Program so no GPA, but first junior year transcript was 37/42 and 39/42 for sem 1 and sem 2 respectively
Weighted GPA: N/A
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): School doesn’t rank
AP (place score in parentheses): None
IB (place score in parentheses): Predicted: 42/45; Chemistry HL: 7, Physics HL: 7, Math HL: 7,
Chinese Language B HL: 6, English Lit SL: 6, Economics SL: 6.
Senior Year Course Load: IB Program with folowing subjects: Chemistry HL, Physics HL, Math HL, Chinese Language B HL, English Lit SL, Economics SL
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel, etc.): (not sure what counts as major but I’ll try) AMC 12 Distinguished Honor Roll (126/150), AIME Qualifier (7/15; literally 9 points from USAMO qualification 
), Hong Kong U18 National Team Ice Hockey, South East Asian Mathematics Competition 10th Place, Bronze Medal at IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships Div III with Hong Kong
Common Awards (AP Scholar, honor roll, NM things, etc.): Head’s Commendation (basically the equivalent of honor roll), voted Best Forward and Most Sportsmanlike in local U18 Hockey league, Drafted into HK’s semi-professional ice hockey league
Subjective:
Extracurriculars (name, grade levels, leadership, description):
-I have been apart of several math competitions since 8th grade, participating in AMC, AIME, and other local competitions hosted by other schools, as well as competitions in South east Asia (not olympiads sadly)
-I am a member of my school’s jazz band for the bast 3 years, and I have been first chair as well as the “lead” trumpet for all three years
- Varsity Tennis since 10th grade, have helped school placed as well as second in the local high school league
- Varsity Volleyball since 11th grade (co-captain), (won’t really mention this on my application as it doesn’t seem significant enough)
- Played tennis for a private club called the Aberdeen Marina Club since 7th grade; Last year (11th grade) I became captain of the team as well as the club’s #1 ranked player
-Been playing hockey since I was 7, and have participated in several U12, U14, U16, U18 leagues in Hong Kong. Most Notably, in 10th grade I was captain of my U18 league team, which placed second, and I won League Best Forward that year. In 11th grade, I captained my team again in the same league, winning League Most Sportsmanlike Player this year as well.
-I have participated in several international ‘AAA’ hockey tournaments including Wayne Gretzky International Ice hockey Tournament (10th grade), Frozen Cup ‘AAA’ Invitational (9th grade), and the North American Prospect Showcases in Boston and Buffalo playing in the U16 ‘AAA’ division (10th grade)
- This year I was one of 5 U18 players drafted into Hong Kong’s semi-professional hockey league called CIHL
-Since the end of 10th grade, I have participated in an online research project called AoPS CrowdMath MIT PRIMES, where I collaborated with other online users and mentors to produce a research paper on bounds on minimally non-linear 0-1 matrices. We are currently researching into other areas of graph theory, and combinatorics.
-I participated in an online course aimed at improving performance on competition math called Worldwide Online Olympiad Training (WOOT) all throughout high school - Member of my school’s math team which is comprised of 3 students that represent my school at local math competitions
-Founded a training program this year for younger high school students in order to prepare them for math competitions including the South East Asian Math Competition and the AMC contest series
Job/Work Experience: None
Volunteer/Community Service:
-I worked at a local primary school called ELCHK, tutoring kids English this year. We helped them with basic sentence construction, vocabulary, and with interviewing skills for middle school
- Volunteer for the Second Strings Project, a volunteer project aimed at teaching young children music skills, since 10th grade. I taught children how to play the ukulele, and eventually taught them songs which they performed in front of their parents
-I spent a week in Sri Lanka as part of a Habitat for Humanity program helping build houses for Sri Lankan residents whose houses were destroyed in the civil war.
-I fund raised money to combat human trafficking as part of the 24 hour race, which required us to take turns running laps around a 3km course for 24 hours.
Summer Experience: 9th grade summer: took a course in discrete math as apart of the JHU CTY program. 10th grade summer: went to the AwesomeMath summer program, taking level 2 geometry and number theory.
Writing (Subject, 1-10 rating, details):
Essays:
Not going to talk much about these. I hope they will be ok
Other
U.S. State/Territory or Country: Hong Kong
School Type: International
Ethnicity: Asian Chinese
Gender: Male
Income Bracket Range: dunno
Hooks (URM, first generation, recruited athlete, development): Sadly none
Colleges I’m most likely applying to:
MIT
Stanford
Penn
Cornell
Harvey Mudd
University of Michigan
CMU
UC Berkeley (not EECS)
UCLA
UC Irvine
University of Toronto
McGill University
I know I’m applying to almost all reach schools, but I would really appreciate it if you guys could tell me realistically what my chances are getting into those schools.
Any comments or advice on how to improve my application are welcome!
Thanks in Advance Guys!