Chance Me (I really need the help) - Tufts, Emory, Wesleyan, etc...

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Currently a (stressed out) senior. My family are all Americans, but they live in Hong Kong whilst I go to a boarding school in New England. I’ve been lurking on these forums for a while, but I’ve finally made an account and created my first post.

Colleges interested in, no particular order: Wesleyan, Tufts, Emory, Dickinson, Boston College, William and Mary, Tulane Pomona, University of Maryland, University of Virginia, Georgetown, Lewis and Clark.

Objective:
Sat: 1420 (780 on English/Critical Reading and 640 on Maths)
SAT II: (US History: 760) (Literature: 740) (French: 610)
Weighted GPA: (N/A)
Unweighted GPA: 3.9
Rank: (N/A)
AP: (Eng. Lang, 5) (US History, 5) (Euro History, 5) (French, 4)
Senior Year Course Load: AP Econ, AP Bio, AP US Gov, AP Eng. Lit, International Relations, Constitutional Law, Theology.
Junior Year Course Load: Honours Pre-calc. Honours English 3, Honours Bio, AP French, APUSH, Health.
Awards: Grand Concours (French) - Gold, Varsity Letter Tennis, Best Delegate at UConnModel UN, High Honours for the duration of my time at school (so far).
Course Rigour: Most Rigorous

Subjective:
Extracurriculars:
• School Newspaper - An editor (not editor-in-chief)
• School Literary and Art Magazine - Print Editor
• Model UN - Vice-President
• Peer Tutor - I am part of our school’s peer tutor programme, in which I tutor students in History and English.
• Philosophy Club
• Gay-Straight Alliance
• Improv Club

Summer Internships/Jobs:

• Visa Assistant - Over the summer I processed visas and helped out with miscellaneous office work at a US Embassy in a (to remain unnamed) foreign country. I would print up to four hundred visas a day and paste them into passports.

• After my Sophomore year, I worked in the mailroom of the aforementioned Embassy – sorting boxes and cataloging shipments.

Essays: Haven’t written them yet but expect them to be good (fingers crossed) 9/10?
Teacher Recommendations: I think they like me a lot: 9/10?
Counsellor Rec: Got to know my counsellor very well: 10/10?

Other:
State/Residence: Hong Kong
School Type: Boarding
Ethnicity: White
Gender: Male
Income Bracket: $100k
Assets/Property: $1.5m
Hooks: N/A

2

you go to a New England boarding school talk to your GC they should have the best advice

3

Your assets are going to make need based aid unlikely. Are you okay with being full pay for all of the schools on your list or have you run the NPCs? Do you know what your budget is?

Can you point to anything on your list that you would consider a safety? I see reasonable reaches and matches (I think), but I do not see a safety. It is possible that I might have missed one somewhere on the list.

It is not obvious to me what the common theme is in the schools that you are applying to. I see a bunch of good schools, but I am having trouble figuring out what you want in a school.

4

I don’t think that the US State Department would have a high school student work at a job processing visas and handling packages involving diplomatic mail.

All potential employees of the diplomatic service need to pass a test, have an interview, and pass a background check. So that EC sounds highly suspicious.

If your family are Americans and you go to a boarding school in New England, why are you using British English spelling/terminology (ie Honours, whilst) and referring to Mathematics as ‘Maths?’ Something doesn’t add up here.

5

I did some digging around and the US Embassy in Bangkok does offer the program that OP mentions. Although it does sound odd that Department of State is having high school kids handle visas and potentially confidential diplomatic information.

The SAT is still low for a lot of schools. Especially for Georgetown, Pomona, and Tufts. And Lewis and Clark seems to be an outlier on the list of schools.

6

How about this for an explanation of summer job, British english: his parent(s) are US diplomats or other government employees who lived abroad a lot. He has gone to English schools in foreign countries, some or all of them British. He is unusual but I don’t see reason to suspect something dishonest.