Chance me (John Hopkins, Cornell, and other reaches)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

This post is just for my reaches

Gender: Female
Ethnicity: Asian
School: Public

Major: Biochemistry, Biology

Sat: 1540

Sat II:
800 chem
770 math 2
780 physics
770 literature

Honors/AP Classes:
H English - 11
H Bio- 11
H History- 11
Apah- 11

GPA:

W GPA: 3.7 (upwards trend…but yea its bad. screwed up freshman year so no honors freshman year and sophomore year )
UW GPA: 3.56

Senior Year Classes:
AP Bio
AP Environmental
AP Eng 12
Calc H
Stat H
Ap psych

ECs:
-Pre-med (9-12) president- under my leadership we raised enough money to restore the vision of 5 people in underdeveloped countries
-Founder and president of science research club(11-12) - we have a website, student conduct their own experiments and write professional research papers
-Bioleague
-Worked with a charity to raise money to pay for 10 children’s education for a year in Africa (they organization decides which country) (the cost per child was 120; i tried my best, I know the number is small)
-Internship with surgeon
-Tutoring a child with dyslexia in english

Explanation for ec’s:

Pre med: I am extremely passionate about medicine and specifically neurosurgery for these reasons: I have always been good at math and science and am ambitious to learn about them daily, I am passionate about helping people and making people happy not only with their lives but also content with themselves, I enjoy and get a natural high off of a faced paced, hectic life. In freshman year I joined pre med to learn about the fields and discover what I want to do, but it turns out the president only kept the position for college (he still got into harvard, despite being known as a cheater haha). In fact, he got so lazy during his senior year, he decided not to run the club in my sophomore year. I re-opened the club once I was a junior and promised myself I would not do that, now we have a meeting every other week on the following topics: medical topics (diseases, medical history, etc.), innovation and invention, MCAT prep, and serving mankind. I realize that the people whose eye sight was restored is a low number, but this junior year was my first year running this club and I am proud of the start I had; it annoys me that the number isn’t as big as a 50 or 100 (so far), but thinking that 5 people have a better life because of my school and peers makes me more determined and passionate than I was before.

Research: Following into medicine, my other passion is research. It is crazy to think how far we have come from the last century. It takes true dedication and ambition to put every ounce of knowledge, time, and work into a research paper for the soul purpose of driving mankind forward. My research club has 8 very skilled, ambitious, and dedicated researchers who have completed articles from sleep’s effect on memory to calculating what an average person can do to slow down climate change. Now I know that as 14-17 year olds we did not cure cancer or invent a biotechnology to un-paralyze people, but what this club has done is prepared students to build and find a passion for something- have direction in life, make a difference at my school (issues such as dirty water fountains were resolved and scientific reasoning was given to get vaccinated during flu season, changing over 100 people’s view on vaccines~survey we did), and to be the leaders of tomorrow. I can humbly say that everyone who made it into my club has walked away a better pre-med, a better engineer, a better researcher, and most of all a better person.

Providing children with education: One of my biggest goals in life is to open up a stem focused school in undeserved countries. So originally I fundraised for that goal; at the end of the year I was disappointing that I barely raised 1,500$. My cousin introduced me to this charity (not saying name to protect my privacy) that she has worked with before, and I learned that 1,200 $ can provide 12 children in africa free education for a whole year. Now this was not my original goal, but it gave me a good start. The rest of the 300 went to feeding a homeless family in america for 1 month. Now, in the future perhaps during college, I will launch my own business / fundraiser to reach my goal of making a school.

Volunteer:
School store

Summers:
-Summer school to move up a level in math

  • Pre college research

My reaches:

John Hopkins University
New York Univeristy
Cornell University
Tufts University
Columbia University
Boston College
Harvard University
Princeton University
University of Pennsylvania
Lehigh University
MIT

now I won’t apply to all, only the ones I have a good chance at, given the circumstances of my low-rigour classes due to my flunk in freshman year (my school has hella strict pre-reqs). I’m hoping you guys can help me with that, and please be honest I am open to criticism.

2

If your junior and senior year grades are amazing, you could get into schools like NYU, BC, and Lehigh. Your standardized test scores show that you are qualified academically. The others you would need outstanding essays and letters of recommendations

3

@doorrealthe any specific tips for jhu?

4

Standardized test scores are good and ECs seem to correlate with the major. GPA and demographics are the big killers though. Lots of Asian applicants will have a weighted GPA north of 4.5 with the same standardized test scores.

Class rigor seems weak-does your school not offer AP Calculus? Also a potential premed should have taken Physics along with Biology/Chemistry as well. Also I didn’t see AP scores listed.

5

@Hamurtle my school does have a lot of ap classes, it just my school is heavily number based. if the pre req says you need a 93% to get in but you have a 92.1% they say no

6

@hamurtle Im still a junior so I havent taken my ap tests, but at the end of the year I will convince the supervisors that I am prepared for ap chemistry, all the physics teachers at my school are lazy and I don’t want to mess with that.

7

I thought that you were a senior-make sure that you work on the GPA. Also don’t take Honors Calculus if at all possible. At a minimum for a STEM major you should be taking AB Calculus.

Are the SAT scores actual results?

8

@Hamurtle yes

9

@Hamurtle the thing is, in my school when we make our next year schedule we get a predicted gpa for the end of the current year. the gpa info i gave will be my gpa at the end of junior year. i can not improve it before college apps

10

For JHU, I would not apply to their more selective majors, such as biomedical engineering. I’d apply to a less selective major that you are still partially interested in and then potentially switch majors if you are accepted and end up at JHU

11

In addition to what others have said about your GPA, I’d really try to push your research efforts further. Do you think you could find an internship at a lab somewhere over the summer, or maybe even publish a paper with a professor in a field you’re interested in?

12

@doorrealthe for Johns Hopkins, students are accepted to the university as a whole, not so specific majors or even schools, so the major you apply to doesn’t matter. Biomedical engineering is the only major that you have to apply directly into. However, students rejected from BME are still considered for admission to the university.

13

@helpfulalum about the internship, yes. I am currently seeking internships but idk how to go about emailing the surgeons. The research part, i can try but no gaurentee. Are my chances low enough that I should just not apply and wait for medical school?

14

@bbixl145, in post #5 you say that you are a junior, but in your 12/19/2017 ‘Chance’ thread (http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/2042062-chance-me.html#latest) you describe your application essays, rate your recs and refer to having taken (past tense) one AP as a junior. So are you a junior or a senior?

fwiw, JHU emphasizes rigor & GPA > test scores (you can see that on College Data, and anecdotally I have seen it in practice).

15

@collegemom3717 I am a junior and my gpa is a prediction for the end of junior year. I gave essay ideas because I already worked on some essays with my teacher.

16

I transferred into Hopkins a long time ago. My high school record was messed up, and all I really had was SAT IIs not as good as OP’s. I think they are very interested in SAT IIs and AP exams, as well as rigor and GPA, but not so interested in SATs and ECs. The school is intense and they want strong academics. It isn’t like when I went there, but I still wouldn’t recommend it for premed.

OP has an excellent chance at Tufts, NYU, Boston College, and Lehigh, I don’t think you have much chance at top Ivies or MIT., but you probably will get into a top 30 school, almost certainly a top 50 school.

17

@sattut when transfering, do colleges see your high school record as well as your current college record or just the current college record?

18

if you transfer during first year (for second year) your HS record carries a lot of weight. If you transfer during 2nd (for 3rd year) it carries little or no weight (depending on the university).

19

They accepted me for mid year sophomore year after 1 1/3 years of college, which was sort of weird. My high school record was badly messed up, but it was fairly obvious what happened.

If you are premed, I wouldn’t recommend transferring up. Med schools want GPA and MCATs. You should do well on MCATs. They may not adjust enough for the difficulty of the school. So it isn’t totally bad if you don’t get in somewhere that good, as long as you stay motivated and show the stats they want.

20

Also, it is much harder to transfer into some schools, particularly Hopkins, if you are premed.