What would you consider to be my chances of admission to MIT, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, or Georgia Tech? I am also applying to safeties, but is applying to these schools realistic?
I live in Costa Rica and was born here, but am also a US citizen. (I believe I still am viewed as an under-represented minority)
GPA:
3.65 UW
4.15 W
Really big upward trend senior year (took all AP classes - Stats, Calc AB, Chemistry, Micro/Macro Economics - except one) and achieved A+ in all these during first semester
Also upward trend started in second semester of junior year (all As except one C)
I have 3 C’s on my transcript post freshmen year (2 semesters of APUSH in 11th and 1 semester of English in 10th) — THIS is the scariest part of my application for me, however, the subjects are unrelated to my major
1480 SAT (790M, 690R+W) - retaking in December and expecting super score to at least be above 1500 because R+W has improved on practice tests
800 Physics SAT 2
790 Math II SAT 2
Extracurriculars:
Owner and developer of Minecraft server (hired staff members, managed team, entrepreneurial) for two years
Lead developer for MeepCraft.com (ex-biggest Minecraft server) for two years
Taught a class in 9th grade to elementary students on how to set up Minecraft servers
Built two amazing computers (water-cooled etc)
Self-learned/worked with Java, Swift, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and MySQL.
Published app on App Store
Formulated business ideas and made an extensive app prototype for my future company (can’t talk too much about that here, but its explained on my application)
Physics Distinguished Scholar Award - award granted by the teacher to one student who he considers to have a strong combination of passion, enthusiasm, and academic strength for the subject
MUN (won two honorable mention awards in conferences and attended an international conference in New York - NHSMUN)
AP Scholar Award
Developing an app and website to connect community service groups with volunteers in my country
Summer engineering program at UC Berkeley (with NSLC)
Swimming (non-competitive) through most of high school
Truthfully, I don’t have any feedback but I’m interested in what people say about this because I too have 3 C’s (apush sucks lol) and I’m looking into the same schools
The C’s would be bad for any Ivy League school or competitive Top-25 school. Most of the applicants would have gotten A’s in APUSH or English regardless of having an interest in STEM or not.
If you are thinking CS at CMU, be aware that the acceptance rate is on a par with Ivies. I would take out the massive reach schools off your list.
I would recommend UIUC (could be a reach though as well), UM-Twin Cities, Purdue, and UW Madison as more realistic options for Engineering.
I believe you do count as an URM/Hispanic since you live in Costa Rica. Son’s school had someone born in Costa Rica who got into Yale this year with a not so rigorous classload and lackluster SAT-it was the talk of the school since this person did not look Hispanic at all and didn’t identify with Hispanic culture (want to say this person was of German and Russian Jewish origin). You have the way more rigorous class schedule and better test scores IIRC. If you could identify with Hispanic culture that could be an advantage for you.
MIT: Potential acceptance or maybe even waitlisted due to the mass amount of engineering activities you have donE. However, there is a lot of people just like you so remember that. Also, your SAT score will decrease your chances.
Cornell: I think so. Just increase your SAT score.
UCLA: Depends. You have to be great at swimming. More competitive.
All the other, you can do well at but increase your SAT score.
What is your budget? You’re looking at $60K per year for the UC’s
(Since you are not a resident of California, you have to pay full fees.)
The California publics cannot admit on the basis of race, so your URM status does not matter.
Your unweighted GPA is not competitive for the UC’s.
USC, a private school, will cost about $72K per year. Since you are not National Merit, your chances at the best scholarships will be very limited.
Per my reply to your other post with the same subject, try to cast a wider net with fewer reaches. Some good out of state public schools with good engineering programs to consider would be Purdue, Minnesota-Twin Cities, and Wisconsin-Madison.
UIUC and U-Dub might merit consideration, but the GPA/SAT is slightly low for those schools.
Take out CMU-that is a reach. High reach if for CompSci since the acceptance rate is on a par with Ivy League.
MIT is going to be a likely reject based on GPA/SAT. Lot of applicants with 4.5 weighted/1600 SAT and national/international level ECs will get outright rejected.
I noticed that I double posted accidentally, sorry about that. If a moderator could merge my posts, that would be great.
My budget is not a concern. I am not seeking financial aid and am able to pay full out-of-state tuition for any college I am accepted to.
Also, I believe it is important to note that I underwent a family circumstance (parents were divorcing and I had to testify against my own mother, etc) in the end of 10th/beginning of 11th grade and I feel as if this did have an impact on my grades - maybe I would have had more motivation for APUSH. This circumstance matches with the time period during which I received the three C’s. I am going to discuss this on my application (not blaming the C’s on it either, but talking about how it affected me and how I managed to overcome it and achieve stellar grades in senior year thus far)
It is also important to note that I am the second kid in my grade to take most AP exams and had one of the most rigorous schedules of my grade (specially senior year). The number of AP classes is limited in my school compared to most US schools, but I still took most Honors and APs when possible. Also, My senior year GPA alone is 4.9 weighted.
I also have really good letters of recommendation on the line.
One of my recommendation letters is from my current Calculus teacher, and I suspect he included that I had self-studied precalculus just to be able to reach Calculus AB by senior year (normally people graduate with Precalc in my school). He probably viewed this as me challenging myself as people barely ever achieve to skip a grade of higher level math in my school.
The teacher who taught me Honors Physics (required prerequisite for AP), AP Physics, and AP Economics literally told me (really unusual of him, he is very professional and reserved) that my recommendation letter was one of the best he had written. He also included a really nice line that he told me about in my recommendation letter: how I had developed an app to predict flight time, range, and max height of a projectile without even being asked to do so.
I constantly relate my acquired knowledge to real-world situations and have a great love for learning when things are STEM related. This is expressed in my essays and supplements. My main essay is about how programming has influenced me as a person, and my supplements are pretty good (showcase many attributes that these schools seek).
If your counselor could mention the C’s and the family situation in a supplemental letter, that could be considered a mitigating circumstance. Try to be careful in how you frame the circumstances so it doesn’t sound like an excuse.
The URM/Hispanic part is really going to be a landmine of sorts. Refer to my other post about the kid from my son’s school who got into Yale. That was pretty blatant since it was pretty well known in my son’s school that the kid did not identify as Hispanic and used Costa Rican birth as a loophole.
I’m not sure how Hispanic is officially defined and it’s a touchy subject since Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru have significant groups of people who are culturally Hispanic but have ethnic origins that are not from the Iberian Peninsula (Germany, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Syria).
If Spanish is the primary language you speak at home and you identify with Hispanic culture, you can identify yourself as such.
I do identify with Hispanic culture, however, I don’t really speak about it in most of my supplements (only a few like MIT ask about it). Is writing about it more necessary, or is just checking it off under ethnicities and having both English AND Spanish being first languages enough?
Putting down first languages as English/Spanish should be OK without any further explanation. That is unless your given name is not obviously Hispanic.
“I constantly relate my acquired knowledge to real-world situations and have a great love for learning when things are STEM related. This is expressed in my essays and supplements. My main essay is about how programming has influenced me as a person, and my supplements are pretty good (showcase many attributes that these schools seek).”
There is a strong interdisciplinary structure to one of the key projects (the IQP) which enables the STEM directed student body to relate to practical problems surrounding the successful application of your ideas (MQP). This is an important aspect of “real world” problem solutions, but it is experienced, not lectured in a classroom. WPI has received many awards for this program. :bz
The rest are reaches. USC may be a bit less so, since it likes test scores (versus UCs that like GPA more).
UIUC and Washington are reaches for CS or engineering, though they may be more likely to admit you to the school but not your major. But then getting into CS or engineering enrolling us difficult.