Chance me: My dream school: Harvard

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

Of course, to start off, I know the letter from Harvard will likely be a rejection (or deferred for my SCEA application). But still, I would love to know your opinion on my chances to my dream school: Harvard.

Grade: Rising Senior
SAT I: 1570
ACT: N/A
SAT II: 800 Bio E/M 800 Math II
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4.00
Rank (percentile rank if rank is unavailable): <15 (school doesn’t give exact rank until senior year)
AP: Seven 5s, three 4s (Taking 6 APs and Calc 3 my senior year)
Major Awards: Won many local and international piano competitions, competed in the top two most prestigious young adult piano competitions (basically top 30 in world): (question, how much will this help? I read in Allen Cheng’s prepscholar blog that you basically need a spike to get into HYPS: does this count?)

Subjective:
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parentheses): Created a website to help students with coursework, ranked top 2mill by Alexa.com, Co-founder/Co-Pres of three clubs, member of others
Job/Work Experience: Job this summer at grocery store
Community Service: Volunteering at hospitals, volunteer at lab, volunteering for NHS
Essays: My teacher said in her opinion it was top tier, I’m still editing to improve
Teacher Recommendations: Both teachers loved me
Counselor Rec: Probably fine

Other
School Type: Public
Ethnicity: Asian
Gender: Male
Income Bracket: <125,000

Please let me know!!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!

P.S. Jesus, I don’t know how I slept at 11pm every night…

2
  1. Disregard much of what you read. There is no one formula.
  2. Write and rewrite your common app essay and supplements over several months.
  3. Hope for the best. Your specs are good but being Asian doesn't help. You are competitive but still 5-8% chance.
  4. Make sure you don't fall in love with one school. Get a good mix of 5-7 schools.
3

I agree with the last post. You are qualified, other than that the admissions process is random. Regarding Allen Cheng’s post, HE IS NOT AN ADMISSIONS OFFICER. I see many people on this site that refer to his post, but he is only going off of his personal experience. He doesn’t have experience as an actual admissions officer and therefore knows just about as much as anyone else. His entire post is a complete guess and doesn’t really have any hard evidence that his method works.

4

You should do a music supplement. Go over to the music forum on CC and read about that.

You can submit a supplement with a recording, a music resume (teacher, performances, awards, etc.), and letters of recommendation (one or two) from teachers or directors. This can help, yes.