Chance me please? Columbia, Penn, Stanford, etc

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to read this. It's basically the end of my junior year right now, only about a few more weeks to go, so I thought this would be a good time to get the opinion of other people about my application so far since I still have the summer (even then, that's not that much time left though...). </p>

<p>Colleges I'm applying to:</p>

<p>Top choices
- Columbia (top choice currently)
- Princeton
- Stanford
- Yale
- Duke
- University of Penn
- University of Chicago</p>

<p>Others (mainly for if I can't get into any of my top choices)
- UNC Chapel Hill
- Berkley
- NC State</p>

<p>Unweighted/weighted GPA currently: (3.75/4.75/5.13) </p>

<p>I go to a boarding school, so the 3.75/4.75 is from my old high school where I went to for 9th and 10th grade. I didn't stay long enough to get a class rank. The 5.13 is my weighted so far at this new boarding school. No class rank for the school either. </p>

<p>IB/AP Courses (+ scores)
- IB Physics II
- AP Chemistry (4 or 5 I'm hoping)
- AP Calculus AB/BC (5 on AB and hopefully 5 on BC)
- AP US History (4 or 5)
- AP Physics (No class but took the exam, 4)
For next year,
- AP Economics
- AP Statistics
- Multi variable Calculus (not an IB/AP, but will that look good to colleges?)</p>

<p>I am also currently enrolled in a Research course, where we work with the Jackson Lab in Maine and work with mice genomes (computational biology). </p>

<p>Class rank/size
- No class rank, size of about 300</p>

<p>SAT Score
- 2280 (800M, 760CR, 720W)</p>

<p>SAT II Scores
- Math II: 800
- Physics: 760
- Chemistry: Took last Saturday, hoping for a high 700</p>

<p>ECs:
- Biggest one I have is Boy Scouts. I've been involved in Boy Scouts for about 8-9 years now, and I achieved the rank of Eagle last fall. I've been senior patrol leader, patrol leader, etc. basically, a lot of leadership position within the trop
- I debate a lot. I've done debate all 3 years so far (with the hope of continuing next year) and I've been to many national tournaments and won awards (for example, we won a trophy for double octafinals (top 32 out of 300+) at Harvard Debate Tournament, with many of the best debaters from around the nation) and semi-final awards at the State TFL Debate tournament (with plenty of smaller, regional tournament awards)
- I'm in HOSA, a student organization with over 120K members and I've won state awards for Biomedical Debate, and we placed first at the National Leadership Conference last year that had 7000+ attendees. We've also won second and third places at the state conference.
- I have a ton of service hours, which mainly came from the IB requirement at my old school and the various requirements for Boy Scouts. Probably a total of 300+ hours during my high school career. </p>

<ul>
<li>Also, I am an Asian Male from North Carolina</li>
</ul>

<p>Basically, I'm mainly worried about my grades. I've gotten several B's throughout high school, and I think that's my weakest point. Mainly, I've just gotten B's in Spanish (because I'm really bad at Spanish) and a few B's here or there. I've gotten A's in all the IB and AP Courses that I've taken so far. I'm also worried about the real lack of variety in my EC's. I mainly do really only two things, debate and Boy Scouts, but I work really hard in both of those.</p>

<p>Any advice you guys have? Chances? Any other colleges I should apply to? Please be as direct as you can. Columbia is my dream school, and I seriously want to know what you guys think the chances of me getting in are. If you need more information, let me know, and thank you for reading!</p>

2

<p>You’re a decent applicant and you have a shot at all of your schools, but your top choices are still big reaches, as they are for everyone. You have a good chance at UNC-CH and Berkeley, although I wouldn’t call them safeties.</p>

3

<p>How does your school weight?
Anyway, you have decent chances.</p>

4

<p>Thanks for the replies. The reason I call UNC-Chapel Hill a safety school is because basically everybody from our school gets in. Our school is also part of the UNC system and our teachers know each other (out of the few hundred or so that applied, I think only one or two got rejected). </p>

<p>Also, we don’t have class ranking or anything, if that’s what you mean by school weight. We’re on a 4 point GPA scale with honors classes being counted as 5’s and AP’s/intensive courses being counted as 6’s (we don’t have unweighted GPA)</p>

5

<p>I think two in depth ECs are okay. (I had 3 ECs but one of them was very unique.)</p>

<p>I am going to be very honest.

  1. Your GPA is “low” for those top colleges
  2. Your SAT I score (2280) is good but not great for an Asian male
  3. SAT II scores are okay as long as you get high 700 or 800 from Chemistry
  4. Course rigor is okay</p>

<p>If you don’t have any hook or national level recognition, then</p>

<p>Princeton: Unlikely
Stanford: Unlikely
Yale: Unlikely
Chicago: High Reach
Columbia: High Reach
Penn: High Reach</p>

<p>Duke: Reach
Berkley: Likely</p>

<p>UNC Chapel Hill: In (You are from NC)
NC State: In (You are from NC)</p>

<p>What about

  1. Vanderbilt and Notre Dame: I heard that VU and ND want to have more Asians
  2. NW: Many people with similar stat as yours got in
  3. Wash U if you are not applying for FA
  4. LACs: I heard that some very good LACs want to have more Asians</p>

<p>Start your college essays early and apply to many top colleges because your chance is 0% if you don’t apply. Good luck to you!</p>

6

<p>Thank you for the honest reply. The only national recognitions I have come from 1st place at the national HOSA leadership conference (with over 7000 people) in my event, biomedical debate. I also have a few individual trophies from national debate tournaments (one from Harvard debate tournament, for example). </p>

<p>Do you think I have a good chance if I apply ED to Columbia? Acceptance is about 25% for ED…but I’m still not sure if that would help me out a lot.</p>