Chance me please? thank you so much!

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

USC (dream school, even though I know it’s impossible to get into with my test scores :frowning: )
UCLA
UCI
Boston College
Boston University
Pepperdine University
Wheaton College
University of Portland
University of Oregon
UH Manoa
(no need to do all, at least helping me out in one will be great, ty!)

Asian female, income about 27,600 (family of 5, including me)
first generation: kind of? my parents went to college in Korea so I’ll be first gen in America.
intended major: major in education
GPA: 4.0
school rank: top 10%
SAT: 1190… (will retake in November)
ACT: 24 (i just suck at testing in general, not planning on retaking since I think I do better on the SAT)
AP classes: APUSH, AP LANG, AP LIT
Honors classes: a total of… 10 classes?
dual enrollment (at a local cc): took speech & communication 151 during the summer and I’m planning on taking another course during spring
Senior year classes: AP CALC, AP ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, expository writing, psychology, geology, TA (teacher assistant) for APUSH
Awards: NHS (?), Varsity letter, my friend & i just brought the honor roll back to our school so hopefully we’ll be getting those soon.

EC

HS Varsity Triathlon club (9,10,11,12)
-9th grade my relay team won 2nd, 10th grade won 1st, 11th grade won 3rd.
HS Varsity swim team (10,11,12)
-got into finals for backstroke events
HS Varsity girls water polo team (10,11)
-our team went to states in 11th grade but I didn’t get to go because of AP testing
National Honor Society (10,11, 12)
-10th and 11th grade: member. 12th grade: president
Youth Group (9,10)
HS leadership team (11,12)
-helped plan winter ball (dance), senior prom, spirit week, homecoming, etc.
ukulele (9,10,11,12)
-taught myself how to play
mentor (10,11,12)
-at our hs, we have a program that encourages students to make good decisions and always check up on how they’re doing in school every thursday (mandatory for everyone).

Work/job experience
10th/11th: worked a one week job during fall break at a triathlon shop
12th: got an actual job to save up for college and pay for senior year expenses

volunteer hours:
9th grade: church events, triathlon volunteering = about 59 hours
10th grade: church events, NHS, triathlon volunteering= about 56 hours
11th grade: NHS, triathlon volunteering, mentoring= about 53 hours

teacher recommendation letters: seems pretty okay, hopefully :slight_smile:
additional letter: teacher who taught me from 1st-8th grade
essays: I’m procrastinating so much lord help me.

Country: USA
state: Hawaii
School: public

weakness: English. I mean, yea I can speak and write English, but I struggle so much during the first section of the SAT. Also, I don’t have that many people around me to look over my essays, so my essays may be weak.

please let me know if you think another college/uni I didn’t list would be good for me :slight_smile: I didn’t plan on applying for a lot of east coast colleges since I haven’t gotten the chance to visit the east coast (cause y’know… it’s not cheap to fly places lol).
and if you could just give me some advice below too, that would be great.

Thank you so much !!

2

As an OOS applicant, UCI and UCLA will give you no financial aid or merit aid which you need. Expect to pay $60K/year to attend so I would drop them from the list. SAT would hurt your chances anyways. For USC and Pepperdine, I think these will unaffordable and USC would a Reach with current SAT. Any chance of being recruited for sports?

Have you used the Net price calculator to determine costs since you will need both need-based aid and merit aid to make many if these schools work. For merit your SAT needs to be much higher.

3

University of Nevada, Reno would be affordable because of the Western Undergraduate Exchange. Under this program, since you’re from Hawaii, tuition would only be about $9,000 per year. If you can get your test scores up, they might even give you some merit aid. Your GPA also already guarantees admission, from what I understand.

4

The WUE mentioned in the above post would be a great option to explore. Here is the list of participating schools:

http://wue.wiche.edu/search_results.jsp?searchType=all

5

Your stats are quite low. And your income will not cover the tuition for most of these schools. You should look for outside scholarships that are not academic/merit based.
Your chances based off past year admission statistics and GPA and test score only.
USC- 5.98% (did it because it’s your dream school)
wont do UC’s because they are too far out of reach. and BU/BC
Pepperdine- 48.89%
you should be fine for the rest.
if you don’t mind me asking, how did you calculate your GPA? Because your UC could be different.