Chance me please?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Basic stats:
straight Asian female
Unweighted GPA: 3.95 (one B, unfortunately. Crazy teacher haha). Weighted GPA: 4.79
Class rank (weighted): #24 in a class of about 270 (~top 10%) Highly competitive school :confused:
SAT: 1580 (790 on both), 6 on the essay
780 on both the Math 2 and M Bio SAT subject tests
Courseload: 14 AP’s, including Bio, Physics, Calc AB & BC, Psych, Micro/Macro Econ, English lang&comp, Lit, etc. 4’s and 5’s on all the AP tests I’ve taken so far

Extracurriculars:
-Varsity volleyball & club volleyball (hs team won county & regional championships, scholar athlete award. Captain of my club team)
-Piano player for 12 years (theory&keyboard exam awards, awards at county & state festivals. spent a summer rehearsing and performed a piano-flute duet in a chamber music program)
-NASA summer internship (highly selective, analyzed meteors, research published in mentors’ papers)
-Community service (a few clubs, varied stuff like volunteering at cancer walks, Ronald McDonald house, nursing home, establishing partnerships with local restaurants to provide food donations, etc.)
-part-time job at a fast-food restaurant, 10+ hrs per week
-national spanish exam honorable mention

I’m very aware that I’m not president of NHS and I haven’t done groundbreaking research, and I am painfully know my ec’s are light. However, my essays were relatively strong and I believe I have two good rec’s from teachers that liked me (as far as I could tell). Please be brutally honest. I’m applying to a lot of reach schools and I know I don’t have a great chance at a lot of them. I’m interested in bioengineering and math.

UMD College Park (I’m in state), early action. Hopefully my safety
UVA, priority
UPenn, regular
Duke, regular
Johns Hopkins, regular (my brother went there for med school and is currently a surgical resident at JH, so hopefully a leg up for me haha)
Brown, regular
Maybe Cornell? (the only app I havent submitted yet)

As for hooks, I don’t think I really have any, except for maybe my family’s immigrant background. I tried not to use that too much and end up with the cookie cutter immigrant essay, but I did mention it.

2

You have very impressive stats! My school does GPAs differently so it is hard for me to compare to my schools weighting, but from your SAT score I can tell you are very smart. You are also very well-rounded, which is going to be helpful.

Any ivies that you apply to regular are going to be extremely hard to get into and will be a reach:(. These schools fill up almost their whole class with ED and EA applicants. However, I have heard Brown is the easiest ivy (although, how easy can an ivy really get?)
UMD 100000% safety
UVA out of state is also a very competitive school, but you have the stats to get in. I believe this is a match for you.
Duke is comparable to an ivy, but you do have incredible stats. I would say it is a low reach.
I also think that you have a good shot at JHU if you have family ties. I would say it is a low reach as well.

Make sure to show as much interest as you can! I have a friend who is older, but extremely smart with an incredible GPA and nearly perfect SAT (I think it was 2360 or something crazy). She did not ED anywhere and got rejected from ALL ivies and waitlisted (and was never moved off) of one. She got into UVA and other amazing schools, though.

I would recommend ED2ing somewhere if you have a favorite, or adding more schools that are not ivies. I hate seeing brilliant people getting rejected from schools that they could 100% do the work at. If you like UVA, I recommend applying to UNC, too. You have a good chance there and the due date isn’t for 2 weeks. Also, have you looked at Georgetown? It is close in proximity to a lot of schools that you like and is an amazing school that you can get into.

Best of luck!