Chance me please

Student Lounge Hispanic Students
1

<p>Hey I'm Hispanic and I am applying to many ivy league schools / private universities.</p>

<p>Here is the basic layout of my stats:</p>

<p>SAT I: 2190; 800Math, 740 writing, 650 CR
SATII: 780 MathIIC, 780 Chem; 700 History
PSAT: 209, National Merit Hispanic Finalist</p>

<p>3.85 GPA unweighted
Rank: 61/732
Public School, Southern CA.</p>

<p>9 AP Classes: (hardest course load possible for a student with athletics and orchestra)
AP Scholar with Distinction</p>

<p>History (3)
English Language and Composition (4)
European History (4)
Calculus AB/AP (5)
Chemistry (5)
English Literature and Composition (Taking currently)
Calculus BC/AP (Taking currently)
Human Geography AP (Taking currently)
US Government and Politics (Taking currently)</p>

<p>Extracurriculars:</p>

<p>AMC 12 Honor with Distinction (score above 100) for 2 years, 9th and 11th
AMC 12 score: 105
AIME Score: 4</p>

<p>President of National Honor Society (12th), Parliamentarian (11th), Member (10th)
Treasurer of Future Business Leaders of America, 1st place Parliamentary Procedure Gold Coast Sectionals, 3rd place Parliamentary Procedure CA STATE
Parliamentary Debate Club Vice President (formed club in my junior year) : 1st place Novice Championships, 6th place State Championships
Piano (14 years). Passed Level X Advanced with Branch Honors and Convention Title. Southwest Young Musicians Festival 2nd place. Orange County Music Styles Festival 3rd place.
Junior Honor Guard (Top Most Well Rounded Student in entire school during 11th grade, invited to attend graduation and lead graduating senior class).
Math Club (4 years member)
Key Club (4 years member)
American Cancer Society (4 years member)
String Orchestra (4 years Violin I)
Relay for Life: (4 year 24+ hour participant) & City of Walnut High School Student Coordinator
Cross Country Captain, Varsity 3 years, Runner 4 years (MVP, All-Academic League Runner, Most Improved, 3 time CIF participant, First team All League (2 years), 2nd team All-League (1 year).
JV Tennis (9th & 10th): MVP, Most Outstanding player, Only Undefeated Singles player in all-league
Varsity Track: Distance Runner (MVP, Most Outstanding Runner, Best Frosh/Soph runner, League Champion)</p>

<p>I'm applying to the following schools:</p>

<p>Harvard
Yale
MIT
Cornell
Caltech
Stanford (EA)
Dartmouth
Northwestern</p>

<p>UC:
Cal
UCLA
UCI
UCSD</p>

<p>How do my stats look for these schools? Thanks.</p>

2

<p>You’ve got great chances.</p>

3

<p>Based on a recent conversation I had with an admission’s director at UCSD, don’t apply to Stanford EA, apply regular decision. </p>

<p>Last week I was at a dinner at a friend’s house and the director of diversity admissions/hispanic excellence outreach (forgot rest of the name) for UCSD was there. The host’s daughter with better stats than yourself told the director of her plan to apply to Stanford EA. The diversity director strongly discouraged her from apply EA. She said that you are judged against the other EA (who usually are above the norm of the applicant pool and their stats) and that Stanford doesn’t really then judge you against the regular decision applicant pool-who would have stats more in line with yours. When the hosts asked about deferral, she said that applying EA to Stanford really reduces your chances. I hope I am making sense but we figured this person was in the know since her whole job was directed at hispanics and getting them into college and medical school. </p>

<p>Obviously where you apply is a personal choice. However since we had just discussed this issue, I thought I would share it with you.</p>

4

<p>^ Not true. Applying SCEA in no way decreases one’s chances of getting accepted at some point. Deferred applicants are not looked down upon. </p>

<p>As you can see in the results thread, many Hispanic applicants were accepted SCEA with stats profiles less impressive than the OP’s.</p>

5

<p>st,
I agree that in general applying EA does not decrease one’s chances of getting accepted, but I’m a little cautious about S. While Yale and S are similar in selectivity and having SCEA, it seems like Y & S have very different approaches to deferral to the RD round. Y defers a large portion of their SCEA applicants, almost 48%:</p>

<p>[Yale</a> Daily News - Early admit rate plunges to 13.4 percent](<a href=“http://old.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/26932]Yale”>http://old.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/26932)</p>

<p>Unfortunately, I can’t find official numbers for S, but I though that they were significantly less than this. I’ve tried Searching on the S forum and googling, but I could only find an older thread and one that compares a CC poll (neither of which I recognize are conclusive or even necessarily correct):</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/444262-stanford-scea-admission-rate-vs-cc-scea-admission-rate.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/444262-stanford-scea-admission-rate-vs-cc-scea-admission-rate.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/14921-accepted-deferred-rejected-year-out.html?highlight=deferral+rate[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/14921-accepted-deferred-rejected-year-out.html?highlight=deferral+rate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Maybe someone more familiar with the S forum can contribute a thread with the actual numbers. Anyway, that’s why I’m a little hesitant about recommending applying SCEA to S unless one is confident that they are at the tip top of their demographic (eg. Hispanic). It’s not that deferrals are looked down upon, just that there aren’t that many of them. And with such a strong SCEA applicant pool, it could be strategic to instead go RD for some applicants.</p>

<p>p.s. I am not speaking specifically to the OP, as I haven’t checked the S stat profiles for Hispanic SCEA acceptances.</p>

6

<p>I just found this, on the S website of all places ;):</p>

<p>[Restrictive</a> Early Action : Stanford University](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/application/decision_process/restrictive.html]Restrictive”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/application/decision_process/restrictive.html)</p>

<p>“3 Possible Restrictive Early Action Admission Decisions
Applicant is admitted and has until May 1 to respond to the admission offer
Applicant is denied and can not reapply for Regular Decision admission in the same year
Applicant is deferred to the Regular Decision round, where he/she will receive a final decision by April 1<br>
Stanford’s philosophy is to make final decisions whenever possible, so the vast majority of Restrictive Early Action applicants receive one of the first two decisions noted above.”</p>

7

<p>Thanks entomom. That is exactly what the director told me at dinner. She said for EA Stanford, they judge your qualifications against other EA applicants which tend to me higher so if you are not the highest in the applicant pool, you are better off applying regular decision. </p>

<p>Again it’s a personal decision for the OP but since this point was just discussed with me at a meeting by someone in the know, I wanted to share the discussion.</p>

8

<p>I don’t see how the statement on Stanford’s Website indicates that one shouldn’t apply SCEA. There is absolutely no reason to believe that an applicant who applies early has worse chances of eventually being accepted than one who applies RD.</p>

9

<p>st,
My opinion (that’s exactly what it is, I don’t claim any insider knowledge) is based on the way that I think SCEA works, which itself is entirely up for debate ;). </p>

<p>It seems rational to me that the only people accepted SCEA to S & Y are those candidates who they would select from ANY pool of applicants. Selecting them early gives the school extra time to woo these prospects who will likely be accepted to other top colleges RD. Anyone who is borderline can be held to the RD round to be compared to that pool, and then accepted, WL or denied. I just don’t see how these schools would benefit from selecting anyone other than the candidates they find most desirable without the shadow of a doubt. </p>

<p>To this point, I think S & Y act similarly, however, when it comes to what to do with the SCEA non-admits, they diverge. Y denies a relatively small percentage of SCEA applicants, and the majority are deferred to RD. S on the other hand defers a relatively small percentage of SCEA applicants and many more are outright denied. So, if an applicant is not in the tippy top of their demographic but is still a competitive candidate, it seems like they would have less of a chance of being held over to the RD round (and possibly be accepted) at S, particularly if they have some late breaking awards, test scores, etc. that weren’t available when the SCEA cuts were made.</p>

<p>Again, no one is implying that once there, a deferred SCEA candidate is evaluated differently than someone applying straight to the RD round, but rather that they might risk their chance of getting to RD at all.</p>

<p>I think what itsv and I are trying to say is that it’s something to be considered when applying SCEA to S. I think it’s productive for people to give their POVs and experiences; we’re not telling the OP not to apply SCEA, just discussing a possible downside. I personally would rather hear both sides of a story in order to make an informed decision.</p>

10

<p>I agree completely. If an applicant is certain that he or she wants to apply SCEA to one of the schools but may have a better application during the RD period, Yale is probably the way to go because of the lesser chance of rejection.</p>

<p>I should emphasize, however, that acceptance at either school early is extremely competitive. I have done a rather in-depth quantitative analysis of the Yale SCEA results as posted here on CC. Conclusion: unhooked candidates must have stellar scores at a minimum to have a reasonable chance of acceptance; the mean SAT score of acceptees was over 2300. It was certainly no piece of cake for hooked applicants, but as one would expect with affirmative action in mind, the average test scores were lower but still very high.</p>

<p>Here’s the thread that contains some discussion of the findings, a link to the analysis of Yale SCEA, Princeton RD analysis, as well as a similarly formatted analysis of Stanford’s SCEA. (I didn’t conduct this Stanford analysis, but it was done in the same basic manner.)</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/723173-helpful-thread-those-contemplating-scea.html?highlight=helpful+thread[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/723173-helpful-thread-those-contemplating-scea.html?highlight=helpful+thread&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

11

<p>Absolutely, there are relative differences between the two schools, but both are about as tough as it gets.</p>

12

<p>You might not want to apply for your Ivies, but in my discussions with admissions counselors (Texas A&M, Ole Miss, and University of Alabama)* they push EA for the opposite reason.</p>

<p>According to them, with early decision they are looking to fill their class up, to state it simply, and apparently applying early is looked upon favorably. However as time goes on, there are fewer spots left and you have to compete for them.</p>

<p>*Yeah, I could probably get into Harvard, but I’m from Texas and would hate it there. =/</p>

13

<p>“Yeah, I could probably get into Harvard”</p>

<p>That doesn’t come across all that well.</p>

14

<p>Hank,
I’m not sure I understand your point, first you mention EA and then go on to talk about ED, these are approached very differently by adcoms. Also, adcoms at the Ivies vs. T A&M, UMiss and UAlabama are likely to have very different candidate pools and may look at early admissions differently.</p>

15

<p>you gonna get in one ivy at very least. possibly more than one.</p>

16

<p>just to let everyone know who’s commented on the thread
Accepted Stanford EA</p>

<p>=)</p>

17

<p>Congrats!!!</p>

18

<p>Congratulations on your acceptance to Stanford. You will be joining my neighborh who is also Latina. It is so nice to see your hard work pay off.</p>

<p>Also as an aside, we know a lot of students from local high schools who applied SCEA to Stanford this year who got rejected so it looks like what was posted earlier is true, either acceptance or rejection. So far we have not heard of anyone in our area who was deferred at Stanford through SCEA.</p>