Hi, I am a current junior who plans on applying to Rice ED. I am from a small town in Texas. I am first generation Chinese. I was raised by a single parent.
Academics
ACT: 29 (I was hoping to take it again but I can’t now due to Covid-19.)
G.P.A: 5.88 or 3.9
Rank: 2/215
AP : 1, Ap physics ( our school only offers 2 ap courses and you can’t take them both, you have to choose to either take ap physics or ap bio)
Dual Credit: 5 so far but I plan to have taken 9 dc courses by the time I graduate
EC:
Band: I was in marching band and played clarinet since 8th grade. I have gone to state twice in solo and ensemble contest. I have to drop band for my senior year due to schedule issues.
Student Council: I have been a member since 9th grade. I currently serve as the junior class secretary.
National Honor Society: I became a member this year and I have 50 community service hours.
Business Professionals of America: I have competed in Entrepreneurship (where I come up with my own business and market it to judges like shark tank) since 9th grade. I advanced to state junior year.
Theatre: I starred in a fall show freshman year. I gave up theatre due to conflicts with band.
Work:
I work at a clothing store in town.
Other things:
-I completed a week long engineering camp at UT Austin the summer of my sophomore year.
-I completed a 3 week summer immersion program for psychology at Columbia the summer of my sophomore year.
- I am teaching myself Spanish.I am using Duolingo to teach myself Spanish. I have been using the app for 300 days and I plan to do a summer immersion in Spain before college.
- I can speak Mandarin, English, Fuzhounese and somewhat speak Spanish ( I can definitely comprehend it more than I can speak it lol).
- I really hope all these things show that I am super driven and have a curious intellect.
Rice '24 admit here, hope to be able to help. As of now, I don’t see any distinguishing factor that will comfortably get you admitted to Rice; however, with strong essays that can strengthen and support your application, you can give yourself a decent chance.
If COVID-19 permits before you apply perhaps attempt the Spanish SAT subject test to show that your Spanish attempt has been successful. Business professionals of America stands out to me as one of your more interesting ECP’s perhaps mention a similar program at RICE you would like to take part in at college
I have a few thoughts about this. By your SN Jones Sandra, I’m assuming your female. If I’m wrong, part of what I’ve written will not apply.
- Rice is areach school for anyone, accepting only about 10% of applicants over the past 2 years. Your ACT score is a problem. I hope you didn’t have it sent to Rice.. Many colleges have already suspended the requirement for standardized for next year due to coronavirus. Rice has not yet made a decision about this, but they are considering suspending the requiement as well. But they would rather not. Keep track of this, but study for the test as though it’s going to happen and do practice tests. Hope that they drop the requirement because without it you become a much stronger candidate, remembering that it’s a long shot for anyone.
- You went to the UT summer camp for engineering and took AP Physics. That lines up for an engineering major. Is that your interest? Only 33% of the engineering students at Rice are female. Most colleges in this situation want to change this male:female ratio. So, I think you become a stronger candidate if you are in fact applying for engineering because you are not competing against all other applicants but within the smaller subset of female applicants.
- Coming from a single parent family, I assume that your financial resources are limited? Rice covers all costs for families with incomes under $65,000 and full tuition for incomes under $130,000. In this context, I think your essays should focus on what obstacles you’ve had to overcome to rise to 2nd in your class, whatever limitations their are on access to AP classes in a small town high school, and what extra responsibilities you’ve taken on in the family like your job.
Best of luck.