Chance Me Stanford/Caltech

Chance Me / Match Me!
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I’m in senior year, and I’ll apply in fall 2022. I want to improve my GPA, Awards, and ECs this year, but I listed here just what I already did.

Demographics: Latin American, male. Low-income.
Need Full Aid: Yes.

Major: Computer Science.
Dream Colleges: Stanford, Caltech, Harvard, UMichigan, UChicago, UToronto (Lester B Pearson Scholarship), and Carnegie Mellon.

GPA: 9/10 (rank 2 of 24) (For comparison: the #1 student has 9.2 and the average is 7) (Stanford and Caltech don’t need to convert the grades to a 4.0 scale)
Course Rigor: High. It’s the hardest public school in the region. I have 17 subjects per year, and I usually spend 10 hours at school. The acceptance rate is 20-25%, and the drop out rate is about 30%.

SAT: I didn’t take it yet. But Caltech is test-blind (so SAT won’t increase or decrease my chances).

Top 5 ECs:

  • Research about gamification to teach programming. I developed a gamification platform, and 60 students used the software for one semester.
  • Research about machine learning to predict meal production in university restaurants, aiming to reduce food waste. I was selected to present the project at a national science fair with this project (The fair will be in March).
  • Research with four professors, eight undergrads, and thirteen high school students. This research will start next month, but I already know that I’ll work with Data Science and Machine Learning. I’ll need to teach high school students too.
  • I voluntarily developed an application for my school. About 300 (approx 60% of high school students) users registered and used last year.
  • I’m writing about Machine Learning, but I published anything yet, but I have plans to publish articles or videos this year.

I published extended abstract papers in a regional (doesn’t has academia value) college conference (eight campuses) of the ECs I, II, and IV. I submitted papers about ECs II and IV to a national CS conf, but I don’t know if the papers will be accepted (So, don’t expect it).

Other Minor ECs: Freelance Jobs, two months Internship (I’ll get in an internship this year again), app/software development, course minister, programming tutorial writing, and programming languages voluntary monitor (1 year).

Awards and Honors: 1st Regional Hackathon, 1st Regional High School Programming Olympiad, National Math Olympiad Bronze, National State Olympiad Silver, and National Science Fair Finalist.

If I’m not good enough, please recommend colleges.

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You are clearly a very competitive applicant. Congratulations on your substantial achievements to this point!

For Toronto acceptance is the easy part. I expect you to get accepted. The hard part is getting the scholarship. The Lester B Pearson scholarship is very competitive. Toronto is very good for CS if you get the scholarship.

For Michigan I have no idea what sort of funding they have for international students. I just do not know.

For each of these, have you checked to make sure that they offer full need based financial aid for international students? I know some do but I cannot remember for all of the schools on your list.

I think that you are a competitive applicant at all of these schools, but that all are reaches (either for admission or for funding).

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Stanford, Caltech, Harvard, UChicago, and UToronto (the Lester B) have full-ride scholarships. I forgot to search about UMichigan and Carnegie Mellon, but searching right now, these universities just have scholarships for U.S applicants =.

Thanks for the reply!

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Do you happen to have EC’s that are sports-related or community-wide in involvement?
Although you have impressive EC’s-these all appear to be narrow in scope.
My son attended Caltech. He was an Eagle Scout along with a number of his Caltech classmates. He was also an athlete and was a National Merit winner-one of many at Caltech.
Do you have a part-time job? Volunteered at food banks? Have you stepped out of your comfort zone?
At that time, they had accepted students who were involved in the community and had more than just one area of interest.
My husband attended Stanford. He has conducted interviews for them.
The admissions director, when speaking to alumni families, indicated that they weren’t looking for students who spent their complete time in their rooms-like books. She said, “we have books on our library shelves. We don’t need the same exact books”. She indicated they were looking for students who would contribute, socially, to the university and build a class.
As for financial aid, a lot of schools were hit hard by the pandemic and their coffers are low. If you need funding, and the school is being frugal with their funds, they may choose someone who has a more diverse background. Yes, our son is also Hispanic, but that didn’t play into many of the schools where he was accepted.

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I’m in senior year, and I’ll apply in fall 2022

You’re a senior but won’t be apply for over a year and a half? What will you be doing in the interim?

At most of the schools, you’ll be in the pool of fully qualified candidates, which is probably 1/2 the applicants. At that point it comes down to recommendations, essay, etc. Acceptance rates are probably 15-20%, higher than the school’s overall 5-9% rate.

Michigan may be a slight outlier - still a top 10-ish CS school, but slightly lower admissions bar, so maybe a 50% chance there.

You’d likely get into at least one of these, but you certainly should add some safety schools.

(The above excludes Toronto, I’m not familiar with it.)

If you’re already a Senior, when are you planning to take the SAT? Caltech is test blind through students starting Fall 2022. If you’re applying Fall 2022, this doesn’t cover you. And other schools probably won’t be blind, maybe not even optional, at that point.

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About sports, I like to practice run and workout, but I didn’t participate in competitions yet. About volunteering in my community (city/neighborhood), yes, this is missing from my profile. My only volunteering contribution is with education (teaching, creating content, mentoring, and ECs I, IV and V) with my school (I really like to contribute sharing knowledge).

Thanks for the reply. I’ll reflect on the things that you told, and try to get better.

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Oh, I’ll apply for fall 2022, sorry the mistake.

UMichigan doesn’t have financial aid for internationals :/. I’ll search about safety colleges too.

Thanks for the reply!

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for Stanford specifically, your essays will really make or break your application