Those are only my reaches (just an FWI) - not sure if it’s worth actually applying? Definitely feel borderline.
Figure I’ll note my papers and internship were both in bioinformatics, and that is what I intend to pursue in the future.
Objective:
SAT I (breakdown): didn’t take
ACT (breakdown): taken twice; superscore 35 (36E 35R 34M 35S) 34 single-sitting (36E 35R 34M 31S)
SAT II: math II 790, taking bio in October and expected 760-800.
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.9
Weighted GPA: 4.8
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 1/~760
AP (place score in parenthesis): n/a
IB (place score in parenthesis): 5 SL Econ, 5 SL Spanish.
Senior Year Course Load: Full IB Diploma (HL Math, HL CS, HL Physics, HL English, SL Econ, SL Spanish)
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.):
3rd author (of 9) on paper submitted to Stanford conference (less than 20% acceptance rate), but not sure about acceptance yet.
4th author (of 12) on paper accepted to 3.3 impact factor journal
State science fair 2nd place
American Statistical Association: outstanding use of statistics (in state fair)
~20 regional and state academic decathlon medals (3rd in the state is probably the most impressive)
National Merit Commended
Some medium-sized CTFs and hackathons.
Subjective:
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):
Academic Decathlon (President)
Math Club (Vice President)
Mock Trial (Vice President)
Code Club (weird structure for leadership, but I have captained a couple teams for CTFs)
NHS
Job/Work Experience: (none)
Volunteer/Community service:
150 hours (iirc). Split between internship for summer camp at state science center, organization of a math competition for middle schoolers, and other misc NHS stuff.
Summer Activities:
Intern at state science center (service-oriented)
Research internship program at state university (~15% acceptance rate) for 7 weeks
Essays (rating 1-10, details):
Have not completely finished though, but:
Stanford ones: 8/10. I like the prompts, am a decent writer, and are putting a great amount of effort into them. That said, I don’t have any hugely impressive stories to talk about and I’m using them more to show quirkiness and passion more than anything else.
Rice ones: 9/10. I definitely prefer the straightforwardness, and I feel as if they allow a better expression of my future interests.
UChicago ones: 7/10. Very quirky prompts and I haven’t started them yet. Not sure how they’ll play out, but again will put in a pretty sizable amount of effort.
Common App: 8/10. Definitely unique and well-written, but definitely not on the tier of a refugee story or similar.
Recommendations (rating 1-10, details):
Teacher Rec #1:
9/10: Academic Decathlon coach for 4 years. Knows me very well and wrote a rec for the aforementioned summer program, and director of that program said it was one of the best recs she’d ever seen.
Teacher Rec #2:
8/10: IB computer science teacher for 2 years and thinks I am very talented, though he’s not the most prolific writer.
Counselor Rec:
7/10: Knows me pretty well, but I don’t have any super personal connections to her.
Additional Rec:
9/10: mentor for summer program.
He’s an extremely intelligent person and quite prominent in his field (H index = 37). I’ve read the letter, and it is extremely flattering, comparing my ability and contributions to that of postdocs and medical residents. Important to note that he previously worked at UChicago.
Interview:
(n/a)
Other
Applied for Financial Aid?: yes to all
Intended Major: computer science
State (if domestic applicant): AZ
Country (if international applicant):
School Type: Large, public, title 1
Ethnicity: white
Gender: M
Income Bracket: not sure how this will end up working because of odd divorce situation, but between 80k and 160k.
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.):
None lol