Chance Me: TX resident, 3.94 GPA, 1550 SAT, AFROTC full-ride scholarship winner, Linguistics Major for UVA, UMich, Notre Dame (EA) [top 5% rank]

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics

  • US Citizen
  • Rural East Texas
  • Large middle-class, rural high school
  • Asian (Siberian), male
  • AFROTC scholarship winner
  • Fluent in Nivkh, Korean, French, Spanish, Arabic; conversational Modern Greek, Evenki, Oroqen

Intended Major(s) Linguistics/French, Catalan (for UChicago)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.94
  • Class Rank: 30/700
  • SAT Scores: 1550 (800 English, 750 Math), first try, 9th grade

Coursework

  • 5 in Human, Bio, French, Spanish, Psychology, World, US History, Lang, Physics 1, Seminar, Research, Calculus AB, Calculus BC
  • Dual Credit Calculus III, Differential Equations
  • 6 APs senior year

Extracurriculars
*President of a few medium-sized honor societies, founder of school boxing club, All-State percussionist, State social studies competition silver medalist, JROTC officer, Tri-M Librarian, Internship at UN (Geneva), Certified Martial Arts instructor, 200+ community service hours, teacher’s assistant internship at local private international school, Fundraisers ($5000+), job at Spanish-speaking restaurant

Awards
*PVSA (Gold), Outstanding Soloist (given to 12 out of 200 auditioned), NMSQT commended, Blue and Gold Award (US Naval Academy), Smaller JROTC awards, Gold medals at regional competitions and invitationals, $3000 scholarship for 1st place at history competition, AP Capstone (one of 2 students in my school with it)

Essays/LORs/Other
*Counselors and teachers told me my essays (especially uChicago ones) were phenomenal, but I think they’re pretty average for schools of this caliber.
*Average teacher LORs
*Really good peer LORs, clergy LORs, 1 LOR from college professor I did unpublished research with
*Portfolio with poems, plays, musical compositions, and art.

Schools
*Notre Dame (REA)
*UChicago (EA)
*UVA (EA)
*UMich (EA)
*UT Austin (Auto)

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Anything is possible.

Congrats on the achievements.

Are you assured full tuition vs ROTC ? If not would you pay for Michigan when UT I’d automatic?

Would these schools be supportive of your major? Linguistics can be very different at different schools so check curriculums.

Best of luck.

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Congratulations on your scholarship!

I think you will be competitive for all of the schools on your list.

You have a great auto-admit school at UT if none of the others work out, but I think you will get more than one other acceptance. I suspect Notre Dame will be a yes.

Do the schools on your list all accept letters of recommendation from people other than teachers? If not, and your teacher recommendations are just average, that could lower your chances a little. But I think the scholarship award itself may stand as a substitute; it’s sort of an outside endorsement on its own.

Good luck!

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You sound like an amazing student. No guarantees, but I think you have an excellent chance at the schools on your list.

Did none of your schools require TEACHER recommendations? That’s unusual.

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All those schools require them, and he’s written this above.

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You are right - I completely missed that!

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Oh my gosh how many languages are you fluent in??? LMAO couldn’t believe my eyes at it, well done, well done.

I think you’ll get in Norte Dame REA. Nothing is for sure, but you’re a very strong applicant. The fact that you want to major in Linguistics with that language profile is a huge plus.

UChicago is the only school on this list that I have doubts about, just because the admit rate for non ED students at that school is close to 1% (and most of those 99% other applicants are statistically competitive).

Do you have any other schools you’re applying to in the RD round? If you get in Notre Dame and have the willingness/financial resources, I’d suggest chucking a few “why-not” applications to schools like HYPS.

Congrats on being an excellent student, and best of luck!

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I was a bit unsure about intended major though because OP states Linguistics/French - so maybe a planned double major? Or did they mean a major in French Language?

Either way, I think it’s great - just curious about their planned course of study (as someone with a background in linguistics, including a subspecialization in linguistic anthropology which could be an excellent area or inquiry for the OP given their language background and actually a lot of work in linguistic anthropology is done with Siberian languages).

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Add UMass Amherst to your list. Tops in the nation for undergrad linguistics. Also add UCLA, very strong in linguistics.

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Thank you for your suggestions! I will definitely add UMass to my RD list. I don’t see myself living in the West Coast though.

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Are you assured full tuition vs ROTC ?

Yes. I have been awarded a type-2 scholarship from the Air Force, meaning in return for studying Linguistics and a “strategically important” foreign language (which includes French), then serving as a military linguist for 4-5 years, I get my tuition paid for!

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Oh my gosh how many languages are you fluent in??? LMAO couldn’t believe my eyes at it, well done, well done.

LMAO. My parents are Nivkh, so I speak their language pretty decently. There’s a huge Korean community in Sakhalin, and my parents were good friends with them, so I learned a lot of Korean during my “critical age.” I also grew up in Algeria (around 7 years) and went to a public school there, which is how I picked up French and Arabic. I moved to America in 7th grade barely speaking any English, but by then, I loved learning new languages and figured it out pretty quickly. I did Spanish for high school; I’m taking AP Spanish Lit right now, so “fluent” is a little bit of a stretch lol.

UChicago is the only school on this list that I have doubts about, just because the admit rate for non ED students at that school is close to 1% (and most of those 99% other applicants are statistically competitive).

I heard. Ima be honest, I am really regretting not doing ED for UChicago. I had a lot of fun writing their essays and making their video porfolio, so I hope some kind of divine intervention takes place and I get in.

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Hey there. If you truly regret it (and I mean, 100%), it might not be too late to change. I know for a fact that you can change UChicago EA to ED (via UChicago site – “If you would like to switch from our non-binding EA or RD decision plans to a binding Early Decision option, please email collegeadmissions@uchicago.edu to let us know of your change in plans and download, complete, and submit an Early Decision agreement form by uploading it to the “Forms” section of your UChicago Account”)

You’re gonna have to first contact Notre Dame and ask if changing from REA to RD is possible. I read on their site it’s possible to change from RD to REA but not sure the other way around. Give them a call if you must. And do so quickly. UChicago’s deadline for switching is December 1, but idk what Notre Dame’s is – anway, the sooner the better. And if you are able to and decide to change, MAKE SURE you deal with ND first because otherwise you’d be inadvertently breaking their REA agreement.

I only suggest doing this if you’re 1000% sure (and it’s more than just a second guessing of ND, which is an amazing school btw) but there is the option. You have to do it quickly, though.

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Or ED2 to Chicago with (hopefully) a ND acceptance.

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sent you a message. Look for the green envelope in the upper right hand corner of your screen

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You can’t do ed2 anywhere if u get accepted ND REA

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The restriction is on ED1. From the website:

“ If you apply to Notre Dame through REA, you may apply to any Early Decision 2 program as this has a deadline post our REA decision release in mid-December”

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Huh. My bad on that. Since Georgetown restricted it I assumed Notre Dame (who’s REA is similar) also did that. That’s good to know. Seriously, my bad on the misinformation.

I think UChicago ED1 is a bit less competitive than ED2 (both are still crazy competitive but) but strategically then it might not be a bad idea to go as it is


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@dfbdfb would you have some advice for this student?

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Others have remarked on the colleges you’re looking at as a whole, so I’ll just comment on linguistics at each of them.

First of all, they all (except Notre Dame) have good undergrad programs in lx and most of them are really strong in languages. It’s unclear from what you wrote if you are mainly interested in lx as the study of languages (the military meaning of ‘linguist’, to the consternation of every other linguist everywhere) or the study of language (that is, a more general understanding of the cognitive and social underpinnings of language use). That makes a difference. I’ll be writing this as if you’re interested in the latter, but if your primary interest is the study of languages with lx added as a sort of extra layer on top, my evaluations would be very different. (Though I have included mentions of strengths in foreign languages, in case.)

The IMO strongest in lx of the five you list—though this comes out mainly in their graduate programs—are Michigan, Chicago, and Texas. (So it’s good that you have UTA in your back pocket automatically!)

Michigan’s undergrad curriculum is very broad-based (they even require a full course dedicated to semantics for the major!), and they have an amazing set of faculty. Of all the linguists I know who went to Michigan for grad school or as undergrads—and Michigan produces a lot of them—very few have ever expressed even a little bit of dislike for the program. In addition, Michigan’s foreign language programs are, as a rule, very strong, which is always helpful for a linguist.

Chicago is really well known for their strengths in phonetics and phonology (including sociophonetics), and also in language contact. It’s also one of the few programs to build non-Indo-European language study into its program, which I see as a plus (and a bonus if you’re looking to do graduate study in linguistics, since having a non-IE language on your transcript is a plus for grad admissions). However, I have heard from students who went there undergrad that it’s kind of difficult to get really good research opportunities, because it’s so grad student-focused.

Texas has a reputation of being focused on social uses of language (sociolx, then, but with a further lean toward the anthropological, even), but the undergrad program is flexible and can really cover whatever you like. If you’re interested in things like language documentation or (to a slightly lesser extent) bilingualism, if I were you I might just call a stop to my search, pick this one, and be done with it.

Virginia doesn’t have the high reputation in lx of those three, but is easily among the strongest of them (alongside Michigan and Notre Dame) for foreign languages. The lx major there is unusual in that it requires coursework in historical lx. Honestly, though, if I were looking for undergrad lx in Virginia (unless I were interested in historical lx!—important caveat, that one), I might well look at William & Mary or Virginia Tech before UVa.

Notre Dame is also very strong in foreign languages. However, they don’t have a lx major, and the lx minor doesn’t really provide training in what linguists generally consider the “core” (not a term I like, but it’s what’s used) of the discipline. So if you went there it would have to be to study languages, not lx.

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