-Demographics: Asian (Indian) female, MA, public school, middle class (~150k income with 3 kids going to college nxt yr)
-Stats:
- 35 ACT, 1540 SAT
- 4.67 W GPA, 3.99 UW GPA
- over top 3%, but school doesn’t rank
- Academics:
- 9 AP's by graduation and 2 college math classes; AP Bio (4), APUSH (5), AP Calc BC (5), AP CS A (5), AP Chem, AP Physics C, AP Stats, AP French
- National Merit Semifinalist (do not qualify for Finalist status bc I am not a citizen)
- EC's
- Science Olympiad President (Officer for last 3 yrs); won some medals at invitationals and state competition. Very new team.
- Robotics: team spokesman (presents for awards), C++ programmer, helped organize competition
- Girl Scouts: earned Silver and Gold Award.
- content writer for online news start up (not gonna post the name here)
- also: math team, nhs - top 25 in math league
- GWC SIP 2016 and bioinformatics research in 2017
- programmed an app for safety and won Congressional App Challenge in my fairly competitive district
- other awards:
- NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Award
- RIT Computing Medal
- LOR's: good! English teacher in 11th grade (got an A in his class), calc teacher who knew me for two years, and SciOly coach
- Essays: my why uchicago and uncommon essay were pretty good and my common app is okay, nothing special
Thank you! I know it’s vague but I don’t want to put too much information for privacy issues.
Ah forgot to mention, I am applying as a CS and Math major, leaning towards the CAM major specifically.
Wow, we have very similar stats! (1540, 150k+ income, Asian descent, public school in the Northeast, over top 3%, 9 APs ( although I took Psych (5), Bio (5), APUSH (5), Chem (4).
I think that your extracurriculars are pretty good and your stats are decent, and you have a good shot at UChicago. However, applying EA may lower your chances of acceptance. Best of luck!
Thank you, you too! let’s hope it goes well for both of us 
Your ECs seem pretty typical for an Asian girl from a Northeast public school. Which is not necessarily bad, but does not really help you. Being an ORM is a disadvantage, especially since you’re interested in STEM. Stats are obviously good enough to get into UChicago or anywhere. Essays are very subjective, so I can’t really chance you on those. But at UChicago they’re very important and play a major role in admissions.
Is UChicago your first choice? Would you have applied ED if you had the money to? Considering your income and three kids in college at the same time, it’s reasonable that you’d apply EA to UChicago instead of ED. If you really want to attend UChicago, I suggest reaching out to your regional admissions counselor to show your interest and maybe tell them your financial issues if that’s what is keeping you from ED.
I hope you get in, but there’s a very good chance you’ll get deferred. Just keep working on your RD apps, and wait until next month when we get our decisions. Hopefully you’ll be pleasantly surprised! Good luck!
I think UChicago wants three types of people today: 1. Traditional well-rounded students. I think you’re this case. Apparently you did a great job in high school, and showed leadership. And you are very concentrated in CS and robotics, that’s good! You certainly have strong academics and one special interest and achievement. I will say you have a high chance if your essay is interesting and arond your robotics, CS and leadership.
2. Fit student. They might not be so well rounded, but officers believe they can perfectly fit in the environment, maybe with some extremely high-standard achievement in specific area and going to push it in colleges. UChicago loves this kind of nerdy, scholar type person.
3. Diversity student. They might have something unusual to normal UChicago student, like filming, startup, human right, LGBT. Typically those want to brown, Stanford, Yale. But somehow they choose UChicago, then it’s easy to differentiate them. Officers want those person to add diversity to this campus.
You are certainly the first type, which is the most competitive pool, but you’re strong applicant. We will see soon. If you’re deferred, think about ED2.
Another things is UChicago has just mediocre CS department. Not very sure why you want to go. It might be good in admission round? I don’t know. But if you’re deferred you really need to think about this.
I want to go to Uchicago because I love the philosophy of their education i.e. core curriculum concentrated on intense discussion. I wrote my essays on profound conversations (made an analogy to salt and vinegar chips) and why odd numbers are odd.
Uchicago’s cs is pretty new, but its math is top notch and my future goals are to do a phd in cs so that means i need a very theoretical ug, which uchicago excels at. In the end, I want to combine cs and math with social justice (i.e. data science for social good).
i really hope i don’t get deferred. I cannot apply ED at all.
Like I said above, talk with your regional admissions counselor about why you can’t apply ED. Last year they seemed to be obsessed with yield rate, which caused the major disparity between ED and EA acceptance rates, and will probably do the same this year. I completely understand why you applied EA. My family’s income is slightly lower than yours, and even though I’m the only one in college for the next few years, I’m looking at $50k or more in debt by graduation. So that’s a legit reason not to apply ED. If you demonstrate enough interest and explain that UChicago’s your first choice, then maybe your EA chances will be better.
Like @summerhazed said, they want high yield rate, and they have one of the highest yield rate now. They want to maintain it. That makes EA not really different from RD, in consideration of the stronger pool. And you pursue the FA right? Then in my opinions, you apply EA, ask aids, and want to compare aids… If I’m an admission officer, there is no much point to admit you for you’re not very HYPS level student. Maybe reconsider it, sorry for being straightforward.