Chance me-- UPenn Wharton hopeful

[Ria_Patel2]

Demographics
Illinois, US permanent resident
Public High School
Asian Indian Female

Intended Major(s)
Finance

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

• Unweighted HS GPA: 4.0
• Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 5.0
• ACT/SAT Scores: 1530 SAT

Coursework
AP World History
AP European History
Honors Algebra II, Honors Trig/Calc A, AP Calc BC, AP Stats
AP US History
AP Physics 1
AP Computer Science Principles
AP Language and Composition
AP Literature
AP Psychology
AP Spanish
AP Macro and AP Gov
AP Biology
Dual credit Accounting
Honors Bio, Honors Chem
Honors Sophomore and Freshman english

Awards
1st place journalism state regional competition in review writing
6th place state BPA fundamental accounting

Extracurriculars
Founder (10, 11, 12)- organization that provides business career exploration resources to students from career skill building workshops, speaker nights, workshops, coaching, social media informational posts, case competitions, conferences— reached over 2000 students, featured in news

Organizer (grade 11)- book campaign to bring books to underprivileged children throughout chicago, raised over $10,000, donated a total of 10700 books

Founder (grade 11, 12)- Eating disorder support community app: connect people looking for instant support friends, featured in local news, reached over 3,000 people

Author(grade 11)- self published a book about how diet culture impacts teens from my own firsthand experiences

Editor in chief- school newspaper (9, 10, 11, 12): edit over 50 articles, publish over 20, won best review article for NISPA (northern illinois and the whole wisconsin student press association), lead and manage team of 20

10, 11, 12: CFO- non profit organization that closes teen financial literacy gap, secured sponsorship and organized a summer conference that had over 100 attendees

9, 10, 11, 12: Student council executive board member: organized a food drive, collected over 5000 units of food, pack weekly meals for students in need at school (packed over 300 meals just at school), plan the winter dance (through marketing, increased ticket sales by 400%), plan homecoming dance, organize polar plunge fundraiser

Grades 9, 10, 11, 12: Service club board member: Fundraise over $2000 in hot chocolate sales, organize monthly trips to Feed My Starving children center, collaborate with Green club to start a recycling campaign at school.

Youth leadership board member, 11, 12- non profit that closes gender gap in computer science: ran a fundraiser, hosted 3 workshops to bring computer science to girls, developed a lesson about arrays to add to coding app

9, 10, 11, 12- tutor for non profit- 8 subject certifications, tutored over 50 hours

Essays/LORs/Other
(Optionally, guess how strong these are and include any other relevant information or circumstances.)
Planning my essay to be about how I liked dancing, but I would always be too scared to dance in front of everyone on the open dance floor. One time, I silenced my innernaysayer and I danced my heart out, and I realized that I’m the only one holding myself back. (then I would go into how I ventured past my comfort zone and did things I never thought I could do).

Cost Constraints / Budget
nothing

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below)

• Safety (certain admission and affordability)
  Depaul, Marquette
• Likely (would be possible, but very unlikely or surprising, for it not to admit or be affordable)
  UT Austin, U of I, IU
• Match
  UNC, UVA, UMichigan
• Reach
  UPenn, Notre Dame, Georgetown, NYU, USC

[AustenNut]

Congratulations on all of your hard work and efforts. You have many impressive accomplishments listed here. You stand as good a chance as anyone to be accepted to U. Penn. Unfortunately, however, there are far more qualified applicants than there are spots, at U. Penn as well as the rest of your reach schools. Thus, simply due to the numbers, applications to these schools are unlikely to result in acceptances. (Schools could replace all of their accepted applicants multiple times with those denied/waitlisted and there would be no change in stats.) That said, however, your application would definitely stand a good a shot as possible.

With respect to your list, UT Austin is not a likely. It is very difficult to get in from OOS…many Texas residents aren’t getting in. UNC, UVA, and U. of Michigan (and UT) all have very low admittance rates for OOS students and I would classify those as less likely for acceptance.

What was your rationale for choosing these schools? There are some very urban locations, some semi-rural, some medium or small and others that are huge, they’re all over the country. I’m curious as to how you picked these and what it is you’re hoping to get out of your college experience.

[tsbna44]

I’m sure @AustenNut said it - but you have 4 safeties - Depaul, Marquette, IU and Illiniois.

Then you have reaches - UT Austin, UNC, UVA, Michigan and your reaches.

If you are good with (excited to attend) and can afford any of those first four, your list is fine.

[sgopal2]

Unweighted GPA of 4.0, does that mean you will be valedictorian? If not what is your estimated rank? Even if your school does not formally rank, they will be able to estimate. You can estimate by looking at previous naviance or SCOIR scatterplots.

Getting into Wharton is just about as difficult as getting into Harvard. So if your class rank is high enough, I think you have a decent chance. The only thing I saw missing from our ECs is something related to business/finance. You have a lot of nice service related ECs, but for Wharton something showing interest in the business world would be helpful.

Also note that just about every top applicant has “founded” their own club or nonprofit. So this is becoming more and more cliche. Just be careful in how this is framed in your application.

If your parents can afford, apply ED to Wharton. Run the net price calculator ahead of time. If not the chances of admission drops dramatically in the RD round.

[Mwfan1921]

Agree that UT-Austin, UVA, UMich and Mich are reaches. IU Kelley is a safety (assuming affordability) because you satisfy the direct admit criteria. Would you attend DePaul or Marquette over Kelley?

UIUC, if we are talking Gies, is not a safety. Could be a reach, maybe high match…admission was very competitive this year to UIUC in general, and Gies even more so.

I also agree that if Penn’s (a reach of course) NPC looks affordable to seriously consider applying ED. NPCs may not be accurate if parents are divorced, or they own a business or real estate beyond a primary home…are any of those the case for you? Here’s a link to the calculator: Net Price Calculator

The schools on your list don’t seem to have similar qualities, so I would encourage you to vet the list further. IU Kelley is a great safety to have (again assuming affordability) if you like it…that would allow for an application strategy that focuses on reaches and foregoes applying to many, if any, target schools.

One last thing I would pay attention to…at schools like UVA and UNC business school admission is not direct admit. When it comes time to apply to McIntyre and Kenan-Flagler, it is holistic admission…so even though one may have done well in classes, the schools are building a class that is balanced between male and female, racially, etc. It is not entirely in your control to gain admission at those schools, so there is some uncertainty there. Generally better to take the direct admit, but YMMV. Good luck.