Chance Me: Yale, Stanford, Brown, Penn, UMich, Carnegie Mellon, WashU, USC

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

DEMOGRAPHICS: Asian Male (lol… i tried to differentiate myself as much as possible tho) TX, regular public school, low-income, LGBTQ

MAJOR: Design, Art Practice, Media Studies

STATS:

  • ACT: 33

GPA/RANK:

  • UW: 3.9
  • W: 97.65/100
  • Rank: top 7% (500 students)

COURSEWORK:

  • freshman all honors
  • sophomore: 1 AP World History and 3 honors
  • junior: 4 APs (physics, us history, art, lang) and 1 honor
  • senior: 7 APs (stats, gov, psych, art, macro, lit, environmental science)

AWARDS:

  • National Honor Society
  • AP Art student of the Year
  • Academic Excellence
  • 2x regional art medalist
  • AP Scholar with Honor
    *Mu Alpha Theta

EC’s:

  • Art (9-12): participated in contests and gallery shows, and practiced independently
  • Print magazine (11-12): creator and editor in chief of printed magazine highlighting underrepresented groups. i work with team to advertise, publish, and print magazine to sell to students. this was my biggest ec
  • President of National Art Honor Society (10-12): organize workshops, gallery shows, and building positive community of student artists and inspire creativity
  • Peer Tutor (11-12): Weekly tutoring sessions through community outreach program for organizations such as English Honor Society and Rho Kappa
  • Work (11-12): Restaurant server and cashier
  • Event Coordinator for Art Organization (12): contact with local organizations to promote art at community events and give presentation to middle schoolers about a career in the arts at career fairs
  • Architecture Pre College program (11)
  • Piano (9-10)

ESSAYS:

  • common app (8/10): talked about how i saw little representation in media growing up leading me to create the magazine and how i changed as a person and artist because of it
  • supplements (7/10): spent much less time but not the worst
  • lor (6/10): probably very basic

SAFETY

  • UH
  • UTD

Low Match

  • UT Austin

High Match

  • Carnegie Mellon
  • Northeastern
  • Occidental
  • George Washington
  • WashU
  • USC

Reach

  • Brown
  • Penn
  • Stanford
  • Yale
  • UMich
2

Your delusional if you think Carnegie Mellon, USC, and WashU are matches.

3

At least a couple of your “High Match” schools are well in to the reach category.

Pretty much all highly selective schools are reaches for all applicants (except for the usual suspects: recruited athletes, legacy, donor, etc.) even those with near perfect stats.

33 ACT doesn’t help at CMU where ACT is 33/35 25th/75th percentile.
At schools with <20% acceptance rates like WashU, even an ACT right in the middle of the 25th/75th percentile doesn’t make it a match.

The weakest part of your application at the reach schools - assuming your assessments are correct - are your essay, supplement and LORs - hopefully, you were overly harsh.

LORs support and put your achievements in context. “(6/10): probably very basic” won’t help.

Supplements are very important when you’re applying with a declared interest in art and design: “supplements (7/10): spent much less time but not the worst” is not encouraging.

Essays are an opportunity to distinguish yourself from the field, which is particularly important when your stats are middle of the road - at best - at the reach schools.

4

-Agree that a number of your high match schools are really reach schools.
-Have you run net price calculator to determine that all the schools appear affordable?
-I’d put UT into the high match since (I believe) you are not an auto-admit (top 6% is auto admit).
-Agree with your safety schools.