Chances at Harvard, Yale, Brown, Stanford, UChicago or Northwestern?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hey, I am David Lee, and I go to an international school in South Korea, while I also have a Korean citizenship.

I have 3.9 unweighted GPA overall, 1600 SAT, with 8,8,8 writing. I got 800 for Math II, World History and Literature for subject tests.

I have been a part of the student council since my freshmen year, becoming the all school vice president in my junior year, and president in my senior year.

I have founded a club, called KACLC club(our high school only has 190 students, so it was somewhat difficult to start this). KACLC is an abbreviation for Korean Association of Children Leukemia and Cancer. The club was a supporting group for all of those ill children. We made little plays together, socializing and making their wishes come true(ex. getting an iphone). Eventually our school and the association made an MOU agreement!

I have travelled many time with MUN, becoming the secretariat of competitions(both in-school and outside school), also won many awards for acting and duet acting in Forensics.

Speaking of acting, I do have a great interest in the field. I have acted in a local theater, and of course in the school productions. I eventually got into an acting institute, which not only strengthened my skills, but allowed me to star in small films as main roles, and a sidekick role in a big movie in Korea. I also appeared as extras, and once, got an actual role in one of the Korean dramas.

I am also a writer. I have published a 400 page novel, which won an international award. My friend and I have co-written a screenplay together, which we submitted to a film festival held in Seoul.
That said, I also do have a genuine interest in journalism, which made me become the editor in chief for our school magazine and for student journalists of Cosmopolitan Korea.

I have worked in a movie theatre for a while, which allowed me to watch so many movies for free!(that is going to be one of the stories I will tell in my essay).

I have played in the varsity basketball team since my sophomore year, and volunteered for a charity baseball competition for the same number of years.

Lastly, I was a part of a project called “Project Together”, where many aspiring teenage writers come together and aim to write a quality thesis together. And they publish them. Therefore, I have three published thesis – two about politics, and one about psychology. I also got a scholarship of 3,000,000 won(around 3000 dollars) in total for an “outstanding leadership”.

Do I have a chance at any of these schools? I definitely understand that they would be a reach for me.

FYI, I have taken GED for Korean curriculum, so I am planning to also apply for a few Korean universities too.

Also, I got a B in English in my freshmen year, which dropped my freshmen GPA to be 3.875. Would this drag me down?

Thank you very much guys. I will appreciate any of your responses.

2

One B will not drag you down. It is comforting to see that you have a significant amount of leadership and concentration in the arts for your extracurriculars. It should go without saying that your academics are amazing. While it is a crapshoot for everyone, I would say that you have a pretty good shot of getting into at least one of those colleges. Good luck to you.

3

Harvard is still a reach. Many perfect stat applicants ae still denied.

4

Your B in English during freshman year will not drag you down. Of that I am 100% certain.

Beyond that, who knows? Your stats are very fine. As usual, much will depend on your essays and recommendations, neither of which we will be reading.

Good luck.

5

Congratulations on your accomplishments. However in speaking of Harvard which possesses a tiny international admit rate, please look here:

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1420290-chance-threads-please-read-before-posting-one.html

6

Wow! I am no admission officer, but you seem competitive. Just to clarify, you’re entering your senior year? What was/is your class schedule like. How well do you know your teachers/counselors, and what they will say about you? You’re nto going to be able to include everything you have done, EC wise, so start thinking about what you want to highlight.

7

I agree with the above two posters in the sense that you must be very aware of just how competitive Harvard is. However, I found your accomplishments to be most unusually high level, somewhat unique (especially for a South Korean applicant) and very appealing. I think you have a much better chance than most. Your scores and grades are excellent, so that box will be checked off, meaning that you need to now focus on how to present yourself. What is most important? What is most meaningful to write about so that your personality becomes clear?

Think of writing your app as though you’re carving marble into a statue. Write and structure, then edit and edit and revise and perfect and revise some more and make your essays more fluid and make sure you nail your writing and presentation until the marble is polished and someone could look at the application and know it’s you without seeing your name (much like a bust or statue).

Good luck to you! I think you will get into many fine universities inside and outside of the US if you send good applications to all of them. Your position is an enviable one.

8

Let’s see . . .

You have nearly perfect grades and test scores, and great English. You are student council president at your small school. You founded a club (why does everyone found a club?) to help kids with cancer, but you also worked as a translator with the local arm of an international NGO. You are a varsity athlete. You are a published author, both on your own and in collaboration with others. You edit the school paper and also work for Cosmopolitan. You had a paying job working at a movie theater. And . . . you are a professional film actor with both lead roles in small films and supporting roles in large ones. (And you share the – pretty common – name of a successful Korean young actor.)

It’s too much. Too many of those things take a lot of time to do well. One person could do a couple of them, maybe three, legitimately. But all 8? It really strains credulity. Even if you are basically telling the truth, I think probably you are massively puffing some of this. I also think if there’s any truth to it you likely had a very great deal of adult assistance with some of the projects.

People are going to have a hard time believing you are really Superman, and not a composite of four or five different individuals, or an expensively manufactured caricature of an ideal applicant. That will be your biggest hurdle: you story isn’t credible. Admissions officers who would be bowled over by half of it will feel very nervous about accepting the whole thing and possibly rewarding fraud. And once someone starts doubting any part of it, he has to doubt every part of it. The B you got freshman year in English doesn’t go anywhere near far enough to make this believable.

If you are a real person and not someone’s idea of a joke, I urge you to figure out how to present yourself honestly and credibly.

9

Then do you have any tips that you can give me?

I have spent a great amount of time working on all these extracurriculars, and I do feel genuinely hurt that these accomplishments will ironically drag me down.

What should I do then?

10

Hello David,

I first advise that you be a little more careful with your information on online forums.

As other have said, your B will have minimal impact. All parts of your app seem great. One suggestion is to focus your app on one particular passion, if you can. It seems like schools favor applicants with one focused passion, rather than being all over the place.

11

I have taken a full DP program.

My classes were: English A, Korean A, Chemistry, Theatre, History HL, Math SL

12

@JHS If any or all of it is fake then all he is, is hurting himself. I’m not sure what good it would do to attempt to impress an internet forum, especially at this length. So if its fabricated, the answers he receives will be fabricated and untrue of what he’d actually receive from a university.

13

I consider myself more street smart than book smart. I knew this post was bul*#hit before I finished it. I remember another fake post in which the applicant was considering Wellesley college and was a Football player. Come on people, the B would have given him a 3.83, not a 3.875.

14

I don’t question your honesty at all. I do agree with someone who said you need to be careful in some of your wording. What do you mean by thesis? What do you mean by published and are they accessible online? To have three different, published thesis and a 400 page published novel in the U.S. by a high school junior is questionable by my interpretation of those words.

These are rhetorical questions for your consideration and do not require a reply. My suggestion is to be cautious about the terminology you use on your college applications.

15

OP is almost certainly not being honest. It really confounds me as to why someone would do so elaborately on a freaking college entrance forum, of all places, though, and I’m really curious about your motives for doing so. A few of the most obvious things that point in this direction include: the fact that your unweighted GPA is 3.9 even though you only got a B freshman year (it would be much higher), basic grammatical mistakes despite claiming to have written an internationally reclaimed 400-page novel (coincidentally), the fact that a Korean GED doesn’t exist (the international GED only applies to US high schools), the fact that Cosmopolitan (of all magazines…) doesn’t have a student journalism department, much less one that you can apply to be editor in chief, the fact that “Project Together” is for “teen writers” despite publishing theses on math and science based stuff like politics and psychology, the fact that you claim to be a sidekick in a major movie despite not appearing on any South Korean film and move databases. If you are a real person but just massively exaggerated your stats for collegeconfidential cred, I apologize for the hostile nature of this message, but it’s really hard believing many of the things that you’re saying.

16

I don’t think you will be admitted to any of the schools. What are your matches and safeties?

17

^ Those are all highly selective schools and you are an international applicant, which makes them even more difficult to get into. Make sure you include some matches and safeties, as @ClarinetDad16 advised.

18

Come on, our school has only six subjects that are included in GPA calculation. I got a B in English, A- in history and A in all other subjects. That calculates as 3.875, sir.

19

@Akqj10 Come on, our school has only six subjects that are included in GPA calculation. I got a B in English, A- in history and A in all other subjects. That calculates as 3.875, sir.

20

UChciago and Northwestern are definitely totally possible.