Chances for Columbia/Emory/Princeton/Harvard/MIT

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hi,
I'm a Junior at an esteemed public school in Pennsylvania with a record of sending students to Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and other top schools.
I want to be a math major, and my tentative list of colleges to apply to are:
Reach: Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Columbia, Emory
Match: University of Michigan, Vanderbilt, CMU
Safety: University of Pittsburgh, Penn State, Georgia Tech, Rutgers</p>

<p>If any kind posters would recommend compacting that (relatively large) list, I would greatly appreciate it!</p>

<p>Objective:
PSAT (breakdown): 77 (Math), 73 (CR), 71 (Writing); 99th percentile
SAT II: Math II - 800, World History - 660 (<em>ouch</em>)
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.85 (my weakest spot)
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): Our school only does deciles, and I'm top 10%</p>

<p>Subjective:
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):
<em>Speech and Debate (Vice-President of high school's Forensics Team)
*Extemporaneous Speaking: invited to the Catholic Forensic League grand nationals and the Tournament of Champions in Extemporaneous Speaking at Northwestern)
*Science Research: Won 1st place and the Perfect Score Award at the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Sciences, locally and statewide, and I won 2nd place at the Pennsylvania Regional Science and Engineering Fair
-I also spent roughly 80 hours contributing to the research of a Bacteriophage lab for the University of Pittsburgh
*Science Club: While I don't have an officer position now, that *may</em> change
*Math Competitions: Won the 2008 CalcuSolve contest, my team won 2nd place at the Pittsburgh Senior Math League in 2010, I was my school's grade-level champ in AMC in 2009, and in 2008 I was the state champion in the international Math Kangaroo contest
*Math Research: I am currently working with a respected professor on a math research project in the theory of ordered sets/algebraic combinatorics.</p>

<p>Job/Work Experience:
*I am a paid Calculus tutor</p>

<p>Volunteer/Community service:
*Created a volunteer organization: The Zoom Foundation (co-Founder and President) is federally recognized and has donated many gently used Wheelchairs, Walkers, and Crutches to Haiti and India.
*I tutor middle school students for standardized testing as part of a free service </p>

<p>Summer Activities:
*Summer of 2008: I was selected to attend a program in Animatronics at Robert Morris University
*Summer of 2010: I was one of 28 students selected from a pool of 175 students to Texas A&M University's Summer Mathematics Research Training in Number Theory.
*Summer of 2011: I applied to RSI (I have better chances of winning the lottery than getting in), and some other selective camps.
Ethnicity: Asian (Indian)
Gender: Male</p>

<p>I <strong>Guarantee</strong> a chance back; just post the link to your chances thread at the end of the comment.</p>

2

<p>Impressive resume, but I think race is a huge factor in their decisions and from what I know being Asian isn’t the greatest advantage.</p>

3

<p>I agree with the person above me to some extent… I think that your GPA IS strong. Your SAT2 Math is impressive and from the looks of It you will score well on the SAT.
I think that you definitely have a chance for all of these universities. Just keep doing your best in school, but also set yourself aside from the thousands of other “typical smart asian students” by showing your passion for various ECs, It looks like you are involved in a lot.</p>

<p>Best Of luck to yoU!!!</p>

<p>chance me back if you will</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/1074681-chance-me-brown.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/1074681-chance-me-brown.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

4

<p>where in pa are you from near pittsburgh?</p>

5

<p>I think you have as good a chance as anyone at Princeton, MIT, Columbia and Emory, and an extremely high chance at your stated matches. The GPA thing hopefully wont hurt you too much, the rest of your application is super strong, and they could see that as simply a minor problem. Your EC’s are incredible, I love that you started a non-profit. That kind of initiative looks amazing on college applications. Your race might hinder you some when applying to schools, and you don’t have a definite hook besides your amazing EC’s, but beyond that you have a super strong application with as high an acceptance chance as anyone else.</p>

<p>We actually have very similar lists. I’m engineering instead of math though. Chance me back?
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1102501-chance-columbia-upenn-cornell-cmu-umich-northwestern-georgia-tech-rpi.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1102501-chance-columbia-upenn-cornell-cmu-umich-northwestern-georgia-tech-rpi.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

6

<p>I am not sure how you attributed Vanderbilt as a match, but Emory as a reach. I think that you will find that Vanderbilt will likely be a more challenging admission than Emory.</p>