Chances for Huntsman/Wharton?

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
1

<p>Hey everyone and thanks for any sort of help or constructive criticism. It's my first time and I'm not sure if it's annoying to post on this board for chances.</p>

<p>I would like to apply for the following schools:
U Penn, Huntsman Program IS&B (ED, with Wharton second choice)
Stanford
Harvard
Brown
Princeton
Yale</p>

<p>GPA/Rank:
My school only calculates unweighted GPA and uses that to rank.
Unweighted: 4.0
Rank 1/538 (30 other people share the rank)
Weighted: I'm not really sure. I took all the honors classes (english, math, science) i could every year. I took all weighted classes my junior year. </p>

<p>Competitive high school in Bay Area, CA. </p>

<p>SAT I:
780 CR
780 Math
710 Writing (I might retake Nov if the writing score will hurt my chances.)</p>

<p>Superscore: 2270</p>

<p>SAT II:
800 Math2C (11th)
800 Chinese w/ Listening (11th)
750 Physics (11th)
750 Chemistry (10th)</p>

<p>AP:
Statistics 5 (11th)
Physics B 5 (11th)
Chinese 5 (10th)
US History 4 (11th)
French Language 4 (10th)
French Literature 4 (11th)</p>

<p>I took the corresponding AP class offered at my school for every test.</p>

<p>Currently taking:
AP Calc BC
AP Psych
Weight Training (fulfill PE req)
AP Bio
Government/Econ (AP/honors not offered at my school)
AP English Lit</p>

<p>EC:
- I am involved with a program called McCullum Youth Court in Oakland, CA. It's a youth-run restorative justice alternative to the traditional juvenile retributive system. There are three niches (attorney, bailiff, clerk), and together the program takes on cases for first-time youth offenders. The attorneys (pros. and def.) go up and present the cases to a jury of peers who decide a sentence (workshops and service hours) for the YO who has already admitted guilt. The bailiffs keep order in the courtroom and help the jury in the deliberation room. The clerks help the judge and read the statements, etc. (Sorry if that was kinda long, I've just gotten into a habit of explaining it, lol.)</p>

<p>Anyway, I'm the Sr. Lead of the attorney niche. With the Sr. Lead Bailiff and Sr. Lead Clerk, I help run the Leadership meetings for the program's participants (lead attorneys, lead bailiffs, lead clerks) and also the meetings for the attorney niche. The leadership are in charge of helping/mentoring the Bona Fide/Associate Attorneys and the Basic Law Trainees. Leadership is also a paid position that you can work up to from what is originally community service.</p>

<p>I'm also the Treasurer/Fund and Resource Development Committee chair for the programs Youth Board, which sort of governs over leadership, and I'm also a Youth Representative for the Executive Board of McCullum Youth Court, which is basically made up of the adults who supervise/administrate the program. I also run other meetings so I think the program as whole gave me a lot of practice with public speaking (presenting cases on court nights) and leadership.</p>

<p>I spend like 16 hrs/week year-round for the program, and I have to commute 2 hrs a day to go, lol. (Sorry again that it was so long, lol, I'm just so used to promoting it that I just do it without thinking about it. If anyone in SF Bay Area is interested, the website is McCullum</a> Youth Court - Home .)</p>

<ul>
<li><p>I'm also the president for my school's French Club. It's not a hardcore volunteer club or anything, but I'm pretty much in charge of planning and forcing the other officers to put together fun activities (e.g. cheese festivals, dinners, potlucks)</p></li>
<li><p>I used to be really interested in medicine and health, so I was the Treasurer for a club called Medical Explorers, that was funded by a hospital in my area. It basically gets doctors to come in as speakers for meetings and helps give youth in the community a sense of what it's like to be a doctor. We also had field trips to different labs (cath lab, pathology lab, gamma knife). I've sort of changed interests and become less involved with the club. I'm still the Activities Coordinator for the club this year though.</p></li>
<li><p>My best friend and I were team captains for Relay for Life this summer for American Cancer Society. While some people might not think it's that big, we got some friends and ran around collecting donations and got sponsorships for the event. We spent a few weeks last summer on this and raised around $4,000. </p></li>
</ul>

<p>I also had past experience with raising money. Last year, during the whole China snowstorm thing, I got a few friends, raised awareness of the disaster, and raised $2,000 for the victims. </p>

<ul>
<li><p>I was in a few Chinese speech contests when i was a freshman/sophomore. It wasn't anything too big (CLTAC) but I got 2nd places and honorable mentions. I wrote an essay in chinese, memorized it, and recited it as a speech for the contest, in case anyone wasn't familiar with this stuff.</p></li>
<li><p>I also entered one of my Chinese essays for a People's Daily Newspaper Overseas Youth Essay contest (It's a Chinese essay contest for all international youth/youth not in China). I got 1st place in my division and won a small cash prize. I think the essay was also later published in one of the issues.</p></li>
<li><p>I wrote another Chinese essay for a contest held by a Shanghai-based organization called Overseas Bridge my sophomore year. I got 2nd place and it was pretty cool because they paid for a trip to go to China with the winners. I met a lot of international youth and made a few really good friends. The trip that we won was just a week-long vacation though.</p></li>
<li><p>I started a small tutoring business last summer with my friend, who graduated and also coincidentally went to Penn. I was more in charge of publicity and management, but the program was a workshop for critical reading and writing skills for 6th-8th graders. I was able to earn a bit of extra cash outside of my normal job at Youth Court.</p></li>
<li><p>I am a black belt in Wushu (Chinese martial arts) and was on the wushu team at last my kung fu school. I was an assistant teacher for my old kung fu school and it was my first (under-the-table) job when I was like 13 or 14. I quit towards the end of my sophomore year though because I had a recurrent shoulder injury. After dislocating my shoulder the first time in kung fu early freshman year, I went on to doing it again during swim team practice, and later like 3 more times in kung fu. Towards the end (sophomore year) I was going in for like 3 weeks, tearing my shoulder ligaments and sitting out for a month, going back, etc. Eventually the doctor said to just stop and get surgery when I'm older, so I went on to do other stuff like Youth Court. It kinda sucks though cause I started it when I was like 8. I tried taichi for a little while after I quit, but ultimately I stopped. </p></li>
<li><p>I played violin for almost 7 years (8-14). I took the ABRSM test and passed level 7 out of 8. I was also involved in orchestra, but I eventually quit because I felt like I wasn't putting in enough time and effort in the practice to make it worthwhile. (I probably won't mention violin.)</p></li>
<li><p>I've been a health nut for a few years so aside from trying to eat healthy, I go to the gym a lot (except not recently :X). It's still a considerable amount of time though because I enjoy exercise and I feel lazy since I quit kung fu.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>Thanks for reading through this and bearing with me. I love to talk about myself and I usually talk a lot (or that's what my friends say), lol, so that's probably why it's so long. </p>

<p>Even though it's the Penn board, I would appreciate any chances for the other schools I've listed as well.</p>

2

<p>i’m kinda looking into business or corporate/international civil law.</p>

3

<p>First of all, you definitely need some safety schools.</p>

<p>Your academics is solidly above average. Your extracurriculars are very diverse but almost a little bit all over the place. How do you even manage the time, haha? I would say definitely slim down your extracurriculars to only your most dedicated ones, because for some of them it honestly seemed like you just listed them to impress other people. But I personally would think that there is a great shot for you at Wharton. Huntsman is a bit of a reach (but honestly, it’s a reach for everyone), but go for it.</p>

4

<p>well, I live in CA so I didn’t mention this but I’m applying to a lot of the UC’s. I would probably think of them as match/safety. It’s more because my parents and I wouldn’t want to have to foot the bill for a private school education if it’s not better than berkeley/la.</p>

<p>and about the ec’s. i’m not sure if i explained very well, but it spans over a lot of time. i mentioned that i stopped some of the major ones (kung fu, violin) and kinda explained the reason. What happened was that after I got this recurrent shoulder injury, I had to give up some of the stuff and I found new stuff to do. So no, lol, I’m not doing ALL that ALL the time. The random speech contests and essays aren’t something I do everyday. It’s just that once in a while, usually summer, I do something like that for a contest or something.</p>

<p>What I actually do right now is Youth Court, French Club, and Medical Explorers. I’m pretty busy but it’s manageable because the two clubs aren’t like extremely intense. I probably spend like 3-5 hrs on the clubs every week depending on what’s going on and like 16 hrs at work. </p>

<p>The Chinese-related stuff might be kinda random but I want Chinese as my target language for Huntsman, so I’m trying to sort of explain how I’ve done more than just take classes.</p>

<p>Thanks for your reply though, I really don’t want to come off as someone who’s making stuff up for the section and I need to like explain it and direct it better probably.</p>

5

<p>Are you a native speaker of Chinese? I don’t really think you need much more than that. Huntsman is just looking for intermediate proficiency, and if you can score 800 on the Chinese SAT IIs, it’s sufficient.</p>

6

<p>Yeah I’m a native speaker, I guess, but I basically lived my whole life here. Well, I try to do more than what I guess is needed because many of the people at my school are Chinese and can all pull off good SAT2 chinese scores. However, I wouldn’t say any of us, save maybe the fobs who came in high school, are actually proficient enough to really uhm, appear Chinese, you know? I know that there will be classes down the line, but there is just no way that you can put any 800 Sat chinese kid in China and have him/her pass off as a native or understand enough of the idioms and stuff in the language. </p>

<p>Basically I think many people have a grasp of the basics of the language, but to really be part of the culture and people, it takes a lot more “literacy” because there are just too many expressions that you wouldn’t pick up here without extra practice. </p>

<p>lol, sorry, it’s kinda early and i’m not sure if I’m really making any sense.</p>