Chances

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hi I am a rising senior and I don't really know what colleges I should be looking at/have a decent chance of getting into, and if anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it if you could share it with me.</p>

<p>First, I want to major in Business (undecided as to any specific field).</p>

<p>Here are my stats as of junior year:</p>

<p>Asian - Chinese - U.S. Permanent Resident, emigrated at age 5
Income Bracket $100,000-$130,000
GPA: 3.618 UW (School has a relatively difficult grading system, 94-100 =A (4.0), 90-93 = B+ (3.5) etc, no bonus for honors classes, +0.5 for each AP.
Rank: based on UW GPA, top 10-20%?
Class size: approximately 600
SAT: 2220 (730 M, 760 W, 730 CR 12 E)
ACT: 32 (35 Reading, 34 Math, 33, Writing, 29 Science (lol))
AP: 5s on AP Bio AP World, Taking AP USH, AP English Language this year.
ECs:</p>

<p>Member of American MENSA since age 15 (does that count?)
National History Day 2nd place regionals, 2nd place states (Illinois), nothing at nationals
Ecology Club VP-environmental projects, etc.
Web Design Club founder/vp-pretty much volunteer website designs
Swim team 2 years
Recently started an investment group with a classmate, so far mainly investing for friends, net worth is about $12,000 with about a 12% monthly return, operated over TDAmerittrade, I spend about 20 hours/week researching for and managing it
Volunteered for the obama campaign last year for about 2 months, about 10 hours/week.
Orchestra 6 years, violin
American Red Cross Club
Science Olympiad
National Youth Leadership Conference
School Literary Magazine Business Manager - keep track of sales, manage funds etc.</p>

<p>Awards:
nothing major, National Merit Semifinalist, National History day (above), Science Olympiad regionals 2nd place in 2 events (environmental chemistry/ecology), National Scholar Medalist (from National youth leadership conference)</p>

<p>Assuming my essays and recs are good?</p>

2

<p>There was a thread recently on the benefit of stating the Mensa membership. The consensus was that colleges do not care about someone’s IQ, and that it could come across as elitist.</p>

<p>I don’t know where you should apply, but you would have good chances at many schools. Your UW GPA would be the main factor holding you back.</p>

3

<p>Okay thanks for the advice. Should I include Mensa under EC’s on my applications if I volunteer sometimes for them by helping in administering tests etc.? Also, can you give me some specific reach/match/safety schools that I should be looking at? Thanks again</p>

4

<p>lol my school grades on the same system yours does ( 95 - 100 = A, and no bonus for honors classes) so i can totally empathize…even so, though, the slightly low GPA is going to hurt you at a lot of places, imo…obviously the top schools like harvard, yale, stanford, etc are going to be high reaches for you, esp cuz your ECs are solid but not outstanding. you could probably get in at a lot of the UCs tho, like UCLA, Berkeley, etc. UChicago would be a reach as would Northwestern, Cornell, Duke, etc…top schools like that.
where do you live? most likely your state university would be a good safety.</p>

5

<p>I live in Illinois, I’m fairly confident about my chances for UIllinois at Urbana Champaign (did a summer camp there and its a decent school) so I thought that’d be my safety…any ideas how to improve ECs? GPA will most likely be around 3.7-3.8 after junior year is done, I have a 3.9 or so UW this year, freshman year was what really messed me up. I have a upward trend though, 3.2something---->4.0 (2APs 1 honors)------>3.9something(2 APs 2 honors)</p>