Female
White (Albanian, have dual citizenship).
First-generation immigrant, also first to go to a US college in my family
I speak Albanian, English, and Spanish (less fluent but still)
ACT - 34 single sitting
SAT II - 730 Biology
UW GPA - 3.85
W GPA - 4.54
APs: Biology (5), NSL (5), Spanish Language (4), English Language (4), World History (4),
Senior year schedule:
BC Calc, APES, AP Psych, AP Spanish Lit, AP English Lit, AP Physics 1, Foundations of Tech
Sports:
- JV Volleyball sophomore year
- Varsity Outdoor track sophomore year
- Varsity Cross Country junior year
(not continuing sports for the rest of high school)
Other Extracurriculars:
- Hospital Volunteer - 100+ hours
- Teacher’s Assistant at the American School of Kosova (I’ve spent this entire summer in Albania doing this)
- National Spanish Honors Society
- National English Honors Society
- National Science Honors Society
- Key Club, Unicef Club, Red Cross Club, Foreign Affairs Club, Peer Club (tutoring), Life Sciences Club, Environmental Club (there are others I’m a member of but they’re not very active)
- Won Honorable Mention at Johns Hopkins Art Contest
I’ve worked really hard on my essays (they’re all about the struggles of my immigrant family as well as my pride for my heritage) but my main concern is that I’m too high income. My family earns around 90K for a family of 5. I wrote this in the additional info section:
“My father lost his job during my freshman year of high-school after being told that his salary could be used to pay the salaries for two much younger employees. At 50 years old, no one wanted to hire him. He sent thousands of applications, finding no success. We struggled a lot as a family during this time period. My parents spoke of possibly losing the house. I suddenly became much more aware of money. I stopped going out with friends or buying new clothes, urging my siblings to do the same. Tension in the house grew very high as my parents became increasingly worried. The stress started being transferred to other aspects of life. Arguments grew more and more heated, and there were a couple months when my father lived alone in the basement because the violence he began to treat his kids with pushed my mom to try kicking him out of the house. Talks of divorce began. I had to comfort my emotionally-traumatized siblings and myself through the whole period. Our family was widely torn apart. My father was jobless for an entire year before finding a job as a paralegal. After a couple months, he was notified that he should quit because his manager was planning on firing him. Once again, he lost his job and several months of unemployment followed. However, my father has mostly repaired his relationship with the rest of the family. He has found a low-paying job as a language instructor and also teaches a course at a community college. My mother has been pushed to find a secondary, full-time summer job in order to compensate for my father’s significantly-lower salary. In this manner, my family has managed to keep its head above the water, but the sense of financial urgency still exists.”
I don’t know what the income limit would be for a family of 5 if the income limit for a family of 4 is 65K. If you divide 65K by 4 and multiply that by 5 you get 81K, but I don’t think that’s exactly how the math would work to figure out the 5-family income limit.
I was really excited about applying and am almost finished with my application, but then I started reading the stats of finalists and ALL of them are extremely low income. Kinda bummed…
