Do I have a realistic chance at getting into UPenn?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
1

Hi my name is Nikita and I was wondering if anyone could tell me if I have a realistic chance at getting into UPenn. It has always been my dream school and I would love to go there. I will be applying RD. I am a white male and reside in Russia. . I plan to apply to all of the Ivy League schools as well as Georgetown, Northwestern, Amherst. I plan to major in Finance and/or Economics/Politics. I come from a family of divorced parents. I come from a low-tier middle class family that had lost all of its wealth during the 2014 Russian Financial Crisis. Below I’ll list my credentials.

Academics:
GPA: 4.0/4.0 (unweighted)
SAT: 1520 (720 RW, 800M)
SAT specific subject:
800 Maths 2
730 Physics
670 Spanish

Extracurriculars:

Euromath (1 year)(project was nominated for awards)

Work experience at Yum!Brands (1 month)

Founded a club called ‘future entrepreneurs’ (designed to impassion kids about economics, business, politics) - 1 year

Tutor - I tutor kids at my school in math and english (Yr 11, Yr 5, Yr 9) - 1 years

Research- EPQ on the electric vehicle industry (backed by AQA)- 2 years

Spanish- 5 years learning the language + visited countries and attended fairs

Debate (economics)- 1 year

Two supervised projects on the Great Depression and the 2008 Financial Crisis which I taught to the class- 1 year

Recommendations:

One from my work experience supervisor

One from my Economics teacher

One from my Maths teacher

Essay: Personal experience and how it shaped my outlook on life (related to the crisis).

Interview: Personally, I feel that it went pretty well; even had a chance to talk about the Russian economy and public transport:)/.

2

Yes, you have a realistic chance of being admitted to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn).

3

Though there is no specific information on international enrollment by country published by the University of Pennsylvania that I’m aware of, Harvard’s Office of International Students publishes information on international student enrollment on a country-by-country basis at http://www.hio.harvard.edu/statistics which should be fairly representative of the chances at the other highly competitive schools on your application list, as they all have relatively similar international student enrollments. The Harvard data indicates that there are a total of five Russian students currently enrolled in Harvard College. That would seem to indicate that you would need to be one of the best students in your year in all of Russia to have a realistic chance of acceptance at the schools you are interested in.

4

You basically need to be the top 10 in Russia. Can you realistically say that you are one of the best students in the nation compared to your peers?

5

This is a bit overwhelming. However, few students from Russia are lucky enough to apply to the US. So, I guess that im competing against the private school kids

6

You plan to apply to all those places, or you have already applied?

If your applications are in, it is time to distract yourself. Could it happen? yes. Will it happen? absolutely nobody can tell. If it happens can you afford it? again only time will tell.

So: make a plan for the next 10 weeks. Figure out something (or a couple somethings- one at school / one at home) that you will do whenever you start wasting energy on worrying. The three usual suspects are: do something physical (cycle/run/exercise/chop wood/etc), do something that will help somebody else (a chore for an elderly neighbor) , make something (example: a student who became a surprisingly good baker in the 3 months between submitting applications & getting results).

If you have a dog, walking it while you listen to podcasts (such as ‘how to be an entrepreneur’) is a trifecta :slight_smile:

7

Out of my class, I would be 3rd (if ranked as we follow the British specification and people take different subjects). However, the two people above above me are not applying to the US

8

Thank you all. This is proving to be extremely helpful!