Do I have any hope?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

I try to avoid chance me type of posts and obviously none of you are the admissions committee and can’t give me an accurate chance but I’m just curious to hear other people’s opinions (whether they’re good or bad). The schools I’m waiting to hear from are Cornell, U of Pennsylvania, Brown and Duke. How likely do you think it is that I will be accepted to one?

SAT I: 2260 (800M, 670CR, 790W) superscored (the two individual ones were 2200 and 2140)
ACT: 34 (36M, 35E, 33S, 32R, 10/12 essay) all from same date
SAT II: 800 math 2, 780 chemistry
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.95ish
Rank: 5/300
AP: stats (5)
Senior Year Course Load: AP calc BC, AP chem, AP comp science, AP psych, honors physics, honors Spanish 4, honors philosophy
Awards: Rensselaer medal, high scorer at a few math meets, achievement awards in several classes, National Honor Society, World Language Honor Society

Extracurriculars: club gymnastics for 11 years, high school gymnastics team, high school math team (co-captain), state math team, tutoring in math, volunteering through NHS, Spanish club, ultimate frisbee, all-star cheer

Essays: My philosophy teacher liked all of them. My common app was about gymnastics and basically falling and trying again. Some parts were funny and I think it showed my personality well. Brown and Duke had supplemental essays along the lines of the world you come from so I had an essay about being from Crimea that I though was really good.

Teacher Recommendations: One was from my AP stats teacher. He is also our school math team coach and one of the coaches of the state math team so I hope he had a decent amount to say and think the letter should have been good. Second was from my Spanish teacher of the last two years. She likes me so it was hopefully good. I talked to her about being from Crimea, Russia and speaking Russian/visiting my family in Russia so hopefully she mentioned some of that in her rec otherwise it would be fairly generic.
Counselor Rec: I talked to her about it and it seemed like it was good. We have over 300 people in our grade so the counselor doesn’t know me super well but she seemed fairly impressed with me so I hope it wasn’t too generic.
Additional Rec: My gymnastics coach wrote me a recommendation. She’s known me for 11 years so I would hope it was good.

Other:
Ethnicity: white
Gender:female
Income Bracket: 100k+
Born in Crimea, speak Russian at home and English is my second language

Acceptances: Honors College of UMD, RPI (with $25k merit award for being a Rensselaer medalist)
Rejections: MIT (saw that coming… oh well), Northeastern (yikes, did not see that one coming quite as much as the MIT rejection)

2

Your GPA and test scores certainly seem to make it into the 4 colleges you are waiting for.

However as you know, most of these selective colleges are pretty much random at this point unless you are a recruited athlete, etc. I think you have a fair shot at perhaps Cornell out of the 4.

Good luck with everything, as a senior last year, I know the waiting process sucks especially as the results date get closer.

Also for Northeastern its probably the “Tufts Syndrome” don’t worry about that.

3

Are you a US citizen or green card holder?

4

@intparent US citizen.
@thecoolboy1234 Thanks! Ugh Cornell would be great but I am trying to keep my hopes low…

5

Your weakness seems to be your CR score, as you probably know. But you have an interesting application, too, so that could help. No one can give you actual chances, of course – no one out here has any idea how the admissions committees will view a given application. Sounds like you have a couple of solid acceptances already in case you don’t get any more good news in March. Good luck!

6

@intparent Yeah CR is kinda rough… Brown does not require all scores so I only sent my ACT and subject tests to them, but sadly had to send everything to Cornell, Penn and Duke. Thank you!!

7

I completely agree with @thecoolboy1234 about Northeastern being a case of the Tufts’ Syndrome… It’s evident that they’re trying to move up in rankings, and they think someone of your caliber has a chance some of those great schools you listed, so good in fact that they rejected you. They’d probably claim it was a lack of demonstrated interest, which NEU uses to help protect its yield rates… Don’t worry too much about that school, and don’t use it as an indicator of your acceptance potential at other schools.

You’ve clearly got the stats and the ECs. Unfortunately, though, some of admissions can appear to be luck-based. And depending on your major, you may want to pursue a Master’s Degree, in which case your undergrad institution won’t matter nearly as much. If you live in state, then UMD would be a fantastic option; there’s no doubt you can graduate with a very high GPA and then work to a great grad school. RPI is fantastic too–the only reason I didn’t apply is because I ran out of time lol.

Best of luck with the rest of your colleges!! Only 14 days 'til Ivy Day :D.

8

@misterdjl Thank you!! Congrats on the NEU acceptance and good luck with all your other schools, I think you have a good chance of being accepted to at least one!

14 painful days…

9

Figured I’d post an update in case anyone stumbles upon this thread in the future… I was accepted to Cornell and rejected everywhere else. Out of my five rejections, I’m only a tad bit bitter about MIT bc it’s the only place I would’ve gone to over Cornell anyways but oh well, still psyched about Cornell! :slight_smile: