Hey guys,
My stats suck. My SAT is 1420 (1470 super scored) and I have always dreamt of going to any one of the colleges I listed above. Not because of their ranking, but because I feel that I can fit in. My GPA isn’t too impressive either; it’s a 4.02 weighted and 3.75 unweighted. On SAT Subject Tests, I got 680 on Chem (taking it again) and 750 Math II.
Everything would’ve been much higher if I handled my home situation well. My uncle died the day i had two finals, which led to me failing both, bringing my grades down. I was in depression for the next month or two because we were very close. A month later, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and I had to spend much of my time taking care of her rather than focusing on school. When the summer came, I immersed myself into two summer programs: Stanford CASP and UC Davis COSMOS. As I spent time with these programs and focused on myself, I began to change and today I am a much happier and positive person now. I explained this all on my Common App and detailed how I have changed and what I plan to do with these skills in college.
I do have a lot of extracurriculars though. I was in my school’s Varsity Volleyball team from 9-12th grade (planning on doing it next semester) and I was in my school’s Varsity Cross Country Team from 9-11th grade (would’ve done it again but I have to take care of my mom right now). I co-founded three clubs in my school: Math Club, Biology Club, and a club related to educating the mass on cancers. I prepared the middle schoolers in my team for MATHCOUNTS and they all got the “Honorable Mention” award. I have a booth at a farmer’s market in my community and my club members and I educate people on the importance of mammograms (my mom’s cancer opened my eyes to a lot of things and I wanted to help others out so I did this). In 11th grade, I also raised $15,000 for patients with blood cancers (under Leukemia and Lymphoma Society). I earned the Mission Honor Roll Award. I also received the Science Department Award at my school, in recognition for my passion and creativity in science.
These low stats certainly put me at a disadvantage and I don’t know what to do now. I am applying ED at Johns Hopkins and I am seeing everyone’s stats and they are far higher than mine. These people also have a lot of impressive extracurriculars. Yes, its acceptance rate is’t too bad (31% last year), but everyone applying ED at JHU is so talented and this puts me at a weaker place. All the admitted applicants at UCLA, UCB, USC, and CMU have crazy stats and mine are nothing compared to them.
Could someone please let me know what I can do about this? Do I have a shot at any of them or not? I have safety schools in my list, but these schools are my dream schools and I really want to get in to any one of them. Any sort of advice is appreciated.