Harvard, John Hopkins, Cornell, Cornell... chances?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi, everyone please look at my portfolio and estimate my chances~ thanks!

Race: Asian
Gender: Female
Major: Applying to STEM, related to biology or medicine
International student (both Canadian citizenship and Taiwanese citizenship)

High School Courses:
IB diploma program: HL chemistry, HL biology, HL English, SL math, SL history, SL Chinese, TOK
AP ( took them independently by online course in CTY and has transcripts with score A- or A): AP stat (5), AP bio (4) (took in 9th grade), AP microeconomics (5), AP computer science (haven’t take test yet), AP macroeconomics (haven’t take test yet)

SAT II: a 770 (Bio M) and 800 (math II)

ACT: 33 and a superscore of 34

ACT writing: 23 (very low I know)

ECs:

  1. Government sponsored program for talented student in biology in Academia Sinica:
    Explanation: A 2 years super competitive program in Taiwan, total of 60 members, get in via passing a contest and an interview with 6 professors. Academia Sinica is Taiwan’s national research centre. Class representative in this program.
  2. Research in a plant’s molecular biology lab for 1.5 years:
    Spending almost all my time inside there. Get in as a part of the program in the 1. point.
    I was very lucky. I was taught hand by hand by a university teacher about molecular biology. (She taught me while she is doing her research that is about to publish)
  3. Community service club president:
    Initiated 1 long term program. Leader of another long term program program. Leader and planner of many one day activities.
  4. Science Club president:
    Lab activities and responsible for organising school tours (audience range from government officials to elementary students)
  5. Don’t do sports but often hikes (because I like identifying species, especially plants)
  6. Open an online store and earned a lot by working two days a year. Donated those money.

Competitions and Awards:

  1. Prudential Service Award winner:
    National finalists (top 30 from 5000+ candidates)
  2. Regional Science Fair first place:
    There’s no concept of " state" in Taiwan. The regional science fair has three rounds.
  3. National Science Fair (participant, result not announced yet):
    3… China’s national Brain Bee first prize
    4… International Brain Bee:
    representative to International Brain Bee.
  4. Representative of Southern Taiwan in the national education forum:
    This forum select representatives from each regions. Representatives are responsible for giving governmental policy advice to education minister of Taiwan in national forum. (The policies actually will become true)
  5. Conrad spirit of Innovation Challenge:
    Summit diplomat, made a presentation in Kennedy space center.
  6. Regional Student contest of Art exhibition:
    Award of excellent.

Other:

  1. Meet with president of Taiwan in presidential palace for outstanding contribution in community service.
  2. Meet with education minister of Taiwan for governmental policy advice.

Recommendation letter:

  1. Both very strong recommendation letters from the two teachers. Both understand me well and probably going to suggest I’m the best student they ever see. However, one of the teacher doesn’t master in English writing.
  2. A recommendation letter from the superintendent of the school (he replaced the position of my college counsellor)
  3. A extra recommendation letter from a research fellow (the instructor of the lab I’m researching at), he was the director of the whole research centre

Considerations:

  1. I have a very low ACT writing score, however, I’m probably going to have a very high IB English HL score (A+ on the first semester)

College I’m applying to:

  1. Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, John Hopkins, Cornell, UC San Diego, etc.
  2. Universities in Canada such as Toronto, McGill, and Queen’s
  3. School that offers me scholarship. RPI already offered me one.
2

Oh, and also Rice university

3

Forgot to post GPA:
My GPA: unweighted (if A+ is 4.33): 4.20 (above half of my courses are A+)
Weighted: dk, never calculated, but I take IB diploma
Rank: top 1% of the grade

4

Jesus christ this is amazing- you should honestly not have a problem getting into at least one of these schools.

5

wow, that’s really cool. As an international at Ivies, it will be hard for anyone to get accepted… But congrats on your achievements! Great chances for colleges in your own country

6

@worhexiz
Thanks for your respond! Yeah, that’s true. Sometimes I will get into a struggle to either going to Canada or United States since I think I would get more opportunities as a native student in Canada. However, I just recently decided to apply to both and leave the decision to myself later.

7

@hyungiwosotha
Thanks for your respond! And yeah, hopefully that would happen~~~

8

It’s very difficult to gain entry to HPS as an international. That said, you appear to be a top-notch applicant, so you at least have a shot.

I think you’re going to be very competitive at Cornell and JHU, UCSD even more so. I’d recommend maybe a couple more schools from the Cornell-JHU peer group: Penn, Duke, Dartmouth, Brown, Northwestern… and extending that group a bit yields Rice, Washington U, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Emory, and Carnegie-Mellon. All of the above are very strong.

You have Canadian citizenship, so the Canadian schools you listed should be match-range schools for you, maybe even safeties. I can’t imagine you failing to be admitted to at least one of them.

And if you like and can afford RPI, it looks like you are covered there, which is good.

9

@prezbucky
Thank you for you helpful reply! JHU is one of my dream school so I’m definitely planning to apply. Yeah, I’m thinking about Duke, Brown, Northwestern, Rice and Emory also, however, I need to research more about programs, opportunities, majors, and professors more before making the decision. (So I should definitely start researching now…) For Canadian schools, I’m looking forward for several special programs which are much more competitive.

10

With a 23 ACT Writing score you would be denied at McGill. no subscore can be lower than 24.

11

@TomSrOfBoston
Thanks! However, I also have a score that composite score is 30 with writing 24. I guess I’ll just submit two scores.