Honest Chances at Columbia, Duke, Brown, Cornell, etc...

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi guys. I’m a senior at a decently competitive high school in St. Louis, MO. I would love it if I could have some feedback about my chances of being admitted to the following schools:

Columbia University - Applied ED
University of Southern California (clear #2 right now)
Duke University
Cornell University
Brown University
Harvard University (don’t expect it, but why not, right?)
Stanford University (again, don’t expect it)
University of Pennsylvania (planning on doing Jerome Fisher Program)
University of Miami (applied EA because of Stamps Leadership Scholarship)
Yale University
Washington University (St. Louis)

NOTE: I know that all of these schools are extremely competitive and I know I need more safety and match schools. Right now, the only safeties I have are University of Alabama (accepted w/ full tuition), University of Missouri - Columbia (don’t know how I feel about it with the recent events, haha), and Miami (OH). SO, if anyone has any suggestions on where else I could apply as a safety or match, please help me out!

I plan on majoring in some business field (probably economics or finance) or computer science. Both in cases like Penn and USC’s BACS program.

Here are some of my credentials:

Gender: M
Ethnicity: Uzbek (white? Asian?)
State: MO
Income Bracket: <50k

GPA: 4.0 UW / 4.65 W (weighted should be 5.0 this semester)

Class Rank: 2/360ish

ACT: 32
Math: 29 :frowning:
Reading: 30
Science: 34
English: 35

SAT: Not taken
SAT II: Not taken (couldn’t afford)

Senior Year Courses:

AP Calculus AB (BC did not fit into my schedule)
AP Gov
Computer Science Applications (one of 37 schools piloting this course, it’s an Android app development course)
CC English 4 (College course offered by Saint Louis University)
AP Bio
AP Physics
Study Hall

Junior Year Courses:

AP Chemistry (3 on exam)
AP Computer Science (5 on exam)
Honors Pre-Calculus
Physics 1
CC French 4 (College credit class taken through University of Missouri - Saint Louis)
Modern US History
Honors English 3

ECs/Actitivies:

  • Football - 4 years (2 years Varsity, team captain this year)
  • Varsity track - 4 years (team captain junior and senior year. Qualified for districts all four years)
  • DECA - 3 years (qualified for state and nationals sophomore year, state junior year, state and nationals senior year)
  • STUCO - 4 years (chair of store committee: help run the STUCO store during lunches)
  • FBLA - 2 years
  • French National Honor Society - 3 years
  • Youth Group Leader at a local mosque
  • Developing an app with three other students that enhances restaurant experience for customers (very detailed but don't want to get too much into it)
  • Participating in Washington University's Idea Bounce in April 2016 (think Shark Tank)
  • Debate - 2 years (undefeated record woo!)

Leadership/Honors/Awards:

  • DECA chapter president
  • DECA District Vice President (I preside over 17 chapters in the STL area. Only position available but it’s called VP)
  • STUCO Store Committee Chair
  • Football and Track team captain (bunch of awards for these two)
  • Football and Track Academic All-Conference
  • Football and Track Varsity Letter
  • Taking a pilot Android app development course
  • Took first APCS course offered at my high school
  • 3rd place at Webster University Programming Challenge
  • AP Scholar (if it counts for anything)
  • Outstanding Math Student (basically selected as best math student out of my whole class)
  • Outstanding English Student
  • Outstanding French Student

Those are all of my “traditional” achievements and such. However, my counselor mentioned that I should add my languages, as well.

Uzbek: read, write, speak (Born and raised in Uzbekistan, immigrated to US at 7)
Russian: read, speak
English: read, write, speak
French: read, write, speak (not very fluently)
Arabic: read

Community Service:
Volunteered at a children’s “museum” all summer last year
Volunteer at youth football camps every summer

Work:
Local car wash - 20 hrs/week

2

Your ACT is low for most of those schools (except perhaps for Miami ?).

3

Your above for usc and miami. Match for cornell duke wash u. Somewhat reach for ivies you’ll probably get into at least one.

4

Bump

5

Don’t listen to anyone telling you you’re a match for Cornell…especially when they go on to say “reach for ivies,” suggesting they don’t know enough about the school to recall that it’s an Ivy League college.

Except for Miami, where you have a very solid chance, and WUSTL, which I’d call a high match/low reach, all the schools on your list are reaches for any applicant. Unfortunately, those test scores are below average for this tier of schools, so your odds aren’t great.

Hope for the best, but definitely look to replace a few of your reaches with mid-tier schools to serve as matches/high matches - the University of Washington and Villanova might be good options, given your interest in business (UW’s CS program is also good, not sure about Villanova). You won’t be able to write good essays for each school, and polish them properly, if you’re applying to 14 colleges.

6

You’re definitely in at UMiami
WUSTL is a high match
The rest ranges from low reach to high reach

7

USC isn’t that hard to get into

8

bumpppp

9

Coming out of high school (not transferring) both USC and UCLA are difficult. USC has a 17.5% admit rate.

10

Bump

11

With all those Honours and ECs, also taking into consideration your relatively high grades (it’ll be even better if you can raise them as you promise to do so), you have a great chance of getting into most of the universities you list. Of course, without taking the SAT, you’ll chances drop and you might want to try ACT again to get a better mark.

12

Can anyone please focus on USC and Penn? Those are my 2 and 3 respectively and I want to know how I fare. I feel like my chances are best at USC out of the extremely selective schools on my list, but then again, I’m not sure.

13

You are definitely getting into usc and miami. Penn can be considered a dream. Could you also chance me?

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1858248-chance-me-for-harvard-princeton-stanford-upenn-columbia-northwestern-duke-dartmouth-cornell.html#latest