<p>A few so-called "college counselors" said I was no more impressive than the average applicant that does their services (didn't go to those places thankfully). I'd say that although I might not have a massive amount of ECs, the ones I do have I genuinely am passionate about. Hopefully the colleges can see that.</p>
<p>So I'm one of those people who's going all or nothing. Stanford (REA), Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC everything else. Don't think I need any non-UC safeties, although if you can think of something that matches, enlighten me.</p>
<p>Intended Major: Computer Science, considering a double major in Psychology and a minor in Music</p>
<p>Ethnicity: Asian (yep)
Gender: Male (it gets better)
School: Decent SoCal school, ~6 students get into USNWR top 10 (GREAT ranking ik) every year
Family Income: I think $60k? Parents just started a business 2 years ago.</p>
<p>9-12 GPA: 4.38 W, 3.89 UW
10-12 GPA: 4.68 W, 3.96 UW (ugh French)
SAT: 2350 superscore, 800 CR, 780 W, 770 M, 2320 single sitting
SAT II: 800 Math II, 800 Chemistry, 790 US History, 770 Chinese (lol)
AP Tests: 5s on Chinese, Chemistry, US History, European History, English Language, Art History, Calculus BC. Still waiting on Music Theory.</p>
<p>Senior Year Courseload: AP Physics, AP American Government, AP English Literature, AP Biology, AP Statistics. APs at my school aren't too bad, especially compared to those of other schools in the district. I also took a Programming class at UC Irvine over the summer and I got an A- (thank god the final was curved).</p>
<p>Extracurriculars:
Music Production/Composition- this is the one thing I feel is going to make or break my application. I really got into this last year as I was taking AP Music Theory. I never truly got music until I took the class. I'm really passionate (overused word) about it, and I feel like I've learned a lot about myself in the process of making my music. I'm definitely going to shape an essay or two about my music composition process, and I feel like if I can get them to work I have a pretty solid chance of admission to any school. I'm planning to continue and start DJing at whatever school I get into (diversity?).</p>
<p>Text-based video game designer- I had to learn the fundamentals of Javascript for this. It's not really high level stuff, but I've been doing this for all 4 years of high school, and I've even gotten fairly acclaimed in the community for my games. What I do is I really work on fleshing out the characters and make sure the story shines through, while simultaneously trying to balance gameplay and make it fun and original. Naturally, this takes a lot of bug-fixing and updating on my part; in fact, that's the main thing I do. I've actually won an competition in the community for my stuff, and they have a international audience and have been played nearly 10k times total.</p>
<p>Science Olympiad- Joined Junior Year and qualified for two events. We didn't make to state this year, but I did the best in the team. I also have an unofficial position in the club this year as the manager.</p>
<p>Intern at Techology Business: This is actually my parent's business. However, it's the American arm of a multimillion dollar company run by relatives. I do most tech support work, but I've worked on coding the website a bit as well.</p>
<p>Local Youth Orchestra- Been in this since 10th grade, I'm first violin. We did an International Music Festival this year, and we earned a Silver Award for the USA, woo.</p>
<p>President of Self-Founded Club: An original idea. We had no direction from the start, but I ended up directing the combined efforts of the club into producing a short PSA and entering it into a statewide competition. We didn't win, but I felt like I really learned a lot about leadership, and how you can't run an entire club by yourself and all.</p>
<p>Volunteer at a Tree Nursery: Come here every few weeks, especially during the summer. I do gardening work, as well as logistics.</p>
<p>Guitar- This goes hand in hand with my composition work. I started out from Jazz, but now it's more electronic. Not sure if I should list this as a separate EC. Don't want to make it look like I'm pulling for straws here.</p>
<p>National Honor Society- Not impressive, I know, but I tutored for this every week after school.</p>
<p>A few more things that are less significant than NHS. Should I put them down to fill up the 10 EC slots, or should I hope that the combined depth of my first two ECs make up for the lack of quantity? Like I've been developing an art style, in hopes that one day I may use it for an indie video game.</p>
<p>Recommendations:
Three. Counselor doesn't know me well at all, since there's 4 for 2000 students at my school. I have the highest GPA of all of her students, though, and I made sure to write a ton for a survey we had to fill out to help counselors do the rec.
The one from my math teacher should be decent. I had her for 3 years, from Algebra II to Calculus, and I feel like she knows me pretty well. I guess I haven't been the most interactive in class though, since I prefer finishing the homework in class and doing the fun stuff after school, versus talking the entire period and rushing it later. I feel like I'll get docked a few points in working well with others for this reason, but there was this one kid I helped a lot during my first year, dunno if she remembers.
Also have one from my US History teacher. I hear he writes the best recommendations of everyone in this school. I got the highest score overall of everyone in the class. I also did a one-man job (had a ton of help though) organizing through a bunch of interviews and writing an essay out of them for the end of the year project. I wasn't good with deadlines, but he really really liked what I put out in the end. Needless to say, counting on a stellar recommendation.</p>
<p>Essays: I'm a good writer, at least by AP Lang standards. EC essay is going to be on my passion for music production, and still thinking through the topics for the Common App essays. Haven't started them yet since the prompts are a bit daunting. Should probably start next week. Like I said, essays will make or break the app.</p>
<p>My own thoughts:
I've tried my best to go the non-typical Asian route, aside from the high test scores and GPA. My cups don't runneth over with ECs, but the ones I have I genuinely care about (Africa trips yay) and do a lot with. I feel like they're pretty focused too. My goal in life is to make a one-man indie video game, along the lines of Touhou and Cave Story where the one guy does art, programming, design, story, music, and everything, and I have those as my ECs.</p>
<p>I'm most likely going to Berkeley in 2014. Stanford is my number-one pick though, and over the next month I'll be working on my SCEA application for it. The rest of the Ivy League and MIT is on there because reaches.</p>