Insight/Chances for admission at Penn's Engineering?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
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<p>Background: I got to a pretty competitive high school in CT. We send 3-4 kids to HYPSM and 8-9 more to other Ivies. and like 10 more to JHU, Carnegie Mellon, UVA, Notredame, UChicago, and Georgetown)</p>

<p>It is more competitive this year.</p>

<p>Race: Indian (Male)
**
**Grades: **Our school has a weighted scale, we don't calculate unweighted (but I did it myself and got **3.73). I have a 4.504 weighted and my class rank is 20/538 (top 3.7%). GPA of valedictorian is 4.77
-I have taken the most rigorous curriculum out of anyone in my grade (will graduate with 9 APs, 2 college courses and 13 AP exam scores)
-My freshman grades had 3 B's and 4 A's (All honors)
-Sophomore: 2 B's and 5 A's (2 APs and rest honors)
-Junior: 1 B and 6As (4 APs and rest honors)
-Senior: All As (3 APs and 2 college courses and rest honors)
Upward trend for sure.</p>

<p>Took** Quantitative Analysis (Intensive, Advanced Chemistry course, Sophomore/Junior course in College, met 9 hours a week, 5.0 Credit course)**...was a bad decision, it takes up all of my free time...
Took Multivariable Calc (met 4 hours a week).</p>

<p>ACT Scores:
34 Composite (36 M, 33E, 34 S, 32 R). 10 essay.
Retaking for a 35/36 in Dec, which I think is definitely possible (got on practice tests).</p>

<p>Subject tests:
Chem: 780
Math 2: 800</p>

<p>AP Scores:
Sophomore: 4 Bio, 4 Stat
Junior: 5 calc BC, 5 calc AB subscore, 5 chem, 5 lang and comp, 3 history
Senior: lit-?, physics B-? physics C- mag?, physics C-mech-?, compsci-?, pysch-?, spanish lang-?</p>

<p>Extracirrcular- Won't be too elaborate here, but I consider by far the strongest part of my app.
-Table Tennis, spent around 1800+ hours training in 4 yeras of high school. Average 12 hours a week, HUGE time commitment practicing toward this. #2 junior in state, #43 for my age in USA, won several awards at national and state tournaments. Founder of table tennis club at school. Went to international tournament and my team got 2nd in Division 10. Head of TT at Penn said I would be able to make A team.
-Math Team<a href="9,10,11,12">/B</a>- B team 9th and 10th, A team 11th and 12th. Awarded 3rd highest scoring Junior in Division. Qualified for CSAML (state team) and NEAML (new Englands). We, our A team, got 3rd in State and 14th in New Englands Our best players were at science bowl nationals >.<
-Science Quiz Bowl<a href="9,10,11,12">/B</a>- C team 9+10, B team captain in 11, A team captain in 12. Huge time commitment, our school is usually the state champs. (Also I was part of my schools chemistry olympiad team, we got #1 in state)
-250+ hours of research at 2 different universities (1 year of research in analytical chem and the second year in Inorganic chem/material science engineering). My research will be getting published in a couple of months (after admissions) with my name listed as a Co-author.
Sending both research papers ... wasn't allowed to enter Siemens or Intel STS
-Chess club<a href="9,10,11,12">/B</a>- Vice President, 4th place and 5th place for district tournament, co captain of team at tournament
-Volunteer-** 200 hours + (proctored at MathCounts local and state competition, tutored middle school student each week for 3 years, taught chess to kids at local library during summer, helped kids conduct science experiments in summer at local library, helped at cultural events)</p>

<p>Job (I just turned 16 like a couple weeks ago so I could not work anywhere): I was selected as a High School Campus Leader for Ivy Insdiers</p>

<p>*Hopefully you can see I picked a couple of things and went really deep into each one of those rather than doing a lot of things with not much depth
*</p>

<p>Honor Societies: Foreign Language, Science, NHS and NSHSS...the usual.</p>

<p>Recommendations: One from AP Chem teacher which is very strong, he talked about my research (since he has a PhD), and appointed as Sci Bowl Captain
One from AP Calc teacher: Just read it, it's good (not extremely good, but good), have known for 6+ years, knows my math capabilities and how I do at competitions
-Maybe ONE Additional one from the Professor I did research with, also the professor of the Quantitative Analysis class. Very strong
**
Basically I chose these people because they knew me in and outside of school and were able to talk about my character in a personal way because I have known them for so long.**</p>

<p>Essay: Well-written, talked about table tennis and how it influenced and guided my life. I think it is pretty unique, after all, I don't know many people who would write their essay about table tennis ;)</p>

<p>Penn supplement: Strong (Loved the topic.): Talked about research, chem olympiad experience, college courses about chem and math, why I was attracted to engineering, also talked about what I want do for table tennis at Penn.</p>

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<p>76 views, no replies? :/</p>

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<p>i think you have a very good shot…ED for engineering tends to have really high admissions rate and you have greats stats.</p>

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<p>I’m applying RD :/</p>

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<p>You have a VERY good shot. </p>

<p>Best of luck, fellow Indian ;)</p>

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<p>Agreed, looks like you have a good shot. Best of luck in April.</p>

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<p>Thanks for the replies, guys. So the somewhat low UW GPA of 3.73 won’t hurt me that much when I apply to engineering?</p>

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<p>I’m not an admissions officer but I would think that your ECs more than make up for it. It does seem like there are a lot of valedictorians and saledictorians here but as long as your class rank is <5% I think you have good chance.</p>

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<p>Sounds good. And are my scores competitive (will help me) for people applying to engineering or should I really make an attempt for that 35 or 36?</p>

10

<p>I wouldn’t worry about it, Eric Furda himself said that if you’re in range in terms of test scores, your energy is best conserved for other endeavors.</p>

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<p>^Do you happen to have the ranges for engineering applicants? I can’t seem to find it online.</p>

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<p>SEAS stats - Not sure how current they are:</p>

<p>Middle 50th percentile SAT score for admitted students
640-750 Critical Reading
680-780 Math
650-750 Writing</p>

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<p>Definitely agree with the others here. Taking the ACT when yours is already very good is just a waste of time and money. It’s well within the range to be accepted, dedicate your efforts elsewhere.</p>

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<p>First, this is constructive criticism. </p>

<p>1) you may have depth but you have little breadth I would say and it surprises me that you think ECs are the best part of your application
2)

But I know so, so many people(indians) who will write their essay about tennis
-i mean i would say the stereotypical/standard ivy indian applicant is the varsity tennis player on science and maths teams (the same way the stereotypical/standard asian applicant is the piano player who does tons of math and science competitions and plays chess)
i would say that you scarily fit the stereotypical indian applicant pretty closely</p>

<p>3) 1800+ hours just makes me feel skeptical … way too skeptical
i actually opened up the calculator and found that 1800 hrs spread out means you played an average of 1 hr and 15 min of ping pong a day for these last four years
4) indian male –> engineering is a pretty common path</p>

<p>A) GPA wont hurt you. your rank is good and rigor is good.
B) essays/recs seem good
C) ACT of 34 is fine </p>

<p>so…
if you did ED I would say you would get in(don’t think you’d get deferred), but RD, I don’t think you will make it. </p>

<p>Still, good luck and I love table tennis</p>

<p>also, I am decently similar to you(but i’m doing ED) so I’m going to pm you my stats and all. Tell me what you think(maybe I’m too pessimistic about it all).</p>

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<p>^Thanks. Finally a person who thinks my chances aren’t as good as what previous people have said. </p>

<p>1) 5 things isn’t enough? I mean I have very little free time. I spend, this year, 9 hours of my time a week doing research at 2 different universities and another 9 hours doing laboratory work for that Quantitative Analysis class and the rest dedicated to studying AoPS for math A team, teaching freshman science, preparing for state science quiz bowl, tutoring others, community service, practicing and playing chess, training for table tennis along with all of my classes.</p>

<p>2) Actually I am writing about how my perception of each object in table tennis closely relates to a significant strand of logic or life lesson, basically writing about how my interaction with other objects distorts (in a good way) my innate perception of general ideas. I think it’s pretty interesting, but maybe you are right, maybe many Indians do write about what I just said above :wink: .</p>

<p>3) Oh you better believe it! </p>

<p>I train endlessly on table tennis. Actually 1 hour 15 min a day seems like too little. The majority of my time is dedicated toward physical conditioning, studying technique, and then finally practicing with my Robo Pong 2000.</p>

<p>4A) I still think it will hurt me, but whatever.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Seems logical to me, thanks for the suggestions/constructive criticism.</p>

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<p>I think table tennis isn’t all that common.
Certainly, much less common that actual tennis. I think your extra-curriculars are just fine and ~2 hours a day isn’t that much to be honest. I spend 3.5 hours a day–every single day minus Sunday, on my sport.</p>

<p>My swimmer and basketball friends have similar schedules.</p>

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<p>^Yeah. Most varsity sports spend a lot more time each day. </p>

<p>Also, please note that I am not comfortable posting specifics or any awards/honors for my extracurricular activities on the internet. On the Common app, they are much more detailed.</p>

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<p>wow you’re table tennis ranking is kinna low. 43? i was ranked 1 in my age group hahaa…</p>

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<p>I started playing table tennis since 2006 and there was this one summer where I played 250 hours alone. 5 hours a day.</p>