Ivy League Chances

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Florida Junior

I know most will say that ivy is lottery and that it’s hard regardless of what your resume indicates but just make your decisions holistic!

Objective:

SAT I (breakdown): 2290 (R690,M800,W800)
ACT (breakdown): N/A
SAT II: Will take Math II, USH, Chem, Spanish
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.9
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): ~6/615
AP (place score in parenthesis): Stats (5). Spanish (5). World (3). Euro (3). Currently in Psych, USH, Calc AB, Chem, and English. Next year will take Human Geo, Macroeconomics, U.S. Gov., Physics C, Calc BC, Lit.
IB (place score in parenthesis): N/A
Senior Year Course Load: AP Human. AP Calc BC, AP Physics C, AP Gov/APEcon, Dual Enrollment Art (tentative)
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.):
In the eleventh grade, I participated in the David Essner Math Competition after qualifying for a select group of five members from my school, including sophomores, juniors and seniors.
Champion of the 12th annual FGCU Statistics Team competition
4th Place in the 12th annual FGCU Statistics Individual competition
6th Place in the 2015 January Regional Statistics Team Competition
27th place in the 2015 January Regional Statistics Individual Competition [Best from School]
4th Place in the 2015 SECME Math Bowl
Best from School’s AP Chemistry students in the National Chemistry Olympiad
6th Place in the 2015 March Regional Statistics Team Competition
21st Place in the 2015 March Regional Statistics Individual Competition [Best from School]
AP Scholar with Honor

Subjective:

Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): Varsity Volleyball and Soccer. Math, Social Studies, English, Science, Spanish, National Honor Societies. Chai Club, Chemistry Club (Executive officer), College Prep Club (Founder and President). Tutor. Pre-School of Madrichim (Jewish leadership youth group) (member). School of Madrichim (Jewish leadership youth group) (member). Maccabi Tzair Miami (local branch of global Jewish organization) (leader).
Job/Work Experience: Tutor in Algebra I and II, geometry, pre-Calc, Calc, stats, chem, physics, Spanish.
Volunteer/Community service:Summer Camp Counselor (160 Hours)
Pre-School of Madrichim (Jewish Leadership Youth Program) (66 Hours)
School of Madrichim (Jewish Leadership Youth Program) (170 Hours)
Madrich in Maccabi Tzair Miami (Branch of Global Leadership Program) (Ongoing)
Tutor in Algebra I and II, Geometry, Pre-Calculus, Calculus, Statistics, Physics, and Chemistry.
Most of my college essays will hover around these leadership programs!^ they really beef up my app
Summer Activities: summer camp '13. Costa Rica with Pre-SOM '13. Israel with SOM '14.
Essays: Fire 9-10/10
Teacher Recommendation: Fire 9-10/10
Counselor Rec: Fire 9-10/10
Additional Rec: prob NA
Interview: idk
Other

Applied for Financial Aid?: yeeet
Intended Major: either engineering or business. Maybe both
State (if domestic applicant): Florida
Country (if international applicant): USA
School Type: Public
Ethnicity: White/Hispanic
Gender: male
Income Bracket:
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): diversity and ECs

Reflection

Strengths: stats, courseload and ECs
What you tried to focus on in your application - any hooks you tried to make for yourself: ECs and diversity
Weaknesses: Ivy League lottery

I think I’ll be applying to some of the following:
Penn
Michigan
Cornell
Harvard
MIT
Yale
Columbia
Stanford
UF (safety)
Carnegie Mellon

I still haven’t decided whether I wanna study business or engineering, maybe both. I’d like to apply to schools who are good with both. If you guys could rate my chances (1-10) of getting into each of the aforementioned, that’d be greatly appreciated. Any personal comments are accepted and suggestions of other schools is amazing!

2

Impressive SAT score. I’m assuming that those results in the award sections are from Mu Alpha Theta? You seem like a strong balanced URM candidate. If you’re going into a STEM field or a Business field, you should perhaps do DE college courses/ summer program in those subject areas in order to boost your application/decide which one to pursue.
Score: 8/10 (10 being a 100% guarantee to get into at least one of those schools, discounting UF)

3

@gebo342‌ yea most of those competitions are with Mu alpha Theta! What’s “URM?” Also, I got into SSTP at UF but will not be attending because not enough financial aid was provided. I’ve also applied to MITES at MIT, SCEEP at U-M, and SAMS at CMU. I may do DE next year throughout the year but that depends on my schedule and how flexible it is.

4

UF is not a safety.

5

@baller55 URM means under-represented minority which in most cases applies to you if you’re African-American, Hispanic, Pacific-Islander, Native American etc.
I would think that you should at least get into some of the schools you’re applying to. You seem like an excellent candidate.
I would say around a 80-90% chance to get into Michigan. Ivies… ehh like you said, hard to predict for basically anyone but you’re certainly up there.

6

Yea, I think I’ll get into UF, CMU, Mich, and Cornell easily. The other 6 are legitimate coin tosses.

Any other schools I should add to the list that have business/engineering emphasis?

Also, does anyone think I should retake it to get 700+ reading, or take the act? I think I’m fine but lots of friends and family members have told me I should.

7

@baller55 - You are overestimating your chances for HYPSM - it’s not 50/50 at any of them. You are clearly a strong candidate. I imagine you have a good shot at getting into at least one. The intangibles (essays, recommendations, and interviews) could make or break your chances.

CMU - it depends which school you apply to. If you apply to SCS, I wouldn’t assume anything, it’s at least as selective as MIT.

Cornell - you will probably get in but I suggest you not assume that you will.

I don’t see any reason why Michigan or Florida would reject you. They seem like reasonable safeties to me.

8

^ UMich is not safety for anyone, particularly for Ross or CoE. OP is a strong candidate, but many with even better stat got rejected or waitlist this year. OP’s GPA is right aroung admission average for CoE, while SAT is near the 75 percentile. It would be a very high match to low reach for OP from OOS.

9

“Ethnicity: White/Hispanic”

This is one of the biggest part of the application, so which one will it be? It changes a lot. (Inb4 "no it doesn’t!)

10

I’m extremely inexperienced with all this slang! OP? OOS?CoE? @billcsho‌

My application will surely say Hispanic @SKTT1Impact‌

Lastly, I see most of you are saying that these aren’t safeties and what not, I fully understand that most aren’t safeties; however, with my stats and ECs I believe that, as stated before, I can get into UF, Mich, CMU, and Cornell with ease. The rest are as difficult to guess as the lottery. Hopefully, I can destroy the essays!! @BldrDad‌

11

@baller55 You should check out the sticky threads for the acronyms.
OP is you in this thread. You are a student from Out Of State (OOS) considering College of Engineering (CoE) at UMich, your chance is much lower than you thought as you are not really standing out from the crowd of applicants while the admission rate is near 20%. For the Business School (Ross), the admission rate is even lower. Also, no one can get into Cornell with ease either. Try to bring up your reading score and GPA. UMich does value uwGPA a lot and 21% of enrolled freshmen this year has uwGPA 4.0 from high school.

12

Real talk. I go to Michigan, it’s a blast highly recommend.
First, you’re putting too much weight on EC’s, we all did EC’s in high school. A couple of sports, NHS, clubs, volunteer work, and stats competitions make you nothing special. GPA, SAT, and essays matter the most and you fall between the 25-75% for most of those schools.
Next, saying you’ll get into any of those school with ease is a terrible idea. Better students than you have been rejected in the past and admissions becomes more competitive each year. If you show that overly confident to cocky attitude in your essays you’ll be sure to get yourself denied.
Third, half of those schools are Ivy League which is a tall order. All of them are a reach for anyone (including Cornell). Do some research on schools that you actually want to go to rather than based off solely prestige.
Next, business and engineering are not related all that much (if at all) and studying both is difficult to do in even 5 years.
Finally, if you are a junior now then you are on schedule to graduate in over 5 full years. That sums up from somewhere between 1/4 and 1/5 of your life in which a lot can happen. You’ll change a lot over then next few years and may not even want to study engineering. It’s tough, I know from experience.

So I’ll chance you. I predict if you apply to all 10 schools you will get into 5/10 of them. And I hope you prove me wrong. Good luck. Do well on those essays.
Penn 55%
Michigan 80%
Cornell 65%
Harvard 10%
MIT 5%
Yale 50%
Columbia 25%
Stanford 50%
UF 85%
Carnegie Mellon 40%

13

@spaceng‌ extremely helpful. I completely understand that everything prestigious is a reach for most; and, that I can’t be too confident. In addition, my goal is to complete the M&T program at Penn where I believe I will graduate with a dual degree in Engineering and Business. I was talking with a friend who is studying “operations research” at Cornell and it sounds extremely interesting! I’m considering it. Everything is merely a suggestion at this point. Thanks for the advice

14

Bump

15

@spaceng How did you come to Yale at 50% chance of admission?

16

Hmm…some have touched on this, but I’ll add my take here.

You are way more confident about getting admitted to these fine schools than you should be. The only answer for that is that you just don’t know what you think you do, or someone is feeding you a load. There are a lot of big fish in small ponds out there.

You are a strong candidate for sure, but there are TONS of applicants with scores like yours who will be denied at every one of those schools when you apply, and beyond your not-quite-perfect GPA and SAT scores (you will compete against lots of students with perfect GPAs and some with perfect SATs and many with scores better than yours), you don’t have anything that makes you stand out a lot; I mean it’s a pretty good bunch of stuff, but there’s nothing there that is extremely impressive. Don’t fool yourself. Top colleges want stellar GPAs, stellar SATs, and they want to see that you are EXCELLENT at an EC or two, not just a participant in a ton of them.

Cornell is still an Ivy League school, and it is a REACH for anyone, including you. There is not evidence at all that you will get into Cornell “easily”. No one does. You will either get in or not, but you are NOT a shoo-in there…not even close.

You are also underestimating the University of Michigan. That is an excellent school with many top-notch applicants. This is not a school that YOU will get into “easily”. You are setting yourself up for disappointment with these unreasonable expectations. I’m telling you this so that this unearned bravado (or ignorance) doesn’t somehow make its way into an essay, because that’s a sure way to be denied.

Carnegie Mellon is no pushover either though easier to get into than UMich and the Ivies.

I would agree with you that UF is likely a safety for you. You might want to also consider another one just to be on the safe side.

And, the others are a “coin flip”? Hardly. While many students with stats equivalent to yours get admitted to those other schools every year, many with your equivalents also do NOT. I know a guy with stats better than yours who was a National Merit Scholarship WINNER who was wait listed at Washington University in St. Louis and denied at a couple of other good, not Ivy League schools. I didn’t read his essays, so perhaps he blew it there, but you are just not holding a realistic view here.

If I had to guess, I would say you WILL get into one of those schools other than just UF, but I don’t think you get into all of the ones you said you will get into “easily” as you are not as outstanding a candidate as you believe you are. Cast a net wide enough and you will be denied somewhere but likely also admitted somewhere.

Again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, don’t let the arrogant attitude seep into your essays either in the form of flat out arrogance or sloppiness in your writing of them because you feel you have it in the bag. That kind of thing sticks out like a sore thumb, and if I were on the committee, I would deny you in a second if I got a whiff of that.

17

@stepay’s post is on the money. You have good prospects. You should get in to some of the most selective schools to which you apply. But if you apply to all the schools you mention, you will more than likely collect a tidy trove of rejection letters, too. That’s all right. You can only go to one undergraduate institution.