Low income, ORM, kind of different not really?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Full list of colleges (I know it’s a lot but I have a fee waiver haha):

Public Schools: Cal Poly SLO, UCB, UCLA, UCSB, UCSD, UCI, UCD

Private Schools: Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Santa Clara, USC, UPenn, Yale, Duke

Testing:

SAT:

First take: 1730 old translates to 1230 new, Jan 2015 (no prep, came in and thought I could wing it, look what happened)

Second take: 1360 5/4/5, October 2016 (took day after a football game so I was dead)

Third take: 1520 6/5/6 December 2016 (took on a playoff bye week so I was well rested + prepped for 2 months)

No ACT or Subjects (subject tests never really hit my mind until senior year and I was really busy with football) Ouch that sounds like an excuse lol, I’ll face the fire

GPA: UW (low but not sure, transcript does not say) Academic 3.95 W 4.1 W (Lowkey inflated through community college courses, they count as honors/college courses and I got As in all)
School does not rank

APs: To be completely honest didn’t really even know about APs until start of junior year, and I didn’t really start to think about college until senior year

Junior year: AP Bio (3) AP Physics (didn’t take) Senior year: AP Gov, AP Calc AB, AP Microecon, AP Macroecon, AP Psychology

Extracurriculars:

Interned for a Congressman and helped him campaign, he won!

Football 4 years: Loved it, but soooooooo time consuming. Very competitive team, went to section finals 2 years in a row but lost in both championship games, advanced to NorCal regional games 2 years in a row but also lost in both

Used concept of monopolies to artificially inflate Madden Mobile market and made 4000 dollars off of that. Link: http://maddencoinshop.bigcartel.com

Gave parents that 4000 dollars and got them to invest in Nike (idk if this really counts as an extracurricular but it was a unique experience so I talked about it in my essays)

Chess Club President, started a free tutoring program at the local library, talked about lifelong passion for chess and how the game is analogous to life in some supplements

School: Standard public school, top 250 in California, also in Silicon Valley if that helps lol

Essays: I liked them, everyone else said they were pretty good, if anyone wants a read just message me. Focused on my low income situation, perseverance, inflated madden mobile market + Nike stock experience

Recs: English teacher 9/10, Calc teacher 8/10, Counselor didn’t really know her as we are a pretty big public school so 7/10, Mayor (I know him personally) 10/10, Congressman Campaign Manager 10/10

Hooks: first generation college, low income
Other: Asian male, trying to major in Economics, Immigrant parents, Dad didn’t finish high school, Mom GED,

So what chu think?

2

UC GPA? https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

3

10-11
Unweighted GPA: 3.70
Weighted GPA: 4.30
Weighted and Capped GPA: 3.97

10-12
Unweighted GPA: 3.69
Weighted GPA: 4.25
Weighted and Capped GPA: 3.92

I took a lot of community college courses.

4

Is this monopoly thing legal? Like a part of a game or something? Or did you make money artificially inflating the price of a tangible item? If the latter, I would not talk about that.

Try to limit your choices. I know you have a waiver, but it is wasteful both of the waiver and your time. Focus on your top 8-10. (Are Cal schools single app?)

Looks good score wise though! Hope you get the FA you need out of one or more of them!

5

Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 3.80-4.19:

UCB: 12%
UCLA: 14%
UCSD: 39%
UCSB: 49%
UCD: 52%
UCI: 57%
UCSC: 83%
UCR: 90%
UCM: 92%

UC’s are very GPA focused and SLO uses 9-11th grades so you need to calculate your CP GPA (maximum 8 honors points for qualified courses).

You have very competitive test scores and good EC’s. First Generation will help.

UCB/UCLA: Reach
SLO/UCSD: High Match-Low Reach
UCI/UCD/UCSB: Match-High Match

USC: Low Reach
CMC/Pomona: Reach
SCU: High Match

Good Luck.

6

If you have just taken the SAT, subject tests are required for many of the colleges to which you are applying. I guess that’ll be the thing that will dictate which schools to which you apply.

7

Add UCSC and SDSU/CPP for safeties
UC Santa Barbara, Davis, Irvine, SLO are matches.
Scu is your only true match among the private colleges but it’s one of the worst for lower income students when it comes to financial aid.
Add Vassar (being a guy will help) and Carleton + Grinnell (you’re a minority on the Midwest)
Review your list : do you really want both the fraternity -based social life of a rural college like Dartmouth and the ‘anything goes’ atmosphere at Brown and the urban location + core curriculum at Columbia? All of these couldn’t be more different. Colleges, at this level, look for ‘fit’, and no student would be a good fit for all of these.
Are you applying through QuestBridge?

8

@MYOS1634 - I could be really wrong, but I think OP is currently a senior, and past the deadline for those particular safeties (unless he applied to those schools and didn’t list them above).

9

Hm, if OP’s a senior, then he should apply to Carleton, Grinnell, St Olaf, Denison, all schools where financial aid will be good and deadlines are January 15 - the list is too risky as is in my opinion.

10

@jasonshreve - If you are currently a senior, @MYOS1634 is absolutely right. You have a very competitive GPA and high test scores, but you should apply to a few safety schools (unless you applied to some safety schools and didn’t list them).