My Chances?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hey guys,
I've been browsing through these forums for quite awhile already, but
this will be my very first post here (yay I suppose?). Anyways, jet
lag woke me up and I just got my SAT scores. Since I don't really know
how to chance myself... I'm hoping to get some objective views from
you guys. =)</p>

<p>Now I've seen some of the applications of people here and OH MY GOD
they're crazy! So... bear with me on mine, haha.</p>

<p>Anyways, we'll start with the school and test scores:
School: Shanghai American School (it's a private international school)
Rank: We don't do actual ranking, but I think we might be put into the
percentiles... In which case I would put myself at 10% for sure, and
maybe 5%. We have about 160 students in our grade. So... 16/160 would
be the minimum.
GPA: 3.83/4.00 UW (I don't know how to figure out weighted scores)
AP Classes:
AP US History (5),
AP Chinese (5),
AP Biology (?),
AP Lang and Comp (?),
AP Statistics (?),
AP Economics, micro and macro (??).
Next year, I'll be taking:
AP Lit
AP Calc BC
AP Chem
AP Euro history</p>

<p>And I take IB A2 Chinese SL.</p>

<p>So that's that for the school stats... Test scores:
SAT: 2210 =( [CR:700/Math:780/Writing:730]
SAT II's:
US History: 730
Biology: 800
Math: 790
Chem: 740</p>

<p>I think I might end up taking Chinese since it might be requisites for
things I might apply to, and I'll probably get an 800 for that since
I'm Asian-American. =)</p>

<p>Summer programs/Work:
Summer '07: One month internship doing market research at Danisco
Winter '07: One week internship at a law firm translating legal documents and indexing documents
Summer '07: Harvard Summer School course on International Law (4 credits)
Summer '08: Leadership in the Business World at Wharton</p>

<p>Honors and Awards:
High Honor Roll all semesters (3.71 or above)
Academic Disctinction in Intro to Drama
Academic Distinction in AP Biology
School-wide 101 Word Short Story Contest
---1st place, junior/senior division
Certificate of Distinction in Cayley Mathematics Contest (Top 25%)
USA Biology Olympiad Semi-Finalist (Top 10% or Top 500)</p>

<p>Extracurriculars:
Baseball Junior Varsity – 2005-2006
Varsity – 2006-Present
---China Cup 2007 – 2nd Place</p>

<p>Math Contests Participant – 2006-Present, ASMA, Cayley, Pascal, Fermat, AMC 10 & 12 Contests </p>

<p>Habitat for Humanity Volunteer – October 2007 project in Guangzhou </p>

<p>Math Tutoring
Member – 2006-Present
1.5 hours/week after school</p>

<p>SAS Ambassadors
Member – 2006-Present
----Organization in charge of welcoming new students, hosting farewell ceremonies, and touring college representatives.</p>

<p>Model United Nations Delegate – SHAMUN, BEIMUN, THIMUN
Ambassador – THIMUN-Singapore
Judge & Advocate – THIMUN-Singapore International Court of Justice
Advocate – BEIMUN Advisory Panel</p>

<p>National Honor Society Member – 2006-Present
Treasurer – 2007-2008
President – 2008-Present</p>

<p>Student Council
Director of Public Relations – 2005-2006
Treasurer – 2006-2007</p>

<p>Roots & Shoots Member – 2005-Present </p>

<p>Academic Quiz Team Member – 2005-Present
----Placed 7th overall and 1st among international schools</p>

<p>Okaydokes, so that is me in a nut shell.
Assuming the essays and recs are all good to very good/excellent(ish).</p>

<p>What range of schools would be my reach? Ballpark? Safety?
At the moment, I think my first choice is Dartmouth? Chances there? (I don't think I'll apply ED since parents want me to weigh my options and what not)
And for the SAT... Is 2210 okay? Or should I retake it in October (if so, I'd be aiming for at least 2250+ and preferably 2300s).</p>

<p>Alrighty, I'd appreciate any thoughts on this, and no need to sugar coat stuff. Ultimately that just harms more than it does any good.</p>

<p>Thanks a bunch!</p>

2

<p>I think your SAT's are strong as they stand. However, if you really think there will be a significant increase if you retake them senior year, then it might be worth it. But I would only recommend this if you think you can score in the 2300's range. So take some practice tests, see how you do. If you could score in the 2300's range, that would make you a significantly stronger applicant.</p>

<p>Your GPA and courseload are okay. Your EC's and awards are fine, though not spectacular. You should be warned though, even though you are a pretty strong applicant, the admissions process for internationals is much more rigorous than for US applicants. I think you stand a shot at Dartmouth, but you should make sure to look into other, less selective schools, as backup because the competition for internationals is so fierce.</p>

3

<p>Oh, no, I'm an American citizen. Born in Syracuse. =)
I'm simply from asian descent and live in Shanghai.</p>

4

<p>Bump. =)</p>

<p>And uh... Any idea what types of colleges would be in my reaches/ballparks/safeties?</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

5

<p>Shameful bump. =(</p>

<p>Any additional thoughts?</p>

6

<p>Particularly for international schools, your school's history in getting kids into US colleges plays a strong role. Where have kids gone in the past with your stats? That will tell you alot, particularly in terms of the more selective colleges. With your academic profile, the less selective schools where your stats are in the upper 25% of the scale are good matches and safeties. If you need financial aid or money awards, that can change the picture.</p>

7

<p>Can you give us criteria that would potentially represent what your ideal college would be like? ie, "I prefer a small undergrad population" or "Has an urban setting."</p>

8

<p>i like your chances for dartmouth.<br>
ecs are good
class rank okay (idk, whats the cutoff for you for a good school?)
my big bone to pick w/ you is your sat. the reading is more important than writing, and the reading is pretty low. if you can bring that up to at least a 750, im fairly confident you'd have good chances there.
you can prolly aim for a good bet w/ cornell/nu/etc if you raise that reading score, as well =)</p>

9

<p>Ah, I see. Thanks for the responses. =)
Hmm, I guess for our schools... We've recently begun to get kids accepted into the Ivies. In my freshmen year, 2 accepted at Harvard (first two I think), but this year we had 2 for stanford, 2 for harvard/princeton (same two people), 1 dartmouth, 1 williams. (The dartmouth and williams girl is the same as the harvard one, so she went with Harvard, hehe.) We have a few UPenns and lots of international Berkeleys this year. So I guess our shcool's pretty competitive (at least that's what our counselors will write in our profile; our school caps our APs at 4 a year, so my course load is hard relative to my school... I've seen some people with 6 or 7 APs. :S). Unfortunately... most of the kids who got accepted into the top top schools are all high GPA/SAT kids. I suppose we have similar ECs, but none of them played sports (dunno if that's a benefit for me or irrelevant). But yeah, cptofthehouse, our school uses Naviance that allows us to compare accentance histories of past students and our own stats (just GPA and SAT though) to see the acceptance rates. I'll have to do that whenever my counselor decides to update it.</p>

<p>Inthemistylight, yeah. I hope to get my reading score up. To be honest, I'm not really sure why I did so poorly... As I was taking the test, I understood everything. I'll have to see later, maybe the curve was harsh, but even so... Must've done something wrong to end up at 700. :S</p>

<p>As for occycmm, I guess what I'm looking for is:
-Smaller class sizes
-Liberal arts (I don't really know what I want to do yet, so need to keep my options available in undergrad)
-Setting... Dartmouth is fine for me so I guess as long as it doesn't "feel" isolated all the time, it's fine.
-Preferably a school where undergrad is focused or at least not put second behind the graduates
-As a side thing, hopefully the school is close to slopes for snowboarding. =D</p>

<p>Thanks so far for all the responses guys! They're very much appreciated. :)</p>