my chances?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hey,
How are my chances at HYPSM (haha, I know), Chicago, Duke, UPenn, Johns Hopkins, and Rice? And what should I do to improve my chances? Feel free to be harsh. Thanks in advance.</p>

<p>My school’s large (~4000) but about 15 were accepted into Ivys or Stanford last year.
I’m an Asian male.
SAT: 2260 (CR 800, M 800, W 660)
I'm going to retake this to bring up writing.
PSAT: 229 (at least semi-finalist)
SAT II: Math I - 790, Math II - 800, Chemistry - 800, World History - 800
I'm going to take US History and maybe Biology.
APs: World, Euro, Comp Sci A, Calc BC - 5s
Lit, US, Macro, Stats, Chem, Bio - scores not back, but probably 5s except Lit
taking another 5 next year (Physics B, Language, Envir. Science, US Gov't, Micro)</p>

<p>GPA: UW - 3.985, officially weighted - 4.274 (for 1 year b/c school started weighting last year), unofficially weighted - 4.552 (for 3 years)
Class rank: Top 3% (highest honor), exact rank not given but probably top 1%</p>

<p>ECs:
Freshmen mentoring group – council member (part of an 13-member council in charge of 250+)
Science Olympiad – president
STC (tutoring group) – president
Key Club – secretary
Academic Decathlon, Math Club, NHS, Brain Game team, and other minor ones…</p>

<p>Awards:
Various math contest awards, including placing decently well at Rose-Hulman, ICTM, and IUPUI; qualifying for AIME every year (and missing USAMO by one question last year X[ )
State chemistry contest: won the first year, 3rd the next</p>

<p>Volunteer/work
Through Key Club: 120 hours in 3 years
Volunteered in a lab in summer of ’06: 120 hours
Interning this summer for 8 weeks
Worked at local Kumon for a few months
Tutor through STC</p>

<p>I’m also working on a research project for Siemens and hoping to get semi-finalist.</p>

2

<p>hm...that was longer than expected.</p>

3

<p>bump......</p>

4

<p>bumpbumpbump</p>

5

<p>You're in at all of them!</p>

6

<p>how big is siemens semi?
is it a bigger deal if its individual rather than team
(because im thinking about doing team this year, as im not going to be a senior yet)</p>

7

<p>i dunno, siemens is only good if you get regional finalist. otherwise try isst but it really hard to get a lab</p>

<p>also, it really depends on what project ur doing. bio, chem, phys,maths,...? </p>

<p>depends</p>

<p>otherwise pretty good</p>

8

<p>ya, siemens team is virtually useless unless you get regional finalist.
try other stuff like math and arml</p>

9

<p>^umm okay thats only if you are national level...i once met a kid that was national top 10 but i dont know what college he went to...probably MIT...would be surprised if he didnt.</p>

<p>But do you guys think Siemens individual semi>siemens team regional finalist?</p>

<p>lol 4000 kids in your school...pretty large school...must have some good students and teachers if 15 or so got sent to ivys and stanford...</p>

<p>i wish i got a 5 on AP comp sci lol...i just got back my score today and i failed wished had your teacher</p>

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<p>ya my techer didnt teach me nething i mustve failed apcs 2</p>

11

<p>huh Merriam Webster?</p>

<p>umm yea a bit off track </p>

<p>but yea probably need bigger awards to get into HYPSM</p>

<p>but that profile fits like Duke and UPenn pretty well...</p>

<p>but gotta say some clubs like Key Club and things...people make a big deal about volunteering but i always thought it was more about quality about quantity...too many people do volunteering for the heck of it and dont realy care aobut giving back to the community...so they kinda abuse it which is bad....</p>

<p>umm yea good leadership, maybe you can run for like math club president or science club president next year because it seems like you are interested in those areas.</p>

12

<p>oh ya, abt the colleges.</p>

<p>the top 5, you have to have at least a few decent "heavy" things on there, like AIME and the math contests. Siemens, its ok if you get regional finalist, but colleges know that everybody did research so they do treat a finalist much differently&lt;/p>

<p>the test scores are great but i dont know if you want to put them all, cuz colleges dont want to know all the tests youve taken in your whole life</p>

<p>siemens might be ok</p>

<p>any one of the big colleges for premed like WashU and Duke and JH and NWESTERn should be okay if you keep up ur grades</p>

<p>those are for people who do really well in school with high grades</p>

13

<p>"heavy things"?</p>

<p>AIME isnt heavy...i know atleast 5 people that made AIME in 7th or 8th grade...and i dont think they considered it a big achievement...but it could just be them...</p>

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<p>Yeah, my comp sci teacher sucked too (only taught about half the stuff lol). I guess that seems to be a general trend....
btw, I'm on a team for math for siemens, and ugh, I guess it's too late to do individual research now eh?</p>

15

<p>oh, and I got 3 first-place and 1 second-place medal (including individual overall) at Decathlon state if that counts for anything?
and I got 2 medals at SO state (I'm guessing probably pretty useless?)</p>

16

<p>ya, it goes well along with the other stuff</p>

<p>but you have to have something thats big like be sbp, i know a kid from my school, all he did was sbp, high grades, and he did well on a school sports team and got into harvard. </p>

<p>so if you do a lot of these leadership things im sure it well help</p>

17

<p>bump......</p>

18

<p>bumpbumpbump</p>

19

<p>bump again?</p>

20

<p>whats sbp??</p>