Major: Materials Science & Engineering.
ED to Northwestern.
Schools - Northwestern, Brown, Purdue, RPI, University of Washington - Seattle, Rutgers.
Cooper Union (as Chemical Engineering major), WUSTL (as a Chemical Engineering major), & Yale (as Chemistry major). Last three don’t have my major lol.
Reverse chance me for any other schools.
Demographics: Current senior in high school; $100k/yr family income; half-hispanic/half-white; female; first-generation; average to fairly competitive public high school in New England; moved high schools during sophomore year.
3.3 UW GPA at first school (very competitive public hs), 3.89 UW at new school (less competitive).
SAT: 1520
SAT Subject Tests: Chem (780), Math 2 (800), US History (760)
APs:
Chem (4), Lang (5), and US History (5). Self-studied Calc BC (didn't take as class) and got a 4 BC and 5 AB
Lang (5)
US History (5)
Calc BC (self-studied/didn't take class; 4 BC and 5 AB subsore)
Lit
Spanish
Comparative Gov
Physics 1
Multivariable calculus senior year taken in school.
ECs in order that they would be listed:
Yearbook, all 4 years. Editor junior & senior years.
Stagehand for school plays, 3 years (10th, 11th, 12th).
Science Bowl, 2 years (11th, 12th). No awards.
Intramural badminton, 3 years (10th, 11th, 12th).
Volunteering at science museum—mostly with the planetarium, 2 years (11th, 12th)
Internship at manufacturing facility that makes industrial, automobile, and aerospace bearings (summer before senior year).
Volunteering at library, 3 years (10th, 11th, 12th). Helped with a lot of STEM activities like robotics.
Volunteering at hospital, 2 years (11th, 12th).
National English Honor Society, 2 years (11th, 12th). Founder and president both years.
Modeling, 2 years (11th, 12th). Metalearth models, scale models, plastic models, clay modeling here and there, and teaching myself CAD.
Work Experience (different section):
Part-time job at bowling alley, 2 years (11th, 12th).
Part-time job at Goodwill, 2 years (11th, 12th).
Both jobs worked at the same time.
Essays will be subjectively okay, but letters of recommendation may be average due to my move.
Just an educated guess, 25%-35% with NU. Possible but not likely.
Be very careful with your strategy and how you apply the ED.
Northwestern admit more than 50% from ED, so your chance with NU is enhanced with ED. Other schools, for example Michigan or UVA, admit little from early round, so your chance in RD is still relevant. If you swing and miss with ED, RD is brutal and unforgiving, so make sure you have a few schools with ED2 or EA you can apply in case NU doesnt work.
My top four are NU, Michigan, Case, and UVA. My chance for NU is even lower than yours, but my other 3 are EA, so at least I have a decent shot at any of the 3 with EA, thus giving me the opportunity to swing at NU.
Hey, that’s actually pretty good. About 25% of ED applicants are admitted to NU, so by your guess I’m in the top whatever decile and my chances are as good as the next best (I suck at words… I hope you know what I’m trying to say). Hell, if my chances are 35% when only 25% of the entire application pool is admitted… I’m gucci.
But fr, NU is my top choice. I’m going to apply EA everywhere else that I can to increase my chances.
Out of curiosity, what part of my application is especially weak or not ideal?
NU admits something like 9% last year. Ball park of 4000 applied ED and 1100 accepted. Most of those applicants are 3.9 1500 with strong EC.
That means in the RD round 36000 applications but only 900 admitted? Many of those 900 were shooting for MIT or Yale and missed, and now you are competing against them for a spot.
I would not feel good about our chances, but worth a shot nonetheless. You have to consider your opportunity cost, be very careful with your precious ED tag and where you apply it. Again, alot of school admit a whole bunch with ED, so RD is more brutal than you think.
What OP needs to do, for NU, is truly understand what they look for and make sure her app, supp, LoRs, and any interview are spot on. She has a lot of activities, but not a lot that point to stem. Be savvy and you may be able to enhance your picture.
I was playing off of what the other guy said… a lot of accepted applicants most certainly had higher chances of getting in initially, but 25-35% odds are pretty decent for myself ngl. Obviously still a shot in the dark, but it’s still much better than what my chances might be RD.
As for the ECs: I forgot to mention that my current high school doesn’t allow students to be in more than two in-school clubs. I had 3 or 4 clubs at my old school where there wasn’t a limit, but I’m not even going to mention them since I was only able to do them for two years (they were also humanities based, so it wouldn’t do much). I had to choose yearbook and, since my old school didn’t have a Science Bowl team, I joined that at the new school. Again, 2 clubs max (and I’m technically only allowed to do 1 b/c of yearbook’s meeting schedule… but I forced Science Bowl in anyway). National English Honor Society meets outside of school so there’s no restrictions on that one.
At the manufacturing internship, I helped test some of the bearings for any faults of issues they may exhibit. Mostly focused on tensile strength. Nothing major, but it’s a routine process that has—although not during my time there—saved parts from manufacturing errors and the like. I also informally observed the manufacturing processes, but that was more for the experience than anything.
Didn’t take BC at school because I couldn’t. I was scheduled to go into Pre-Calc and my counselor wouldn’t let me skip. Still took pre-calc, but self-studied AB/BC and then later took the tests. Taking multivariable this year.
Any idea of what my chances might be? Any particular weak points in my application?
Still don’t really understand how it doesn’t look so good, at least with how you explained it. I’m not competing with the RD pool, and if I were I’d honestly give up and not expect anything. Of course, a lot of the accepted ED students probably had, just for explanation’s sake, a 90% chance of getting in regardless—so I’m still at the bottom of the pile… but a 1/4 chance of getting into one of the top schools in the nation? I’ll take it.
total of number of people accepted to NU is roughly 1900, out of those 1900, 1100 came from ED. Which means, more than 50% of the admits coming from ED. Apologies if I mislead you. I did mention above that the ED% was 25%.
And the important point of all of this is that when you take away athletes, legacy, and other hooked kids, the ED acceptance rate gets well below 20% for NU. Probably better than the overall 9% but not nearly as advantageous as most of us are led to believe.