<p>Decision: Rejected</p>
<p>Objective:[ul]
[<em>] SAT I (breakdown): 2340 (800 Math, 740 Reading, 800 Writing, 12 Essay)
[</em>] ACT: 36 (36 Math, 35 English, 36 Science, 35 Reading, 9 Essay)
[<em>] SAT Subject Tests: 800 Math, 770 USH, 770 Chem
[</em>] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.99
[<em>] Weighted GPA: 4.5 (irrelevant)
[</em>] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 7/421
[<em>] AP (place score in parenthesis): Stats 5, Comp Sci 5, Calc BC 5, AP Physics C Mechanics 5, AP Physics E&M 4, AP Eng Lang 5, AP Chem 5, AP Gov 5
[</em>] IB (place score in parenthesis):
[<em>] Senior Year Course Load: 5 APs (most possible)
[</em>] Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): None, though NMF and National AP Scholar
[/ul]Subjective:[ul]
[<em>] Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): Academic Challenge/Quiz Bowl (Varsity Co-Captain, JV Captain), High School Orchestra (Concertmaster), Asian Cultural Club (Secretarial Officer), Newspaper, Piano, Tennis
[</em>] Job/Work Experience: Computer Business/General IT
[<em>] Volunteer/Community service: >200 hours, hospitals, teaching, soup kitchens, etc.
[</em>] Summer Activities: Two internships.
[<em>] Essays (subjects and personal opinions): ? As in the Common App? Fine, I think. Wrote the main essay on topic of growth.
[</em>] Common App Main Essay: Decent, maybe even good, but not great. I had it looked over by my counselor, four teachers, and a close friend, but it was still largely my construct.
[<em>] EC Short Answer: Err…what?
[</em>] Why Yale?: Depends. I mentioned my personal history with Yale, and how using Yale as a goal has helped me. Not much room here anyways.
[<em>] Short Takes: Good, well-phrased and appreciable.
[</em>] Additional Essay:Unsure, at this point. I was aware my Yale supplemental essay was either love it or hate it. May have conferred the wrong image; I tried to portray my morals and guidelines, but it probably came out sounding more than a little self-righteous.[/ul]
[ul]
[<em>] Teacher Recommendation 1: AP English Comp teacher, knew me well and held a high regard for my writing and class participation.
[</em>] Teacher Recommendation 2: AP Chem teacher, knew me well and helped me with an internship, a little unknown.
[<em>] Counselor Rec: Solid, or at least it should have been. My counselor has known me well for four years.
[</em>] Additional Rec:
[<em>] Interview: So-so, the interviewer had a cold and our discussion was a little out of focus in my opinion, as he wanted my opinions on recent events.
[/ul]Other[ul]
[</em>] State (if domestic applicant): OH
[<em>] Country (if international applicant):
[</em>] School Type: Public, competitive but not overly so.
[<em>] Ethnicity: Asian
[</em>] Gender: Male
[<em>] Income Bracket:
[</em>] Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): None
[/ul]Reflection[ul]
[<em>] Strengths: Strong test scores, and that’s just about it.
[</em>] Weaknesses: Everything but test scores, at least in relation to Yale. No strong ECs, no strong awards, lacking profile as a whole. Essays certainly were nowhere near as good as they would needed to have been to outweigh the downsides. And a cookie-cutter Asian applicant.
[<em>] Why you think you were accepted/waitlisted/rejected: Relatively well-covered in the weakness section. In short: I AM LEGION. MANY OF ME APPLY. And more accurately, I’m actually low-performing among the legion of Asian applicants, and applicant pool as a whole, so, that’s that.
[</em>] Where else were you accepted/waitlisted/rejected: Ha ha ha…
Accepted: Cornell, JHU, UChicago, Carnegie Mellon, Tufts, CWRU, OSU
WL: Northwestern, WUSTL
Rejected: UPenn (no surprise there, terrible application overall)
[/ul]General Comments: To those who were accepted, my congratulations! You represent the top of a very strong pool of hopefuls, and I wish you the best! To the waitlisted, well, you still have quite an accomplishment on your hands! Yale doesn’t boast a huge waitlist, so you just had some bad luck; it is not a reflection of your ability. And for the rest of us rejectees, I can only quote from a post I saw earlier today…alcohol makes anything better! Joking. But while this may have been your dream school, as it was mine, you will be heading to strong institutions anyways, maybe not the big Y, but other excellent places. You tried, and missed, and in a year of extraordinary competition, that can only reflect positively on your motivation, ambition, and drive. My best wishes to you. And to all, live long and prosper!</p>