Please Chance Me for ED to UPenn M&T!!

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
1

Applied for Financial Aid?: No
School Type: IB School
Ethnicity: Korean Asian
Gender: Male
Income Bracket: 100k
Hooks : None really (no legacies, recruits, out of state, etc)

Unweighted GPA: 3.9
Weighted GPA (My school’s different but I estimate it to be around): 4.5

SAT (New): 1580
SAT Subject Tests: 800 Math Level 2, 790 Physics , 790 US History, 800 Literature

ACT: 35 (36 Math 36 Science 34 Writing 34 Reading)

APs:
Euro 5

US History 5
Statistics 4
Calculus AB 5
Physics 1 3
Microeconomics 5
Psychology 5
Government 5
World History 5
Human Geography 5
APES 5
Language 5

Class Rank: 7 / 126

IB: HL Math, HL Physics, HL English, SL Psych, SL History, SL French,

Clubs & School Activities:
Math Club
Science Honors Club
Nationals Honors Society (11th to 12th)
History Club
National Economic Competition Club
FBLA
Speech & Debate
Tennis Team
Cross Country Team
All of these from 9th to 12th grade besides NHS

Awards and Honors:
District Champions for school tennis team
7th place Business Math FBLA Nationals in 10th
8th place Business Calculations FBLA Nationals in 11th
Several local Speech & Debate awards
Science Olympiad District Awards
District Math awards and competed at States
My school’s High Achievement Honor Roll from 9th to 11th
National AP Scholar
AP Scholar with Distinction
National Merit Semifinalist
State Champion for Chess back in middle school

Extracurriculars:
Played Piano and Violin for 9 years ( several local concerts)
Played Tennis for 8 years & spend at least 10 hours a week practicing
Raised over $7500 for community charity by fundraising and gathering money from neighbors, companies, etc.

9th & 10th: Went to Japan for volunteering work --> I volunteered to teach English to students there for 10 hrs / week for 2 months both years
11th: Internship for Cisco during the summer (Rigorous Application Process)

Leadership:
Captain of Tennis and Cross Country Teams (12th)
Founder & President of Economics Club (11th to 12th)
Treasurer of FBLA (9th to 12th)
Vice President of History Club 12th
Vice President of Science Honors Club 12th

Essays (rating 1-10, details):
Common App - 7/10 Talked about my Japan teaching experience and how I matured as a person by going through a new experience - not as flowing or catch as the good essays online
Why Penn - 7/10 – Talked about the campus, my interest in engineering and business not that outstanding

Recommendations (rating 1-10)
Teacher Rec #1: 9/10 - Calculus teacher
Teacher Rec #2: 6/10 - Physics Teacher
Counselor Rec: 6/10 - Relatively generic and based off of a talk with the student
Additional Rec: 8/10 - Strong letter from internship supervisor

Also, I got straight B’s in Math during Junior year. Will that & my AP Scores be frowned at by selective colleges such as UPenn since I’m interested in Engineering/Business?

Also, do you guys have tips for writing the supplemental (why you want to go, why this major) essays or where I could do research?

Thank you very much.

2

You will have a decent chance of either Wharton or SEAS alone but you are not very competitive for M&T. This is the most competitive program in the US and having 2 Bs in math shows you’re not gonna be the type of student they’re looking for for this program. No disrespect, you’re brilliant and you’re test scores show this but you’re not quite up to par for this hyper prestigious program.

3

@arvitkm Obviously your Bs in Math in junior year are not ideal given your intended majors but you have a lot of other things going for you that can make up for this, including perfect Math SAT scores and a 5 in AP Calculus. How were your math grades the other years of high school? In general you re competitive for M&T. Your GPA is slightly below the Penn average but still competitive, your SAT is well above the Penn average, your ranking is good, your extracurriculars are good. You are well within the feasible range for admission to M&T and of course to SEAS or Wharton separately. That said applying to Penn and especially to M&T you will face competition from students (especially asian and asian-american students), with absolute perfect SATs, GPAs, APs some crazy extracurriculars you name it. Overall i would say decent chance for M&T, good chance for Wharton or SEAS separately. So just apply M&T and put one of the two as your second choice and in the case you are rejected from M&T you will be considered for admission by the individual school of your choice.

4

Sorry, my unweighted GPA is actually 3.95 (typo). In my my 9th & 10th grades I have gotten A’s in all classes in including math.

So are you saying that M&T is more competitive than Wharton or SEAS separately? Or are they about the same? If you are rejected from M&T will you be automatically considered for each school? Or do you have to put them as your second choice?

Finally, at this point, is there anything else I could do to boost my application?

5

I happen to also take IB Math HL. It is not an easy course, there are only 10 kids in my entire class of 160 IB seniors that take Math HL. It used to be 21 but they all dropped out.

HL math incorporates AB and BC calc but also does some stats, probability, sequences/series and also vectors, but the questions are anything but the style of AP questions.

I’m not sure if colleges would recognize the difficulty or not but somewhere I heard that it does not matter if the course is SL or HL except when determining college credit (as in, a 6 or 7 on HL math exam allows you to skip some courses at MIT for example)

6

So would top colleges (e.g. Ivies) take the rigour of the course (HL Math) into account?

Like Penn95 said, there are many other crazy students with perfect grades, scores, and amazing extracurriculars that could potentially be considered better.

7

@arvitkm M&T is definitely harder to get into than Wharton or SEAS separately. You need to designate a second choice to be considered for admission if you are rejected from M&T. Your GPA is great for Penn.