Provide suggestions for what I can do better to improve my chances!!
In state student in Northern Virginia
Asian
Intended Major: Biology
Pre med track in college
Upper Middle Class
Academics
UW GPA: 3.96/4.0
W GPA: 4.6/5.0
APs: AP World History (4), AP Comp. Sci. A (5), AP Calc BC (4), AP Chem (4), AP Lang (4), AP Bio (5)
Class Rank: Top 5-10 out of 770
SAT: 1480 (1500 superscore)
Teacher Recs: 8/10
Essays: 8/10
Extracurriculars
Biology Olympiad: 11-12, Co-Founder and Co-President
HOSA - Medical Club: 9-12, Vice President (11), Co-President (12)
National Math Honor Society: 9-12, Vice President (12)
Public Health Oriented Club: 12, Vice President (12)
Full-Time Student Researcher for Local University: 11-12, Project Leader
Educational YouTube channel providing content for 500+ average viewers (still working on growing this): 11-12, Co-Founder and Head Content Creator
1/110 students who attended Math, Science, and Technology program in the summer of 11th grade where I participated in summer classes and research in anatomy and physiology as well as astronomy.
Local Hospital Volunteer: 10, volunteered 120+ hours
Productivity- related blog: 12 (still in process of growing this)
Oncology-based Non-Profit Organization: 11-12, Outreach Director
Awards
Science Fair
2nd in States for Material Sciences (11)
1st in Regionals for Material Sciences; Grand Prize Nominee (11)
Organizational Awards from American Mathematical Society and Ricoh (11)
3rd in Regionals for Plant Sciences (9)
Honorable Mention for Medicine and Health Sciences (10)
HOSA
3rd in States for Pathophysiology; International Qualifier
Chemistry Olympiad
National Qualifier
National Merit Finalist
1/60 students chosen to be enrolled in local Governor’s School under a local university, where I take rigorous college STEM classes under college professors and partake in research.
Does your school have Naviance? It is a tool that can be helpful in showing the verdicts for your high school’s students in applying to specific schools. Or–your GC may be able to help you figure out if kids from your school with similar stats do well with these schools. They all are likely to be reaches, maybe UVA is a match. Be careful in thinking Va Tech is a safety; it has not been the expected safety it usually is with competitive in-state kids this year, especially NOVA kids. Also–you could not possibly know if you are a National Merit Finalist yet, assuming you are a junior in high school? The semi-finalist cutoffs have not been announced and Virginia is notoriously hard to make Semi-finalist. Please be honest on here and you will get more accurate advice.
UVA, as a high achieving in-state student is a target, UFL is a low reach or high target, UNC and UMich are solid solid reaches (since you are OOS), and the other two are reaches for anybody.
You are very competitive for your reaches. Why aren’t you applying for W&M?
Also, what can your parents afford? Many upper middle class families find that they have difficulty paying the actual costs for private colleges or OOS colleges, which run from $77,000 a year for Cornell, to $55,000 a year for UNC.
Two additional questions: A. what have you been doing for the past year?, B, why do you have only 6 AP classes - it seems low for a highly accomplished student?
Thank you for the advice! My school does have Naviance, and I seem to be one of the top students for the majority of the schools I am applying to from my school (with exceptions of Duke and Cornell, of course-I am around above average in terms of stats, but I am not too worried since I know they are hard reaches). Of course, as I am still a junior, I had to estimate some stats, but since I got a 1500 on the PSAT, I can roughly estimate that I would be a National merit semi finalist by the time college admissions roll around, since my index is a 224, which is higher than the qualifying index for Virginia has ever been (around 221-222).
I am still considering William and Mary, as it is a bit expensive for the value it would give (more expensive than UVA despite being worse in medicine and biology), but as it is an in-state school, I am still considering it and just didn’t want to include it in the list until I am sure.
Additionally, although I have seen that UF has gotten harder and harder for oos applicants, I have seen that my stats and my application are well off for UF, as I believe I have the highest stats out of my school on Naviance in terms of GPA, but I will make sure to be more careful with UF, so thanks for the suggestion!
Lastly, I didn’t explain my lack of APs because it was hard to explain, but it involves my acceptance into the STEM school at my local university. Essentially, I take 4 classes per semester there, totaling in 8 classes per year on top of 2 classes in my base school, since I am only allowed to take 6 classes at a time. Thus, this year, I am taking Calc 1 and 2 (Calc BC), Chem 1 and 2 (AP Chem), Intro to Research 1&2, intro to engineering, and innovations (marketing and business class). Additionally, in senior year, I am taking Organic Chem and bio chem, environmental chemistry, calculus 3, linear algebra, and am continuing innovations and intro to research (mentor ship). As you can see, although many of the classes are full-weighted and are complex, they don’t have an AP exam attached to it, and since I am only able to take 2 classes from my base school, they have been limited to classes like AP Lang and US History, instead of taking classes that I would like to take such as AP Psychology.
Please, when you want people to figure out what they think your chances are, it is difficult to do so when you are giving “predicted” grades and accomplishments. Until you have done something it does not exists, and any grade that you have not earned also does not exist.
The only one of the accomplishments which is more or less a given is the NMSF status, since, you are correct, an SSI of 224 means that you are certainly a semi-finalist. You will most likely also be a finalist, but you need to make sure that this happens.
As for APs, it looks like you are taking college-level courses that are equivalent to APs.
Finally, as I wrote - can your parents afford Duke, UMich, Cornell, or UNC?
You’re right, W&M looks costly for an in-state option.
You should also look at colleges which have good merit support for NMFs. Since you are thinking about medical school, which costs a fortune, you want to save as much money as possible. So an undergrad which is entirely free of cost is worth your while to consider. The most important factors in admissions to medical school are GPA and MCAT scores, and the “prestige” of your undergraduate doesn’t matter all that much.
@Medicine-enthusiast In what way is William & Mary worse for pre-med or biology at the undergraduate level? If you are looking at some graduate school ranking somewhere, you need to remember that you are going to be an undergraduate and not a graduate student. If you look at the number of undergraduates that go on to get biology PhDs (link provided below), which is one significant measure of quality, you would see that a higher percentage of William & Mary undergraduates earn biology PhDs than either UVA or Virginia Tech, and by some margin (about 3X vs. VT and 1.7X vs UVA). If you look at a website like the College Transitions Dataverse Best Colleges for Biology, which is only looking at undergraduate programs, you would see William & Mary is the only school in Virginia listed.
If you are considering pre-med, then you should be looking at pre-med admission rates if you can find it rather than simply assume a school is better because it has a medical school. Again, you will be enrolled in the undergraduate college and not the medical school. Savvy Pre-med has a rating of pre-med schools based on factors they have found to be valuable in their experience as application advisors (pre-med advising, teaching in core areas, class sizes) and William & Mary is the highest ranked public school on the list at 24.
Assuming your LoRs and essays are in line with your SATs then I will estimate a 15-25% chance at Michigan, 20-30% at UNC, 10% at Cornell CAS, 7-10% at Duke. I don’t know what your chances are in state at UVA, but I have to assume they are very good.
They are all worth applying to.
You mentioned most of your list is safety schools. I suggest 1 or 2 safety schools . . . the only reason I can think of you would want more is if they are very different and you are undecided which you would prefer. I would look for additional schools that you might like more your safeties and, ideally, more than UVA which does look like a Match/Target.