Hello folks, I was wondering if any of you guys had the time to ‘chance’ me for the schools I’m applying too.
Ok, so here are the (non-safe) schools I’m applying to (in order of favor):
Harvard
MIT
Yale
Princeton
Caltech
Columbia
Johns Hopkins
UC Berkeley
My stats:
ACT: 35 (lost the point on the reading section)
SAT Mathematics Level 2: 790
SAT Biology Molecular: 750
SAT Physics: 800
SAT Chemistry: 800
SAT Literature: 700
GPA: 3.83/4.0 (grade 9: 4.0 grade 10: 3.5, grade 11: 4.0)
My classes:
IB diploma program + one certificate course, 5 HLs in total
Extra curricular activities (not sure which 5 I should list, any advice on that?):
Play guitar in a band
Started a local youth science and culture web magazine
Internship at a uni
Internship at another uni the following year
Started a few clubs at my school
Semi-professional 10m air rifle (MIT has a NCAA team so I definitely want to list this)
Other info:
Nationality: Canadian
Preferred major: biomedical engineering
Plans for future studies: med school
MIT - Reach (would be low reach if you had some science/math ECs)
Yale - Reach
Princeton - Reach
Caltech - Reach (same reason as MIT)
Columbia - Reach
Johns Hopkins - Low reach
UC Berkeley - low reach
Here’s the deal…your GPA is not stellar, but your ACT and 3 of your SAT subject matter tests are, and your ECs as you described them, do not stand out. The problem is that these schools are ALL tough for anyone…the Ivies are a reach for ANYONE, and then the others there are all pretty tough to get into also.
I think, unless you blow it the rest of the way, that you WILL get into at least one of those (and maybe more) colleges, but taken individually they are ALL reaches. You should definitely choose some safety schools too.
I agree with @stepay above… just for reference, my kid had similar ACT and GPA to you, and probably a similar level of ECs, maybe not quite as much, also was looking at bio major although not pre-med, and got rejected at UC Berkeley (didn’t apply to the others) this year. So have some target schools as well.
would be low reach if you had some science/math ECs
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My internships were research (one physics, one bio) and I didn’t want to mention this because I’m not sure about it but I might have a research paper published. If that happens (probably won’t but lets lets explore this), how would my chances change?
This is confusing, you may be the primary investigator on a physics paper, but you want an analysis on your chances to get into colleges that have 1000s of posts with the same question?
@Camusish
I fail to understand why my authoring of a research paper is relevant to my thread about wondering about my chances? By the way, it’s a biology paper, not a physics one.
What I meant was if you read them, there’s a very obvious consensus as to your chances. You have the stats of other accepted students/ as well as many not accepted.
@Camusish
What is the consensus!? And also, where can I get those stats? For Johns Hopkins I could only find a thread with like 5 posts on it, all accepted. I don’t know where my ECs stand compared to others.
Oh god, getting into any of those schools would be a dream for me. Thank you for the humongous confidence boost ! Hope you get into whatever school you want!
Well, with more info, I would change MIT and CalTech to ‘low reach’. Still, the issue remains that you have chosen some extremely tough to get in schools. One of the issues too with CalTech is that there are only 977 students in the whole school! They just really don’t take many students each year. Good luck!
I’m new here so I don’t understand some terminology. Could I ask a question to try to clarify something for myself? What does a low reach mean? Like a ‘match’ but not as likely as a match? Pretty impossible but not 100% impossible?
Also I realized I missed mentioning some very important things. lol. I’m going to blame it on being sick and sleep deprived. Sorry.
Both of my clubs are heavily physics related
I write the ‘science and technology’ section of my magazine.
I also had an internship at a tech firm in grade 9.
I won’t be having another internship in the summer: the second internship I mentioned is the internship I’m going to be doing this summer. I will have a total of three summer internships: before grade 9, 11, and 12.