"Stereotypical Asian application"- Chance me (Ivy Leagues + more)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi! I’m a rising senior, and I would like someone to chance me on the schools I’ve listed below. I would also like to know which schools would be my reach, match, and safety, since I’m still working on choosing which colleges I want to apply to.

My biggest spike/hook is my math + CS + physics contest results (listed in my awards section), and other than that my application is the “stereotypical Asian application” (i.e. decent but not perfect grades/test scores, and other than that pretty boring application with not many good EC’s).

Colleges I’m currently thinking of applying to:
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Standford, MIT, UChicago, UPenn, Caltech UCLA, UC Berkely, my state flagship school for a safety (I’m not revealing my state because that would reveal who I am)

(My #1 choice would be MIT, so I am planning on applying early for MIT and regular on everything else)

Demographics:
Asian male (parents are from China)
Upper-middle class
Interested majors: Math, CS

School/grades:
Attend a relatively competitive public magnet school

Freshman year: Weighted GPA: 4.63, Unweighted: 4.0
Sophomore year: Weighted GPA: 4.81, Unweighted: 4.0
Junior year: Weighted GPA: 4.63, Unweighted: 3.75
Class rank: N/A (school doesn’t rank)

Standardized Tests:

SAT: 1580/1600
ACT: 35
SAT II: Math II- 800, Physics- 800, Chinese- 800, US History- 760, Literature- 750
AP: AP Chinese- 5, AP Gov- 4, AP Calc BC- 5, APUSH- 5, AP CSA- 5, AP Stat- 5, AP Physics C Mechanics- 5, AP Physics C E&M- 5, AP Lang- 4

Awards:
Main awards:
3-time USA(J)MO Qualifier (2018, 2019, 2020)
4-time AIME Qualifier (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020)
USACO Plat Qualifier
2-time USAPhO Qualifier (2019, 2020)
USAPhO Silver Medalist (2020)

Smaller awards:
PuMAC Individual Finalist, HMMT Feb Top 50, CMIMC Top 10 (over the course of high school, not all in the same year)
Other awards in local math competitions and hackathons

Activities, clubs, extracurriculars, and leadership:

Boys varsity volleyball team (All 3 years of high school; Captain Junior year)
Math Team (All 3 years of high school; Captain Sophomore and Junior year)
Physics Club (All 3 years of high school; Captain Junior year)
Competitive Programming Club (Junior year only; founder and president)

Played club volleyball for 6 seasons (2014-2015 season → 2019-2020 season)
Head coach of the math team of one of county’s top 3 middle schools (All 3 years of high school)
Internship in summer 2018 and fall 2020

Could someone please chance me? Thanks!

2

@swagmaster101 : I’m truly impressed but make sure not to mispell the school names in application essays (i.e., Stanford instead of “Standford” and Berkeley instead of “Berkely”.)

Good luck!

3

So, I guess CA is your state of residence? :smile:

4

The schools you listed are a reach for all students. You are certainly competitive but you need to add some match and safeties.

Is your state flagship auto admit? If not and you are applying for CS, it could be a match and not a safety depending on your state.

If you like MIT and Caltech, look at RPI as a match. If you are in CA, add Cal Poly.

MIT, Caltech, and U Chicago are nothing like HYP. Think about clearly being able to articulate why these schools are a good fit for you. If you want more reaches (which I don’t think is necessary), I’d look into Carnegie Melon to replace one of the HYP schools.

Every part of your application is going to matter for these top schools. Be sure you can show them why they are a good fit for you beyond that they are prestigious.

5

I’ve heard that MIT really likes math olympiad winners. You wrote that you were a USAJMO qualifier. Does this mean that you attended the international math olympiad?

Sorry I’m just not that familiar with the olympiad competitions.

6

@swagmaster101 In order to give you a general understanding of reach, match, and safety school, College Confidential recently covered this topic in an article that may help answer your few questions. Read more here: https://insights.collegeconfidential.com/how-to-choose-dream-target-and-safety-schools

7

@4above I actually don’t live in CA. And the misspellings were because I was writing my post late at night lol

@2above, No it doesn’t, unfortunately; USAMO qualifiers is about the top 250 high schoolers in the country but the IMO team is top 6.

@3above and above: Well I do know about reach, match, and safety schools, and I actually had MIT and UChicago as my main match schools and UCLA/UC Berkeley between match and safety. (And no my state school isn’t auto-admit but it has a >40% admissions rate, which is why it’s a safety.)

I do think that my profile is a lot stronger than that of the average Ivy League student (at least, from what I heard), and MIT puts lots of value on math/science contest results, which is why I feel like MIT is a match.

8

@swagmaster101 UCLA and Berkeley are not safeties for anybody and MIT and U Chicago are not matches for anyone. These are all reaches with the latter two being more reachy than the former. Any school with a sub 10% acceptance rate is a reach for all, some would push that to <20%

With that said, your accomplishments are impressive and you are likely to obtain acceptances to many competitive schools.

9

So you’re about top 250 in the US for the math olympiads. Ok got it. I didn’t realize that the IMO only takes the top 6. That sounds brutal. I’ve read elsewhere that MIT tends to scoop up the IMO gold medalists each year. That sounds like its an incredibly small number of people.

You say that your HS does not rank. What do you estimate your rank to be? They will be able to estimate based on previous applicants, and distribution of current applicants. This will be important for your chances to MIT, etc, as they tend to take only the top students. For certain magnet schools, they will go down farther on the rank percentiles.

10

What could really hurt you is the Junior GPA of 3.75. A sudden drop in GPA as you start taking the most challenging classes is not, generally, a good look. Looking at your AP test scores and your other test scores, that GPA is also surprising, since you seem to have the required mastery of the material, so where did that drop in GPA come from?

Or is this a typo?

11

If your rank is outside of the top 10-15% then I agree with @mwolf that your chances at MIT are not that great. Especially since you’re in a tough demographic. There are tons of Asian math whizzes who apply to MIT each year that they can pick from.

But there are some magnet schools where I know that being in the top half of the class is a remarkable achievement. Many go onto Ivy+ schools. How does your high school stack up in terms of MIT acceptances each year?

12
  1. You can apply EA to MIT and EA to other colleges that do not restrict you from applying EA elsewhere.
  2. If you apply to just that list of colleges, your most likely result is that you will be starting at community college after being shut out, or starting at your state flagship if it is not one of the most selective ones.
  3. Safeties are colleges where you have a 100% chance of admission and 100% chance of affordability.
13

You’d probably have a better chance of admission at Oxbridge. They don’t care about GPA (or ethnicity) and value math competitions very highly.

14

@MWolf actually yeah, I indeed made a typo; my junior year GPA is actually 3.88 not 3.75, oops. The GPA drop is due to a B in AP Lang. Would that still hurt me significantly?

@sgopal2 Well in terms of awards/achievements, I’m by far the best in my class and actually the second best in the history of my school. I’m probably also top 5% in my class with regards to SAT scores, but my GPA and AP scores are most likely not within the top 20%.

However, do colleges really just take x amount of people from each school? I thought they evaluated applications individually and only look at the school to get a sense of what the GPA means. Or am I wrong?

@above I am already planning on doing #1. With regards to #2, could you please elaborate on why?

15

How good are you in humanities? Do not be a typical math/science kid. To improve chances of being admitted, one must focus on bringing humanities and show more of a community involvement. GLTY

16

@above: my humanities are decent I guess, but not great (as you can see from my SAT and AP scores). I’m planning on trying to have a very well-written essay which could help demonstrate my writing abilitiy.

@3above: Thanks for the suggestion, but I’m not planning on applying there because I want to stay in the US for college.

17

I think you’re missing the point of what colleges are looking for. Olympiads are valued, but you can’t base your entire application on them. I had zero Olympiad experience but a good balance of STEM and humanities and got into MIT. And saying MIT is a match and Berkeley is a safety is ridiculous. Not even people who have 4.0s, ISEF experience, and hooks consider those schools as such. I would advise you to slightly lower your expectations and come at this with a more informed mindset.

18

That makes sense, and no, one B isn’t going to hurt you significantly.

However, to reiterate what others are writing - you need to figure out what you looking for in a college besides prestige/ranking. Furthermore, every single one of those colleges on your list is a reach or a high reach - not a match or safety among them.

As for flagships - Some flagships would not be safeties, even with your profile. For example, UMichigan would likely be a match for an in-state students with your profile, as would UVA, and neither would be safeties.

The reason I’m mentioning this is that you also described UCLA and Berkeley as safeties, and described MIT as a match.

The problem is that many people calculate their “chances”, based on where they are, compared to the accepted students. So a person whose stats are better than 95% of the students who were accepted to a college will assume that the college is a safety.

The actual way to figure our one’s “chances” is to see see the percent of students with those stats who were accepted. So, while an applicant with a UW GPA of 4.0 (with a rigorous course set) and an SAT of 1600 has better stats than 95% of all applicants for Princeton, that does not mean that 95% of all applicants with those stats were accepted.

One needs to calculate what percent of applicants with similar stats were accepted, in order to figure, roughly, how one’s stats figure into their chances of admission. Colleges with very low acceptance rates (e.g. Harvard, MIT, Stanford) will usually reject the vast majority of all of their applicants who have stats which are as good as the top 5% of the accepted students.

19

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/freshman-admissions-summary can show you historical frosh admit rate by HS GPA for various UC campuses (unfortunately, it does not show by division or major; engineering and CS majors are commonly more competitive and selective than overall campus averages). For the most recent year shown:

UCB HS GPA >= 4.20: 38% admit rate
UCB HS GPA 3.80-4.19: 12% admit rate
UCLA HS GPA >= 4.20: 35% admit rate
UCLA HS GPA 3.80-4.19: 7% admit rate

These are the weighted-capped HS GPA as recalculated by the method used at https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/ .

These also do not account for characteristics like essays and extracurriculars, which most applicants have no visibility in how they compare with the rest of the applicant pool.

20

I do think that my profile is a lot stronger than that of the average Ivy League student (at least, from what I heard), and MIT puts lots of value on math/science contest results, which is why I feel like MIT is a match.

@swagmaster101 Actually, it’s not. There are quite a number of Mathathletes who are in the top 10 ( or #1) at MIT and who play volleyball for example. Or, they built a product from scratch. Or kids who might be into something else where there are high level competitions and they place highly ( Intel, for example). You will be competing with minds from across the world.

I think you have a chance at MIT, but I don’t think it’s a match. More like a reach. Same for Caltech. I’d suggest some of other other schools. And I’d have a range of schools. There are more kids with super stats than kids with super stats and high level EC’s. The best schools can pick. I’d pay attention to the essays and recommendations. Good luck.