This fall, I will be applying to: 8 Ivy Leagues, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford.
Objective:
Grade: 11
Ethnicity: Asian
SAT I (breakdown): 2290 (780 W, 760 M, 750 CR)
SAT II (place score in parentheses): 800 (Math II), 760 (Biology E/M)
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.95
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): N/A
AP (place score in parentheses): AP Psychology (4) School has only 4 APs in total
IB (place score in parentheses):
Senior Year Course Load: AP Physics, AP English Literature, AP Spanish, Econ/Gov, Anat/Phy Honors, and Drawing
Major Awards: None
[ b]Subjective:**
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parentheses): Medicine Club (President), National Honor Society (Treasurer), Future Business Leaders of America (Secretary), Principal’s Student Advisory Committee, and Private Tutor
Job/Work Experience: N/A
Volunteer/Community Service: Key Club (50 hours/year)
Summer Activities: Medical research at UCI before senior year with a postgrad student
Teacher Recommendations: They should both be positive, but nothing special. They might be kind of general, since I don’t know a lot of my teachers.
[ b]Other**
State (if domestic applicant): CA
School Type: Small and competitive
Ethnicity: Asian
Gender: M
Income Bracket: 150K
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): None
I was wondering why it’s so urgent as well. Anyway, since you asked, I would say for the elite schools you mentioned your profile is nothing special. You have good grades and test scores but your EC’s are pretty ordinary. Also, the fact that you say your recs will be nothing special is a big problem. Harvard, for instance, just accepted only 2.9% of their applicants in the RD round, so for every person they accepted, they rejected 32 others - most of whom were very competitive applicants. I suggest that you spend the remaining months of this school year making sure your teachers and GC gets to know you better, especially by showing leadership and good character in and out of the classroom. Ultimately, top colleges rely heavily on recs to help them sort through the piles of applicants who all have good grades and test scores.
Good luck with your applications!
You’ll be a competitive applicant in a pool of thousands of other competitive applicants. These schools are always a reach.
I recommend that you peruse some of the admission results threads on this site, in order to understand how competitive the landscape is for highly qualified students like you, and then that you begin exploring “match” and “safe” schools where you would be happy to attend. At the very least, expand your list of UCs. People with your stats were rejected or waitlisted from UCSD and Davis this year, as well as Berkeley and UCLA.
I would urgently urge you to reconsider your list. Why would you arbritrarily choose 8 Ivys? you should try to be more thoughtful with your choices.
You’ll probably get into at least one of the schools above with your stats if you write some good essays. I would include some safeties (maybe a state one, or off the top of my head somewhere like case western, etc) also so u have some low tuition/full ride options open because none of these schools are a sure admit for you or ANYONE.
^ Don’t count on Case. They tend to waitlist overqualified applicants.
The earliest you will be applying is almost 6 months from now. What is so urgent?
Brown: High reach.
Columbia: High reach.
Cornell: Reach.
Dartmouth: High reach.
Harvard: High reach; Rejection.
Princeton: High reach; Rejection.
UPenn: Reach.
Yale: High reach; Rejection
UCLA: Match.
UCB: Match.
JHU: Low reach.
Stanford: High reach.
There will be thousands of other students like you during admissions. The above commenters are subtly saying: find different schools. The chances are not exactly in your favor as you are male, reside in California, and are Asian.
I already said this in another chance thread, but many of these schools are looking for a balanced class-- not balanced students. They don’t want 2000 future doctors and engineers. They want authors, musicians, and others.
Have you taken AP Calculus or Chemistry? Is your AP Physics 1 or 2? You say your school is small and competitive; however, it doesn’t seem like they have high level courses. Not being mean, but you need to get realistic and look at the stats of accepted students to these schools. Except for UCLA, they all seem to be reach schools for your stats.