Objective:
SAT I (breakdown): N/A
ACT (breakdown): Composite: 36… English (36); Math (36); Reading (36); Science (36); Writing (11)
SAT II: N/A
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.81 (Sophomore and Junior year only) (Stanford doesn’t really consider freshman year grades)
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): My school doesn’t rank
AP (place score in parenthesis): my school doesn’t offer AP
IB (place score in parenthesis): IB Math SL (7); IB English HL (7); IB HOA (7); IB Physics (7); IB French HL (7); IB Music SL (70); IB TOK (7)
Senior Year Course Load: IB Math SL; IB English HL; IB Geography SL; IB Physics HL; IB French HL; IB Film HL; IB TOK; Advanced Orchestra
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.):
Won 5 short story contests;
Won YoungArts silver medal for my screenplay (very prestigious competition)
Subjective:
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):
Orchestra (grades 2-12) (President)
Theater (got 2 main roles)
Tennis (varsity)
Track (varsity)
Archery Club (founder) (president)
French Honor Society (president)
Science Honor Society
Math Honor Society
English Honor Society
Social Studies Honor Society
Poetry Club (President)
Computer Science Club (Vice President)
Job/Work Experience: Worked at Giant (summer job)
Volunteer/Community service: 250 hours (library; and tutor)
Summer Activities: Wrote songs and recorded them; wrote many short stories (over 500); wrote a Feature Film Screenplay; Practiced violin (4 hours a day); Gym (can do 70 pushups in a row); Ran 2 miles a day
Essays (rating 1-10, details): Main essay: Starts out about my childhood, how we fled the dangers of Iraq. then talks about my parents’ divorce and that I don’t even remember my own father; how I was disowned by my own mother because I was confused about my sexuality (my mother is VERY religious) and the time I ran away from home. I also mentioned my love for writing and music because those were the only two ways for me to express my emotions and feelings, (that’s why I wrote over 500 short stories). I concluded it by saying that I never gave up, even during my darkest times; I always found something to keep me going and to accept who I really am. And that life is nothing without friendship and happiness.
Other
Applied for Financial Aid?: I am going to apply for financial aid; my mother isn’t going help me in any way.
Intended Major: Computer Science
State (if domestic applicant): Virginia
Country (if international applicant): United States
School Type: Public
Ethnicity: Middle Eastern
Gender: Male
Income Bracket: about 60,000
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.):
Wrote more than 500 short stories
Wrote a screenplay; in the process of negotiating with producers to turn my screenplay into a Hollywood Film
Art Supplements (violin, composition, singing, theater, and a short film)
Learned how to play “The Flight of the Bumblebee”, on the violin (one of the fastest pieces EVER)
Wrote a song and recorded it. I got it to air on a few not well known radio stations (nothing big)
Taught myself how to speak in Chinese (Mandarin)
Taught myself how to read and write in Arabic (I used to only speak it)
Your hooks aren’t hooks, and I don’t believe Middle Eastern qualifies you as a URM.
Are your perfect IB scores real, or predicted?
Your essay mixes an awful lot of stuff together. Be careful that it doesn’t come across as contrived or a sob story.
In general, you need to edit yourself and present a less cluttered picture. Don’t throw in extraneous stuff that won’t make an impression. Being able to play Flight of the Bumblebee fast and do 70 pushups won’t get you very far.
You are yet another person with great humanities background applying with the intention of majoring in CS, but without particularly strong qualifications is CS. Play up your humanities background.
@renaissancedad LOL okay. First my IB scores are real, for my junior year so far cuz I actually tried hard, unlike my sophomore year. SOO basically I shouldn’t put my heart into the essay? I’m confused. The thing is that I don’t really know what to write about in the essay so I just chose that topic. LOL. I just over exaggerated it a bit… does that count as lying?
SOOO I’m not up to par for Stanford? What about Berkeley, UCLA, NYU, Duke, etc?
Your ACT score and junior IB scores are outstanding. Your GPA is a tad lowish, but not a major red flag. You have some decent ECs, though other than your writing it’s hard for me to tell which ones you really did in depth.
By all means apply to Stanford, and Duke (which I consider just as good as Stanford) and anywhere else. You meet the “qualified” or “competitive” threshold for consideration. But the chances for all those top places are in the 5-10% range (better for NYU; Berkeley and UCLA out of state is tough and expensive, but you are qualified). I’m not trying to discourage you, or confuse you. But in general, I would be very careful about 2 things:
Exaggerating. That can be dangerous.
Presenting a cluttered picture of who you are. You want to differentiate yourself from other applicants, and you want to paint a clear picture of yourself so that adcoms relate to you as a person, not as a set of stats. You have lots of compelling achievements and personal background. The trick for you will be to edit it. Take out the stuff that doesn't matter. What matters to you most, and what are you about?
Take your essay as an example. I’m certainly not suggesting that you don’t “write your heart out”, or that you don’t bare your soul regarding personal experiences. But your essay seems to have at least 7 major themes/story lines in it:
Your childhood in Iraq and refugee status.
Your parent's divorce and lack of relationship with your father.
Your gender/sexual orientation issues.
Abandonment by your mother and running away from home.
Your use of music and writing as a means of self-expression.
Your failure to give up, even in the darkest of times.
Your belief that life is nothing without friendship and happiness.
That’s a lot to fit in a novel, much less a 650 word essay. Do your short stories have this much bathos in them? I’ve seen bad Communist propaganda films with less. I can’t believe that you can do justice to all of these in such a short space, and even if you could, the sheer number of them would overwhelm most readers, and also risk your essay being cliche.
Pick a few of these, and explore them in more depth. For example, your gender/sexual orientation issues and abandonment by your mother and your use of music and writing as a means of self-expression fit together nicely. Be careful to not tell a sob story, nor be polyanna-ish. And in general, I would use the same principle with your essay and your accomplishments: edit, edit, edit.
You don’t want the admissions readers to think of your essay as a sob story (wah wah wah boo hoo wah wah wah). You want to show them what you learned from these experiences. SHOW the readers, not TELL. I would definitely make sure your essay is simplified and not have a very complicated 7 themed storyline. I think you’re in good shape for UCLA, UC Berkeley, and NYU but these are all financial reaches as well.
@isl4ndsurf3r ok got it! ;). DAMN I just wanna see that acceptance letter! LOL, BTW I think I can afford the colleges later because I wrote a screenplay that has some people interested in buying it from me. But I’m looking for a bigger and better production company such as Warner Bros and Lionsgate. I received a 100,000 dollar offer right now. But I don’t know if I should make the deal… wait… should I write my essay about my screenplay?? But it’s not that interesting, it’ll seem like I’m bragging on the essay. What do ya think?
I’m not an expert on essay’s so I can’t give you advice on that. Your EC’s and ACT score are splendid; however your GPA is a bit low (but that shouldn’t keep you out). I think you have a decent chance of getting in.
Also, it seems like you’re adding random stuff into your achievements… going to gym and running arent good summer activites for college (definitely a good thing for your personal life though) but you really wouldn’t want to list that in your application, unless you have some sort of weight loss story you want to share in your essay.
D was rejected this fall by Stanford REA with a 36 ACT, 3.82 UW GPA and a bunch of APs. Presenting a clear and compelling story is vital. If you have a $100k offer for your screenplay that is pretty unusual. How you complete your application and the quality of your essay are really the key factor for top students like you applying to schools like Stanford. Two great books “conquering the college admissions essay” by Alan gelb and “on writing the college application essay” by Harry bauld. Before you start writing you need to understand what is different about this kind of writing
@Wje9164be OMG your daughter is a top student and still got rejected?! That’s starting to worry me. Did she have any passions or anything which she mentioned on her essay? What about an interview? Which can boost chances.
She was captain of speech team, symphony orchestra, model un, youth and gov all 4 years. Basically blew interview. Just realize that admissions to schools like Stanford is hyper competitive
@JustOneDad totally, I’m gonna be competing against other Death Mages haha. (LOL Sarcasm)… So what if just “one dad” got admitted into Stanford. haha get it? LOL
@Wje9164be This makes me wonder how this person with a 3.4 GPA got into Stanford. It’s so weird! Will my race will help me get admitted? I am Arabian but I don’t act like one at all. LOL… Are Arabs even considered URM? Hopefully they are.
The fact that you sound surprised that a top student was rejected by Stanford makes me think that you do not truly understand how competitive admissions are for schools like Stanford. Do not get hung up on a school like Stanford.
@DeathMage, you are obviously extremely bright and talented. So apparently was @Wje6164be’s daughter. With a 5% admit rate and 30,000+ applicants, 80-90%of whom are bright and talented, it’s very hard. What you need to do is to differentiate yourself and to present a clear and compelling story.
Everyone has baggage and warts. You want to be careful how you display yours. You want to paint a flattering picture of yourself, not one that shows everything. This will probably piss you off, but if I were a Stanford admissions officer and I read your profile based on the OP, I might easily think something like this: “This kid is obviously smart and has accomplished a lot, but he seems to have a lot of baggage. He’s got stuff about growing up in war-torn Iraq, stuff about his parent’s divorce and not knowing his father, stuff about his super-religious mother and abandonment issues, and confusion about gender/sexual identify. That’s a lot of baggage to be carrying. He sounds hypomanic. Writing for self-expression is great, but writing 500 short stories and playing Flight of the Bumblebee super-fast sounds more like emotional and psychologic catharsis than self-expression. I can’t tell if he’s brilliant, unstable, or both. Quite possibly a little of both. Maybe with 25,000+ super-qualified applicants we should take someone a tad less brilliant but less risky.”
I’m not saying that that is who you are, but it is easily the impression that you could end up leaving.
The trick is to present yourself in a way that doesn’t make them think that. You could easily present a picture where the admissions officer comes away thinking “Here’s a kid who has overcome adversity. He’s a gifted writer and musician, has won Scholastic Arts and Writing and other writing awards, has been president of a poetry club, and actually has a screenplay under serious consideration by Hollywood. We want more kids with humanities interests at Stanford, and we’re interested in kids who can bridge engineering/CS and the humanities, who are creative and innovative, and who think outside of the box. This kid sounds right up our alley.”
Which impression would you rather give?
You have the bare bones qualifications to get accepted to Stanford. So do 80% of the people who are rejected. You want to think about how to differentiate yourself from those people, and how to present yourself.
Why do you want to go into computer science? It sounds like you would succeed much more in the humanities. The screenplay offer is really special, I’d try to work that into your essay. If I were you, I’d write about just one of the struggles you’ve encountered in your life and work your way up to the screenplay offer, which you could describe as one of your greatest achievements (if you believe it is). To make this work, you’d need to sound exceptionally humble and grateful for the opportunity. I’d say you need to focus on the essay right now, that’s what’ll differentiate your experiences from the rest of the Stanford applicants’. You are a very strong candidate, and if you knock the essay out of the park, I could see you at Stanford. Keep in mind that admissions are extremely competitive, so you can’t rely on anything. I would rethink applying to UC’s, you likely would not be able to afford them. Instead, look at other top 20 schools like UPenn, UChicago, Vanderbilt, etc and see what you like. Good luck!
I agree with @JPhilly99. I keep seeing kids with great humanities backgrounds who apply to Stanford saying they want to go into computer science, and without remarkable backgrounds in that area. Stanford wants to attract kids with strong humanities backgrounds. They would much rather be the “Harvard of the West” than the “MIT of the West”.
Some other things to think about:
Stanford requires 3 short (250 word or less) supplemental essays in addition to the Common App essay:
Some of these might be opportunities to discuss other parts of your background, such as your Iraq background.
I agree about places like Penn, Chicago and Vanderbilt. I'd add Duke, Brown and Rice to the list. Duke has a supplemental essay related to diversity which should be right up the OP's alley:
[quote]
Duke University seeks a talented, engaged student body that embodies the wide range of human experience; we believe that the diversity of our students makes our community stronger. If you’d like to share a perspective you bring or experiences you’ve had to help us understand you better-perhaps related to a community you belong to, your sexual orientation or gender identity, or your family or cultural background-we encourage you to do so. Real people are reading your application, and we want to do our best to understand and appreciate the real people applying to Duke. (250 word limit) [/quote[
@renaissancedad and @JPhilly99 I don’t really need a degree in humanities, because I already am in the doorstep of Show Biz (Hollywood). My plan is to sell my script and act in the film too, well if I can convince the producer and the director of a major film company. After that, I’ll already be have my career in film/ acting, so why the degree in humanities? I want the computer science degree to have a chance to work for the CIA.
@DeathMage, if you are accepted you can do whatever you want. But for the purposes of applying, Stanford is looking to balance all of the CS/engineering types with more kids with humanties interest, and encouraging those interests along with CS where possible. You screenplay and writing is going to stand out much more than your CS, as an applicant.
