What are my chances for Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and other top Ivys?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>My main concerns: Lack of research and awards.
Strong points: Extracurriculars in the scientific field I am passionate in, but good at humanities as well.</p>

<p>Gender: Male
Nationality: Asian-American (how much does race affect my application?)
Location: New Jersey
School: Good, top-15 U.S. private school, competitive. (is this a good or bad thing?)</p>

<p>GPA: 4.1 (out of 4.3)
Sophomore year: Took Calculus BC.
Junior year: AP Chemistry, Physics C, Honors Calculus-based Statistics
Notes: I tend to get A's, with A+'s sometimes. My lowest grades from Sophomore to Junior year are A-'s. I have a few A+'s in math and english. I like to think of myself as a humanities and science kind of guy. Though my school does not rank, I am probably in the top 10 students of my class.</p>

<p>SAT scores: (taken in Soph. year -- currently waiting for results from a retake)
Crit Reading: 770
Math: 760
Writing: 800</p>

<p>SAT II:
Math: 790</p>

<p>PSAT: 223</p>

<p>AP scores:
Calculus BC: 5</p>

<p>Extracurriculars:</p>

<p>Co-CTO and Developer of a student-run startup company -- unnamed for privacy reasons. This company was among the top 5 finalists for the Intel Innovators competition. In my work, I implemented backend features in Ruby on Rails 3, including a post ranking algorithm, user post submission, user profiles, commenting, and voting (including voting on comments).</p>

<p>President and Founder of my school's programming club. Host weekly meetings to teach programming, algorithms, and web development to members. Taught Python, Java, and C#. Led projects and prepared members for competition programming. In addition, I'm planning on taking the AP CS exam independently this year.</p>

<p>Wrote Java applications for basic card games, tic-tac-toe, and ball bouncing in Android SDK. Developed a fairly sophisticated two dimensional platform game.</p>

<p>Participated in the 2011 AI Challenge -- Created a solution for an ant robot using pathfinding and collaborative diffusion (i.e., weighted goal-finding).</p>

<p>USA Computing Olympiad – Active Competitor. No rewards yet, but planning on reaching Silver/Gold in senior year.</p>

<p>Participated in Princeton University Math Competition (PUMaC), Harvard-MIT Math Tournament (HMMT), Delaware Valley math competitions</p>

<p>I am also planning on working a computer-related internship at a company this summer.</p>

<p>Also: Princeton U offers classes for high schoolers to attend. Would it be worth it to sign up for a computer science class? Doing so would probably wreck my senior-year schedule.</p>

<p>Thank you! Please be harsh if need be -- are these schools a "reach" for me?</p>

2

<p>Dude, no one can predict what they will say and rarely anyone is fit for those school.</p>

3

<p>Can you fly?
Do you walk on water?</p>

<p>Or, do you have MAJOR hooks?</p>

<p>If not, then they are reach schools for you.
(Bigger reach for you since you have a major anti-hook.)</p>

4

<p>They’re not reach school. He/she seems to be perfectly capable of making it into one of these schools. Again why would you want the opinion of people who don’t know much about this?</p>

5

<p>You need one more sat 2</p>

6

<p>You have good chances because your start-up company extracurricular sounds nice. I’d say you’re probably in for at least one of the four schools you listed in the title. The one thing I would caution you is that the “participation credits” don’t mean much because anyone can participate in those. </p>

<p>Only take the PU class if you really want to. I don’t think it would significantly help your application.</p>

7

<p>You’re a strong student who will get into many good schools. Theses? Who knows? much will depend on the soft factors. You need to use your essay to truly differentiate yourself from all the candidates who read a lt like you. You are in an extremely competitive pool being Asian and from NJ. make your essay about anything except academics and computer programming.</p>

8

<p>Really strong applicant. There’s going to be a lot of candidates just like you - great sat, great school, great rank, and interested in computer science. Your essays are going to have a lot of impact on admissions - so make them outstanding, and original.</p>

9

<p>IS OP a strong candidate?
Absolutely!</p>

<p>Will OP get into some great colleges?
Absolutely!</p>

<p>However, HYPSM are high reaches and Columbia, Cal Tech, Chicago and Penn and so on are reach schools no matter how you look at it.</p>

<p>Do not underestimate the “power” of being an Asian male. Apply to many top colleges, you will get into some of them.</p>