Hullo everyone!!! Junior year is just about ending at my school and I have decided to ask the super awesome College Confidential community to chance me for top schools. I’m super stressed and the college admissions process is already starting to baffle me.
Major: Biochemistry or Pre-Med probably
Race: Asian
Gender: Female
Location: Northern California
Grades:
4.90 (UW), 4.50 (W)
No class rank at my public school
SAT I:1560
Math: 800; R&W: 760
(After a lot of struggle, I decided to retake in August as a senior, and am pretty sure I can get above a 1570 or above…)
SAT II:
Math II: 800
Chemistry: 800
Biology: 790
Extra Curriculars:
Volunteer weekly at a hospital
Captain (top leadership position) of Policy Debate Team at my school in sophomore year (didn’t do it junior year)
-got some pretty solid local awards in debate competitions
-got 5th at national qualifiers in sophomore year
-hoping to do well in the national level competitions senior year in october/november (last minute college application bolstering right???)
Honestly, my debate records are not amazing, but my leadership position here is my main claim to fame
President of our school’s Science Olympiad team
-1st place in an event at the state level in freshman and sophomore year
-6th place at state level in junior year
-1st, 2nd place at regionals in events sophomore and freshman year respectively
Did pretty well in sophomore and freshman years of Science Olympiad, leadership position here is also something i’m proud of (we have a massive club of over 70 people)
Over junior year summer:
-Got a cancer research internship and a separate bioinformatics internship at a UC
Pretty good internships that align with my interests
Miscellaneous:
Piano level 10
-stopped sophomore year
Won a minor, local awards in Quizbowl
Anyone’s comments will be greatly appreciated!!!
You certainly have impressive achievements, especially with Sci Oly and the two internships. You could probably weave in some experience you got from either internship into any of your essays or supplemental responses. I see much potential in that.
Do NOT retake your SAT. No admissions officer will care if you get a 1570, 1580, 1590 or 1600 or 36 or whatever. Your score currently is more than enough as far as the SAT goes. Retaking it might even be a gamble should you face a more difficult version and score lower than 1560. And, although I can’t vouch for the credibility of this position, many on this website would suggest that SAT retakes may be deemed excessive and obsessive past that threshold of 1500/1550 or so to admissions officers, essentially communicating you’re a testing drone who has nothing else to do but test and test for perfection. Plus, why waste $50 and a Saturday morning?
As for your chances, they are as good as any. No doubt you’ll get Berkley and UCLA. Stanford, Yale, Penn will be reaches (like they are for anyone), and at this point, apart from any last minute awards you get in debate, your essays will likely be the deciding factor. Devote time to really developing those essays and making sure they communicate your personality across in an exceptional and unique way. That would do much more for you than spending any unnecessary time on the SAT. A book that helped me was “On Writing the College Application Essay”; it allowed me to get a feel for my “voice” and inject flavor and interesting elements into my language and story-telling.
Good luck! Please don’t retake that awful test!
Yale: Deny
Stanford: Deny
UCB: Admit
UCLA: Admit
JHU: Admit
Waterloo: unknown
UPenn: Defer, then waitlist, then deny
Obviously these are my personal opinions and don’t mean anything haha
Don’t retake your SAT unless you are POSITIVE you will improve by at least 20+ points. Even if you do improve your score, it will likely have little to no effect on your current chances since adcoms don’t usually care about the difference between a 1560 and a 1600. Your test scores and GPA (did you mean 3.9 UW?) are stellar, and you’ve done very well on the subject tests you have taken. Your ECs are also pretty outstanding and you have a lot of awards in the science field. Did you ever consider submitting a project to your local science fair? (If you are in the Bay Area, you could look into Synopsis). Your internships seem pretty impressive and do in fact align with your interests very well. I would say you have a great shot at the UCs, and are likely to get into JHU and Penn too probably (but I would not bet on it, since Ivies are a crapshoot sometimes). Yale and Stanford are tossups, though I have heard Yale is trying to increase its student population in STEM majors, so I would say you have a pretty good shot there as well. Good luck! I would appreciate it if you could chance me back here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1995754-chance-me-low-gpa-rank-cornell-rice-wash-u-ucla-etc-p1.html Thanks!
Like the above posts, DON’T retake SAT. As an Asian student, try to avoid (in essays in particular) being “that familiar Asian profile…” I sometimes wonder whether having the perfect GPA, SAT I and SAT II’s for Asians are an advantage or actually a disadvantage, i.e., leave some imperfection in to avoid looking “robotic.”
You can’t major in pre-med by the way. You can go on the pre-med track, but pre-med is not a major.
All of this is excellent advise. The biggest thing you can do now to make yourself stand out is your essays. As great as your resume is, it’s probably very very similar those of a lot of high achievers vying for the same schools (crazy, I know, but I’ve seen a lot of “chance me’s” on CC - there are a lot of amazing people out there).