What are my chances? (UMichigan, UCLA, Emory, NYU, Wake Forest, UPenn, UW Madison, Vanderbilt, UNC)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

I have just been rejected from Duke Early Decision and now feel very conflicted about where I will be able to get in (Duke ED accepted about 23%). I did not feel very confident going in though and I feel like I was convincing myself that I loved it more than I really did. I have already gotten into University of Minnesota Twin Cities honors, Indiana University honors, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign honors, but these were all safeties for me.

Stats:
-I am a white female and go a top 10 school in IL
-UW GPA: 3.72
-Weighted: 4.4
-My freshman/sophomore years I was having a lot of family issues and my gpa was a 4.1, sophomore year was a 4.4, junior year was a 4.75, senior year on track to get a 4.92 W
-ACT: 32, 29 on writing
-Superscore: 33
-Top 10% of my class
-AP’s: AP European History, AP Calc AB, APUSH, AP English Lang and Comp, AP Calc BC, AP US Gov’t and Pol, AP English Lit and Comp, AP Macro Econ, AP Micro Econ, AP Spanish Lang
-I have taken about 4 regular classes in all of high school (1 per year). I also have fine arts credits and have taken Mandarin Chinese and Spanish for all four years, both at an accelerated or AP level
-I want to major in Economics and minor in Mandarin and Spanish
-My essays and recs are solid

EC’s:
-Varsity Club (all years)
-Key Club (all years)
-Varsity Tennis (all years), captain (sr), went to sectionals (so, jr, sr)
-Freshman Leadership Group (jr, sr)
-Athletic Stars/Council --> leadership group where one person per sport is chosen by their coach to learn how to become leaders, very involved in school events (so, jr, sr) --> Regional Leadership Conference Student Facilitator (jr, sr)
-Spanish tutor (jr, sr)
-Chinese tutor (jr, sr)
-Spanish Club (all years), junior class officer (jr), senior class officer (sr)
-National Honor Society (jr, sr), Vice President (jr, sr), created a new tutoring program in my school
-Leadership Council --> 20 students selected in a school of 2800 (jr, sr)
-Spanish National Honor Society (jr, sr)
-Chinese National Honor Society (jr, sr)

Work Experience:
-Tennis coach (jr, sr)
-Nanny (jr, sr)
-M & S Technologies --> software development company that builds medical computer programs for doctors (fr, so, jr, sr)

Volunteering (did this for all four years of high school):
-Salvation Army (over 300 hours) --> ring the bells in front of grocery stores every year, set up holiday fundraiser two weekends every year where I am in charge of over 100 volunteers, after school program volunteer (weekly) where I work with kids from ages 4-13 and I have had to teach some Spanish speaking students how to read English, art teacher for the summer camp where I created the schedule, got together materials, and decided what projects to do and taught to over 140 children per day of camp

Awards:
-Scholar Athlete Award
-Varsity letter award
-Foreign Language achievement award
-History achievement award
-School District’s Best for Community Service
-2016 Community Star Award (selected by my city’s chamber of commerce)

What are my chances with these schools? UMichigan, UCLA, Emory, NYU, Wake Forest, UPenn, UW Madison, Vanderbilt, UNC

2

Oh also received Illinois state scholar award (top 10% of students in the state)

3

Your stats are really solid, and getting denied by duke was definitely not as a result of your stats, but only because of unlucky chances. If you didn’t truly LOVE duke, ask yourself why. Location, the type of students? Go from there and find your perfect place. I wish you luck

4

Other than Penn and Vanderbilt your chances at all those other schools are greater than your chances of ED at Duke. Yes Duke accepts 23% of ED (I’d say UCLA and UNC are both slightly higher chances), but ED involves a much more talented group than RD and a lot of legacy students and athletes come through ED, usually bringing up the admission rates for ED with it still being a pretty selective process. I think you may want to add another school or two with similar selectivities to Emory, Wake Forest, and NYU if you want to maximize your chances at being admitted to a school seen as peer-institutions to these and don’t like your fallbacks as much. Overall, I think your shots are pretty good at getting into at least one of these schools. Duke’s an extremely tough college to be accepted into, don’t take it too rough.

5

Tbh getting rejected by dook is probably the best thing that could ever happen to you. I feel confident you will get into at least one of the other ones. Good luck with UNC

6

We have almost exactly the same stats, and I got rejected from my ED too, you’ll do great things :slight_smile: you have a good chance at all those schools and should get into at least one.

7

I think you have good chances at the rest of your schools, like the other posters said!
Don’t beat yourself up about Duke, especially since ED is generally harder than RD. Duke requires ACT w/ writing so that could be why since your w/ writing score is lower.
Your stats and everything are great! Also, good luck with the rest, I’m applying to some of the same schools. :slight_smile:

8

your stats are great and your extracurriculars are amazing too, duke is an extremely tough school to get into, so it’s not a true reflection of you as a student

UMichigan: match/low reach (difficult for anyone oos)
UCLA: low reach
Emory: match (i think you have a great shot here)
NYU: match/low reach
UPenn: reach
Vanderbilt: low reach
UNC: reach just because it’s so difficult to get into oos without tippy top stats