<p>Sex: Female
Race: Asian
Ethnicity: Chinese
Major: Biology, Biochemistry, or Neuroscience
Career goal: MD/PhD
High School: public school in Pennsylvania</p>
<p>GPA: 4.9231
Class Rank: 4/814 (this because 3 people are tied for 1st with a 5.0)</p>
<p>SAT: will take in November, should be at least 2300
SAT II: US History (770), Math II (800), Chinese (770)</p>
<p>APs
Sophomore: AP US History, AP Calc AB, AP Psych, AP Stat (no one else at my school has ever taken more than 3 AP classes sophomore year)
Junior: AP World History, AP Econ, AP Chem, AP Calc BC</p>
<p>You can certainly apply to the schools on your list…which are a reach for everyone…even seniors with grades like yours. </p>
<p>Applying early to the schools on your list is very tricky. Harvard often encourages kids who’ve been in HS for 4 years to take a gap year! You will need to really stand out in terms of maturity and show you need the stimulation of a college environment.</p>
<p>Hopefully others on this site have experience with kids applying to those top schools before completing their senior year, and can give you some better insight. Tokenadult might have some good input.</p>
<p>As noted before, those schools are a reach for a 2400 SAT, with a perfect gpa and perfect essays.
You should add a “safety” school (that is one that you’re certain to get into: in your state it would be Penn State or Lehigh).</p>
<p>Assuming you get a 2300 SAT, and assuming that your GPA is essentially perfect “unweighted” (that is, after deducting extra points for APs or Honors classes), you would have less than perhaps a 1 in 3 chance of attending one of the Ivies.</p>
<p>I posted here elsewhere about a kid with a perfect unweighted GPA, a 2370 SAT, ten “5s” on AP exams, and he didn’t get into a single Ivy that he applied to (he applied to 7).</p>
<p>So, protect yourself by finding a safety school that you’d love to attend.</p>
<p>Everybody’s situation is different, so I understand that just saying “it worked out better for my son because he decided to stay for senior year” doesn’t necessarily carry a lot of weight.</p>
<p>However, I’ll point out a couple of things you might want to consider:</p>
<ol>
<li>Much of your record states that you have very high potential, but you have yet to prove that you stand head and shoulder above other applicants. There are applicants to the schools you list that have already completed Calc BC–and then some–and have A’s and 5’s on the AP test at the time of application. My son (and certainly he was not alone) had earned the National AP scholar award by the end of junior year (he had 5s on 9 AP exams), won some big awards during junior year, had a slew of 800s on SATII exams across a wide range of fields by the end of junior year, etc. He also strengthened the “leadership and teamwork” aspect of his record during the course of junior year. The point is, his application was far stronger at the end of junior year than it would have been if he had applied during his junior year. (And FWIW he could have actually had a hs diploma at the end of junior year, not just waiving it, as you are thinking about.)</li>
</ol>
<p>You might be overestimating how strong your record is when compared with the very top applicants, since many of those had records just as good as yours at the end of 10th grade, but they went on to strengthen them during 11th grade.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You don’t say where your financial needs fall. If you need or desire merit aid (a couple of the schools on your list offer some merit scholarships, albeit not the Ivy schools), another year of accomplishment would probably be a very good thing. It is my belief that the merit award committees are not looking merely for potential, but proven track records. Again, referring back to kids I know (son included) who were offered significant merit scholarships, junior year accomplishments–both in and out of the classroom–added significantly to the package presented to the scholarship award committees.</p></li>
<li><p>The maturity thing. Again, I realize this varies dramatically with individuals, but I believe an extra year of experience dealing with the world usually doesn’t hurt. If you want to stand out at university, it helps to hit the ground running. A lot of brilliant kids spend a semester or two floundering because they really weren’t quite ready for the transition.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>OP- are you full pay? Have you had the money discussion with your parents yet? They may want to run their finances through one of the online financial aid calculators before you let the process get ahead of you. No sense in falling in love with a whole stack of schools you can’t afford to attend without a financial back-up.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Your grades, test scores, class rank are obviously good enough for anyone. That is not what is going to hold you back.</p></li>
<li><p>You list too many ECs to take seriously. If you were taking all of those courses, doing all of that piano practice, spending 300 hours volunteering at a hospital, and doing research at Lehigh, you couldn’t have spent more than 15 meaningful minutes on some of those clubs. The laundry list makes you look a little fraudulent.</p></li>
<li><p>I would encourage you NOT to do your personal essay about how hard you practice the piano to overcome a lack of talent. If you dig around a little, you will learn that the most selective colleges generally avoid accepting students who approach problems by being hardworking rather than being creative or thinking critically. “Hard working” as the most important adjective in a recommendation is something like a kiss of death – you don’t want your recommenders to focus on that, and you don’t want to give the impression that hard work is what you mainly have to offer.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Also – and I’m sorry to say this – you could not do more to reinforce your stereotypical Asian overachiever profile than to talk about how hard you practice the piano when your ECs in general are not musical. You are not going to be able to escape being a hard working, math-studying, science-competing, hospital-volunteering, piano-playing Asian overachiever – and there’s nothing wrong with any of that – but your college application goal should be to show that those qualities do not define you as a person.</p>
<ol>
<li> You don’t say WHY you are applying to college early. That is going to have a lot of effect on your success. As noted by others, many of those schools would prefer that you applied later. You should be aware that, if you apply to all of those colleges and strike out, your chances of being accepted at any of them the following year would go way down. So you are gambling a lot on your early application.</li>
</ol>
<p>If you don’t desperately need to get out of high school, you may want to consider paring down your list of ultra-selective colleges some, so that if you are disappointed this year you have the option of staying in high school and applying fresh to some of the others next year. If you do desperately need to get out of high school, you should have at least one safety, as others have said. That could be Penn State or one of the other public colleges in Pennsylvania; it could also be a LAC (other than Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams, Pomona, or Harvey Mudd) that attracts applications from fewer Asian overachievers than the colleges you have listed.</p>
<p>My main ECs are:
Math League student representative, Chinese Club founder and president, Science Fair Organization president, Science Olympiad, Odyssey of the Mind, Teen Advisory Board president, Youth Group leader, volunteered over 300 hours at hospital, research in biology lab at Lehigh University, church pianist</p>
<p>Would it be better if I removed the other ones from my list?</p>
<p>Money isn’t a big problem as my dad works at Lehigh, so I could always just go there for free. Also, all the Ivys offer need-based financial aid.</p>
<p>I don’t think the maturity thing should be too big of a problem either. Most people say I come off as being very mature and responsible.</p>
<p>Op- I realize the Ivy’s offer need based financial aid. My point was that until your parents determine that they can afford the school (after aid) you can’t pin all your hopes on that school. The schools on your list will determine what they think you can afford to pay out of pocket, out of savings, etc. Your parents may discover that their portion of the costs is significantly higher than what they’d budgeted for.</p>
<p>So if you’re happy going to Lehigh for free than you’re done. If you’d be happier with a merit award at Vanderbilt or Brandeis or Rhodes or Case than you’ve got some more homework to do before you finalize your list.</p>
<p>Many college applications ask you to list only your top x # of EC’s. You need to decide which are most meaningful to you, these are the ones you want to tell others about. What is your motivation for skipping your senior year? You should be able to tell a school why they should take you now instead of letting you finish out your senior year of HS. If it is because you have exhausted the offerings in HS it may be time to move on to college. Our son was ahead for his age (did his early entry and grade skipping in elementary school) and we thought about letting him do a “gap year” if he didn’t get into one of the very elite schools. However, the choices of something academically (or otherwise) stimulating for an under age person are limited. I do not worry about your age as a college student. </p>
<p>No matter when you apply to college you have to be aware that there is an oversupply of top Asian students with credentials equal to or better than yours. When colleges are looking for a diversified class they have to turn down many excellent students. Be prepared with “match” and “safety” schools that are not as prestigious but have plenty of students with your abilities.</p>
<p>Crossposted with you- I do know of the D of a college professor who did go to college after jr year of HS, it worked for her. She had been accepted to Tulane but chose the cheaper, lesser school she was also accepted at- a good thing as Katrina hit New Orleans just before she started college.</p>
<p>My main reason for doing so is because I will run out of classes to take senior year and I do not feel like I am being challenged enough in high school.</p>
<p>So right now Harvard and Columbia are my top 2 choices (I’ll get good financial aid there too, right?), and if I don’t get accepted there, then it’s probably going to be Lehigh cause it’s free. I am also considering Barnard because of its close relationship with Columbia. What kind of financial aid would I get there?</p>
<p>Which other schools should you apply to? A safety school that you’d love to attend and your parents could afford is paramount! After you have your foundation in place, you can feel comfortable applying to any school on the planet, no matter how low the acceptance rate is. If you would be happy to attend Lehigh, then that can be your safety school. Safety is more than just a school you’ll know you’d get into and your parents could afford. You have to be HAPPY there if that were the only school that accepted you.</p>
<p>Some other schools that those who are interested in medical school apply to are Emory, Rice, Brown, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Tufts and Boston College. Rice and Brown have programs that accept you not only for undergrad but also for medical school.</p>
<p>I’m afraid that I would agree with JHS about the essay idea. Essays are tricky…but at the super-selective schools that you ticked off, they are often the make-or-break aspect of your application. The admissions officer reads THOUSANDS of them in any one season. If you write about a topic that gets covered a lot (people didn’t think I could do XXX, but I persevered, worked hard and proved them wrong), you have to do it in such a way that would be quite entertaining (think Dave Barry). </p>
<p>Use the essay to tell the admissions officer something about you that he or she couldn’t otherwise figure out from your stats.</p>
<p>Because you are involved in so many things, you should think about how to focus the message of the application…if the admissions officers were to give you a two word nickname, what would you want it to be? Then make sure that all parts of your application support that…essays, list of extra-curriculars, anything extra that you send like extra recs of research papers, etc. Sometimes kids who have so much to put down dilute the main message they want to get across by putting in everything but the kitchen sink.</p>
<p>I would read a book of application essays to see how essays can be used to further one’s application. I remember reading one where the authors made comments on the letters that could give you some insight on how to craft one for yourself.</p>
<p>Not to be harsh, but you have not done your homework on this yet, and you are not actually being mature and responsible yet, as opposed to “coming off” that way. The Ivys’ need-based financial aid may or may not work for your family. Probably yes, but don’t wait until next April to find out. And all of the schools, Ivy and non-Ivy, have somewhat different financial aid policies. You need to actually look into this, and to discuss it with your parents.</p>
<p>In general, being active, responsible, sober, and non-rebellious is not the same thing as being “mature”. Something that may stand in the way of applicants who have your sort of profile is a sense that they have been doing what others want them to do all their lives, and have not spent any time exploring what THEY want to do, or who they are outside of the context of filial relationships. Implicitly, with your application, and probably explicitly in interviews, you are going to have to convince skeptical people that this is YOUR plan, not your parents’ or your teachers’.</p>
<p>Is going to Lehigh your backup plan? Do you mean that?</p>
<p>I think you should pare down your list of ECs. What’s left is still barely believable, although I guess that some of them are more summer things than afterschool things. Put the rest into some sort of “other” category on a resume you attach to your applications. But really what you should be looking for is a way to convey your personality as distinct from your achievements and activities.</p>
<p>I’d recommend taking another SAT II. If you are Chinese, nobody is going to give you a heck of a lot of credit for scoring well on the Chinese SAT II. May be unfair, but it’s reality. If at all possible, take the AMC and AIME (math exams.) If your school doesn’t offer them, or even if it does, sign up for this:[USA</a> Mathematical Talent Search](<a href=“http://www.usamts.org/]USA”>http://www.usamts.org/) If you are really outstanding at math, you should offer proof of that in addition to your grades and SAT II score. </p>
<p>Did you take the AP tests? </p>
<p>Your ECs are weak for the HYPSMC level schools. (You have lots of them, but you don’t seem to have any regional or national recognition in them. Unfortunately, that’s what top colleges are looking for. Did you just participate in Odyssey of the Mind, Model UN, Model Congress and Science Olympiad or did you win awards? It makes a big difference. )</p>
<p>I’d suggest you take a look at Harvey Mudd and Carnegie Mellon. </p>
<p>You don’t have SATs yet…and without them, it’s really impossible to formulate a list of reach, match, safeties. </p>
<p>There’s no reason NOT to apply to top colleges, but, You need to expand your list and include good schools that aren’t so “reachy.” It sounds like you can count on Lehigh as your safety–which is a very good safety indeed.</p>
<p>I’d also urge you to spend some time thinking about the kind of college experience you want. Big, small, middle, urban, rural, suburban, strong Greek scene or not?</p>
<p>As an exercise, take a look at the Chicago essay prompts. They are NOT asking for you to talk about your character and accomplishments. They are asking you to show how you think, how you approach difficult (or unusual) and undefined problems. You shouldn’t be using your Chicago essay for other colleges, but you should recognize that there’s a reason why Chicago uses its own essay prompts, and that other colleges are not necessarily looking for different things.</p>
<p>Sure, but financial aid is not an “ask and you shall receive” proposition. Institutions that don’t give merit money will decide what they expect your family to pay and will give you financial aid for the rest (grants that you don’t repay, loans that you do repay, work study). If you want them to give you more money, you’ll have to come up with reasons why you can’t be expected to come up with the original nut–job loss, health issues that drain monthly income, etc. </p>
<p>You should run some figures through a FAFSA calculator to get a ballpark idea about how much your family might be expected to come up with for college costs. Show that figure to your parents and see what they think. You don’t want any financial surprises late in the game.</p>
<p>Middle class parents (and upper middle class parents) are often the ones who are the most sensitive to price. Many make too much for good financial aid, but not enough to comfortably pay for a college that could cost over $200K over 4 years. It would be good to know if your parents fit into this category. If they have saved up enough money to send you to college without regard to cost or are willing to borrow to send you to whatever school you want to go to, then you’re in good shape. If not, it would be good to know that early on in the process. You can be sure to apply to pretty good schools that give merit scholarships.</p>
<p>APs: all 5s
SAT: will be at least 2300
I will also take the Subject Test for Chemistry (probably 800).
AMC 10: 115</p>
<p>Yeah, according to the FAFSA calculator, money shouldn’t be too much of an issue. My parents are going to be paying regardless of where I go, how much financial aid I get. However, that’s a big financial burden, and so I don’t what to make them pay too much. I am also hoping to get scholarships, grants, and do work-study, or get an internship.</p>
<p>Does anyone know what kind of financial aid I would be able to get at Barnard?</p>