<p>The only colleges I know I'm applying to so far are UT Austin, Rice, and Stanford. I'm applying to UT because they guarantee that any Texas student in the top 8% automatically gets in (it's my safety school) and it has a top ranked engineering school.</p>
<p>I'm an Indian (counts as Asian on the application) female, I've got good GPA, SAT, and class rank at a good school. I have other stuff that makes me look "good", but I don't really feel like typing it all out right now.</p>
<p>I see a bunch of kids on CC who have a million EC's and perfect SAT scores and I think, "dang, this is what I'm against", but these kids almost never ever have great sports accomplishments, which is probably the one place that I have an edge over most students. </p>
<p>I've played sectional (state<sectional<national) tennis for the past 5 years. Not everyone plays sectionals because you have to qualify and get enough points/wins in order to be at this level. So, it's definitely an honor. (I got super excited when I got a letter for tennis from Caltech! I don't even care that it's D3!)</p>
<p>I am aware that ISEF and other such academic awards/competitions are very prestigious, but if practically every student that applies to the same schools that I will has these sorts of awards, don't they all equalize each other?</p>
<p>Also, wouldn't such sports achievement for an Asian female be more rare than an academic achievement, no matter how prestigious?</p>
<p>I apologize if I'm making it seem like academic achievements are not important. Of course they are! I guess I just need a little bit of assurance right now that I do have a shot when I'm up against seemingly "perfect" candidates.</p>
<p>Anyways, thanks for reading this and a special thanks to anyone who actually replies. :)</p>