Yale SCEA among other competitive colleges

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Asian female, Humanities major
GPA: 99.45/100, B in AP Calculus during one quarter in junior year --> top 3 in class
Course rigor: most rigorous throughout, including senior year
SAT: 2400, first-sitting
SAT II: Bio (M): 790, Math 2C (800), U.S. History (750)
AP: Chem (5), Calculus AB (5) Lit (5) U.S. History (5), Macro (5), Psych (5), Micro (4)

ECs:

Director & head poetry editor of national student-run, student-published literary magazine (10-12)
Founder & EIC of interscholastic (6 schools) literary magazine (10-12)
Lead activist in regional LGBT rights organization, historically youngest member in a very homophobic region; led demonstrations against direct acts of government discrimination, have spoken at TEDx event for this, local media coverage(10-12)
Organizing committee for the only LGBT festival (pride parade, film and drama festivals, so on) in home country, raised $11,000, invited George Takei to give a talk, national media attention
EIC of school newspaper (9-12)
Student reporter for city magazine (11-12)
SAT Tutor over summer break, earned over $2000
Various volunteer activities providing academic help to students over the past 4 years.

This fall, I’m establishing an international branch of a well-known nonprofit of several million members worldwide, several thousand members in my home country alone.

Awards: nothing special, received bronze medal at one of the lesser known national olympiads, top 3 speaker award for TEDx, school awards & scholarship, nominated for international scholarship (results come out in february). Scholarship to semi-competitive summer camp. Published writer (not an award, lol)

Schools applying to:
Yale (SCEA)
UVA (EA)
Harvard
Stanford
UPenn
Brown
Williams
Duke
Georgetown
Emory
Washington & Lee
Sarah Lawrence
Emerson

2

Are you a U.S. citizen? I’m not sure what “in home country” means?

3

Intl student, sorry didnt make it clear

4

Unfortunately that doesn’t help, as the international competition is quite strong. Your GPA and test scores are competitive, and you clearly have invested a lot in your activism and writing. You need to push that as far as you can to stand out. I think you are a strong applicant, but the international pool is a difficult one.

5

Bump
Want to know more about how strong/unique are my ECs, objectively?

6

You are definitely a very intelligent kid but Yale requires more than just intelligence! Yale rejected my child with very similar scores/grades and better ECs (ECs for which my child won a 15k private scholarship but apparently were not good enough for Yale!).

7

… Having said that, you should definitely apply to the Yale caliber schools (if the application fee is not a problem) but do not expect much!

8

The biggest thing, at this point, is to articulate why Yale? Like many similar schools they are trying to compose a diverse student body on many different levels. They will want to know, what you would add to their academic community, and what unique features you might bring. (so past smarts, because everyone is, what else would you add)

9

@ uclaparent9 true, Yale is a high reach for anybody, especially internationals like myself! What other schools did your daughter get accepted to?

10

i think this is one of the best i’ve seen. Good luck!