JY9123

Dream colleges:
- Stanford
- MIT
- Duke
- Cornell
- Johns Hopkins
- Columbia
- U. Penn
- Northwestern
- U. of Chicago
- U. wash - st. louis


GPA - 4.0 (unweighted)
- we don't have weighted GPA at our school
SAT - 2200
ACT - 34
SAT II - Math IIC 800
- Chemistry 780
- Biology 740
- Might take physics in oct
APs - taking Calculus AB, chinese, biology, and chemistry in next two weeks
- planning on taking physics, calculus BC, and maybe statistics and one history next year

Honor classes:
- freshman year - two math honors
- sophomore year - one science, one math, one english
- junior year - two english, two science, AP calculus
- senior year (planning) - AP calc II, one science, two english, and also I'll be taking a science class at my state university next year (university of wisconsin - madison)

EC
- Science Olympiad since freshman year; moved up to varsity from JV this year, and got two gold medals at state
- SMART team - joined since freshman year and attended a science conference at San Diego, CA this year
- Math Team - joined since freshman year
- Everytown Camp Club - formed this club after participating in Camp Everytown (a leadership camp) in the summer of freshman year to promote peace and non-prejudice at school
- Science Internship at the University this summer
- attending an women's engineering camp at the univeresity here this summer
- Senior Citizen
- National Honor's Society
- Japanese National Honor's Society
- Piano (elementary school to 10th grade), not playing anymore
Honors/awards
- honor's roll every year
- National Merit High Scorer
- Piano state competition - honorable mention and some other awards
- science olympiad medals
- math meets ribbons

specialities
- I came to the U.S. in 7th grade, so I had to struggle with english while trying to do well in my classes
- my parents had really harsh childhood; they went through a lot to achieve what they have now


so, what are my chance of getting into the ivies, and those top colleges?

JY9123

btw, i'm chinese.
and i attend a public high school, which is a really good one.
this year, we have like 5 or 6 attending ivies

palmettotree

Ever seen King of the Hill? You reminded me for a second of Connie.

JY9123

no...is that suppose to be good or bad??

ElderCookies

He means your stats are good. I predict you will get into a couple of them. You just don't seem unique though. I do not advise you to mention the two sad things in your "specialties" section. It will not come off well to ad coms, and you have no reason to since your stats are excellent.

diffy q

Write good essays and you'll be moderately surprised come March next year Only thing that'll hurt you is the lack of humanities, but it probably wouldn't matter too much.

I personally wouldn't bother taking the Phys SAT II...MIT has publicly stated not to retake anything if it's over 700, and your Chem/Bio scores are good enough. (For the record, I got a 750/780 Chem/Phys respectively, and I don't think they even recorded the Chem score).

I'll second ElderCookies about your "specialties".

cgar514

That's a lot of dream schools...

If you ask me...you seem like a good student and all, but no one superb. I say the strongest thing on ur application would be two gold medals at state. You didn't say what state though...but I'm guessing CA (since u attended a meeting there), and CA's a strong state so that's pretty good. But beyond that I don't seen anything outsanding about you. Thousands else in the nation have very good grades too. I'm pretty sure you have a good shot at schools in the lower half of your list...but it'll be hard to get near the top half.

Equilibrium

Lack of humanities?......... Since when has there been a formula for admission to top schools??

The fact that hurts you is your lack of well-roundedness, and uniqueness. You can show your roundness in many ways.

AquaNerd

I'd say sure thing at Hopkins, Penn, Northwestern, and Chicago. All the others are about 50/50 by my completely arbitrary and uninformed estimates. BTW, the college in St. Louis would be Wash U., not U Wash, that's in Seattle.

stupidkid

That's not really true. You don't need to be well-rounded to get into top schools. Just make sure you stand out in one area. I'd say you won't get into MIT, Stanford, and Yale. Good shot at the rest.

Savs

I'd say they're all possibilities. Good luck!

Scared4College

I will agree with the others when they say you seem to present a lack of "uniqueness" in your activities. However, your essays are a good place to factor in something fresh- I think your it's wonderful that you struggled with english and such but you still managed to succeed beyond average. However, you seem to represent many students out there- good academic stats, similar activities. I say that you have a good shot at the lower bottom of your list and perhaps a surprise admit or two from the top- but don't count on it since there are a huge volume of college applicants applying next year, contested, limited spots, and way too many overqualified, academically wonderful, math/science concentrated students( with similar activities, contests, awards,etc.) applying for your "dream schools"- that formulaic, generic list of ivies and top schools( HYPS)....also, NHS and honor roll are hardly worth mentioning- reason being is that all or most high schools have NHS, have varying standards of selection( generally easy to get into while some schools have a more rigorous appliction- but colleges don't really see/care), and most/all students applying- it's a given that they are in NHS. It doesn't really showcase anything unique or award demonstrative. Also, your scores and grades already indicate you are an 'honor roll' student or worthy of academic merit. Unless you recieve an oustanding award that is singular in nature, it really is a disservice to you to list.

auraeight

just my opinions, and my "ranking system" works in this order of progressing difficulty: Match, High Match, Low Reach, Mid Reach, High Reach

Stanford: High Reach
MIT: Mid to Low Reach (b/c you're a girl...I'd apply in a typically male-dominated major if I were you)
Duke: Mid to Low Reach
Cornell: Mid to Low Reach
Johns Hopkins: High Match
Columbia: Mid Reach
Penn: Mid Reach
Northwestern: Match
U. of Chicago: Mid to Low Reach
WashU: Toss up (Tufts syndrome, anyone? and definitely DON'T refer to them as U Wash! they'll reject you in a sec b/c they'll take it as you're not interested enough in them to get their name right lol)

firehippo99

I don't know man. Honestly, from looking at this you come across as the quintessential Asian nerd =/ Most of your stuff is academic and music, which to me doesn't really make you stand out, especially if you're thinking about Ivy League schools where everyone has the high academic achievements. But this is just my opinion.

swoop

unfortunately, you are not unique.. and the fact that you are chinese and you are taking chinese in school kinda shows that you aren't challenging yourself.. but you definitely belong in a private school.. i don't know about ivy's though..