School Humanities Award/Music Award (1 out of ~200 students)
National speech competition Champion (school/national → our school is a network school)
Extracurriculars
NPO: founder and tutor ofOpenEdu (an free open learning program advocating for social justice under educational censorship through delivering open knowledge and multitudes aspects of Humanities and Social Science courses)-> more than
500 students so far
Founder and captain of school Orchestra (perform multiple times / hold workshops at Nursing Home in the city)
One of the leaders of a national student-led online blog with over 3000 subscribers
School speech and debate team captain
School Varsity Girl Basketball starting five player
Tutor 2 kids English reading /1 kid TOEFL and Honor History class - paid
Have written 15+ songs with lyrics (unfinished and finished → unpublished cuz I dont know how to record or produce) and 5+instrumental songs
Schools
I need some advice!
I really want to get into Northwestern Medill Cherubs for their strong journalism program.
Regular colleges - I really don’t know.
I definitely think my profile is incompetent in many ways, particularly that my extracurriculars cannot distinguish me from others or are in-depth enough. I really look forward for some recommendations on both flaws!
Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability):
Remember that you are competing for admissions with other high school students (very accomplished high school students – but still high school students).
You GPA is essentially perfect. You SAT is very strong. Your TOEFL is very strong.
Regarding extracurricular activities, you should read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. As I understand it, it recommends that you do what is right for you, that whatever you do, do it well, and that you treat people fairly. To me this sounds like exactly what you have already been doing all along. This is the approach that my family has used to get into several different very good universities. However, what each of us did was different, and the schools that we got into were different (and only one of them was MIT).
I think that you are a very strong and well qualified applicant to Northwestern. The problem that you will run into is the that the large majority of other applicants are also, the acceptance rate is low, and admissions is even more difficult for international students.
However, whether you are accepted or not, you are a strong applicant to Northwestern, and to whatever other schools you apply to.
There are a number of Lower Probability colleges where, for whatever reasons, being an Asian international would be a hook. They are liberal arts colleges (LACs) located on the Atlantic coast of the United States, far from the Pacific, but which overlap the so-called, “Ivy League” in terms of history, mission and demographics. They are places you’ve likely never heard of because the USNews annual rankings tend to bury them in separate polls from the much bigger research universities. But they match the Ivies in per capita wealth and spending, especially at the undergraduate level; places like Middlebury College in Vermont, Hamilton College in Upstate New York, Bates, Bowdoin and Colby in Maine.
Many internationals overlook LACs because the term “liberal arts college” is an American idiom that doesn’t translate well into other languages; it obscures the fact that they have leading edge science facilities and award the same undergraduate degrees as universities.
I would bring special attention to Wesleyan University (still an LAC despite being called a university since its founding in 1831) and Vassar College for their leadership in the performing arts . Both have admission rates of somewhere between 15 and 20 percent which is pretty low, but not as unrealistically low as places like Stanford, Harvard and MIT.
I’ve actually visited Wellesley as a Liberal Arts College. One thing I really don’t like about it (idk if it’s for most LACs) is it’s so similar to high school - the classroom, the buildings distributions, and the amount of students. I don’t really like “high school like colleges” because I don’t like high school.
Something I love about LACs is that they have small classes where every student can be noticed.
All in all, I think I will prolly apply for some LACs, but my ultimate goal is to get into the other more conventional universities.
Thank you so much for your encouragements. Do you have any advice for my current extracurriculars? I know different schools “like” different applicants, so I wonder what Northwestern, in particular Medill, look for.
We have one student admitted into Northwestern in our school this year who is my debate partner. She has loads of ASDAN awards (NEC, AMC, Physics Bowl, IEO, lots of speech and debate awards).
What other colleges do you think I can strive for realistically?
I know Havard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, and Princeton is basically impossible, but I still would like to try for them, particularly the first for.
I visited Harvard, Yale, and MIT a few days ago, and I love MIT in particular. I’m not a STEM major kid, but I am interested in their Music and CS, but I have no experience in CS, so I am stucked. I also like Yale, and compared to Harvard, I like Yale vibe much better, probably due to the fact that the first Chinese international student graduated from a US college went to Yale.
Fair enough. But I think we could use some clarification from you:
What does that mean? Are you looking for ways to correct “flaws” in your qualifications, or are you looking for additional choices that would increase your chances of attending an American college?
I mean they are my dream school, and I really want to boost my chance in getting in. If I can boost my chance in getting into those top top schools, then it’s going to be more likely to get into other target schools.
Absent winning some prestigious well known award, there is no silver bullet for getting into the HYPSM’s of the world. Your academics and the EC’s you’ve listed certainly make you competitive. The ways to distinguish yourself at this point are through your LoR’s (over which you have limited control other than picking the writers) and your essays. The essays need tell a consistent story with your EC’s and achievements that sells you as a contributor to the college community, academically and socially.
Northwestern University is a top school for debate, but only one or two scholarships for debate are awarded each year.
If you want Northwestern Medill, then apply ED. Share specifics about Northwestern University that are of interest to you.
I encouraged a friend’s daughter to matriculate to Wellesley College. She transferred after one year for the same reasons that you do not like Wellesley.
I’m going to say that at this stage you are a little late to add ECs. Colleges like to see depth of ECs meaning, you have maintained your interest in them for some years. Suddenly adding a number of ECs a semester or so before you apply to colleges is probably not going to add an awful lot to your application (and a couple of T20-30 colleges we went to admission presentations for specifically called this out as not helpful). I would suggest that you would do better trying to match to colleges that fit your (already very good) resume just about as it stands now than looking to add things.
. Both have admission rates of somewhere between 15 and 20 percent which is pretty low, but not as unrealistically low as places like Stanford, Harvard and MIT.