Am I delusional? Chance a worried neuroscience-premed senior [KS resident, 3.95 UW, 35 ACT]

Chance Me / Match Me
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hey y’all! senior here. Please give me some feedback (chance and match!) AND TELL ME IF I AM DELUSIONAL WITH MY COLLEGE LIST

Deciding if I should apply:

  • Option 1: ED to UVA, if I don’t get in then ED2 to Rice, EA/RD everywhere else
  • Option 2: ED Rice, if I don’t get in then EA/RD everywhere else
  • Note: I was nominated by my school for the Jefferson Scholars program. I know it’s a super super long shot but I really want to go to UVA regardless of scholarship or not so that’s why I’m considering ED’ing. Rice would be my first choice otherwise.

Current college list in alphabetical order (NOT APPLYING TO ALL OF THESE I NEED TO NARROW IT DOWN):
Bolded schools are where I’ve already applied btw! Italics are where I have done a campus tour/demonstrated significant amount of interest (not that it helps or anything)

  • Baylor, Boston University, Duke, IU Bloomington, Northwestern, Rice, Stanford (just for giggles), George Washington, UT Austin (double legacy even though it doesn’t count), UIUC, University of Kansas (i’m guaranteed admission, waiting on my honors program acceptance), UMich, UNC Chapel Hill, WashU (just for giggles again because I’m not applying ED there)

Demographics

  • Kansas, public school, dual citizen with Hong Kong, parents both went to UT Austin, female
  • Here’s my dilemma… I was adopted from Hong Kong but raised in a White/Hispanic (Mexican) household, we moved to Kansas in 2015. I’m fluent in Spanish (took the AP exam and got a 5 last year without enrolling in classes). Should I/can I consider myself Hispanic??? Help me. Please. How does that even work.

Intended Major(s)

  • Neuroscience, possibly pre-med track, global health

UW GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • GPA: 3.9535/4.5963 (not sure how my district weights)
  • My school district does not rank students
  • ACT-only, 35 (first try, December 2023)

Coursework

  • Human Geography (5), Comp. Science Principles (5), World History: Modern (4), U.S. History (4), Chemistry (5), Spanish Language and Culture (5, self-study), Chinese Language and Culture (4), English Language and Composition (3)
  • Current AP Classes: Calculus AB, Biology, English Literature, United States Government
  • Took statistics over the summer at local community college (received A in the course)

Awards

  • National merit commended scholar (1420)

Extracurriculars (incl. summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience) SORRY FOR THE FORMATTING THIS IS SORT OF COPY AND PASTED FROM MY RESUME minus identifying names of school and orgs

  • Color Guard, Marching Band 2023 – present (Section leader/new member mentor)
  • Swim Team, Junior Varsity 2021 – present (I’m not the best athlete but I enjoy the exercise!)
  • Asian-American Club (President), Chinese NHS (President) Model United Nations, Mustang Musicians (president of service org, we play music at senior homes), NHS, Science NHS, Tri-M Music Honor Society
  • Community Service (250+ hours)
  • Peer Mentor, Girls Night Out– KU Medical Center
    • I mentored neurodiverse teenage girls and developed marketing materials for research-based intervention program aimed at enhancing social well-being during a 12-week commitment
      most of my viola stuff: considering music minoring if i have time to.
  • Youth Symphony 2019-present
  • Two-time All-District/All-State violist
  • Received perfect scores at State festivals for past two years for quartet performances
  • Logo Commission Service | Freelance Designer 2022 – present
    • Designing custom logos for 85+ satisfied global customers, adjusting service prices based on reviews and surveys, maintaining active customer base through word-of-mouth advertising, scaling business up/down based on time availability through promotional campaigns
  • Custom HTML Profile Coding | Freelance Designer 2022 – present
    • Coding custom CSS/HTML/Bootstrap templates for artist profiles, available on e-commerce storefront: 5,000 views and 2,000 downloads
  • Work experience: Hostess (2+ years) , Guest services associate at golf franchise (summer job)
  • School Orchestra Designer for Senior Banners, Concert Programs, T-Shirt (contest winner) Orchestra Superb Presence Award 2024, Regional Scholastic Writing, Silver Key Award 2024, National Chinese EXPO of Student Works (NCESW) Art Award

Cost Constraints / Budget

  • Not really any, my family is helping me pay for college. Solid upper-middle class, my dad works, mom works as a freelance consultant for international business. Both parents graduated college, mom holds a MBA

other considerations:

  • i would LOVE a school with a marching band or color guard! solid performing arts non major offerings
  • i will not be applying to the UCs… :pensive:

anyways! please let me know if y’all need more information. work your magic.
thank you! -mia

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Lots of good stuff here - but I’d say your is reach heavy. You are a strong candidate, but some of these colleges are very low acceptance for everyone.

That being said I think Baylor and GW are targets especially if full-pay

Just make sure you will be happy if you end up at KU -otherwise, add another safety or likely (or two).

If you can check TWO ethnicities/races: Asian and Hispanic - I would do that. It seems you likely walk through life being perceived as Asian -so definitely check that. But your lived experience includes Hispanic culture -so I think it’s valid to check that as well. Also that might make a really awesome essay topic.

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I think your list is fine if you are already accepted at KU, especially if you get into their honors program. So

  • Sounds like UVA is your clear first choice. If money is not an issue, ED there.
  • Assume you don’t get in and are deferred/rejected, I’d ask if Rice is clearly ahead of your remaining choices. If so, you can ED2 there unless you were deferred by UVA. Then you have a choice to make.
  • Pare back your RD schools to less than 10 in case you do not get into UVA ED. Get those apps into reasonable shape by Dec 15 so you are not overwhelmed with last minute essays. I think the list can be reach heavy unless KU/KU Honors is not an alternative you really want.

I would not tick off the Hispanic box, but you certainly can explain your situation in one of your essays. With the recent Supreme Court decision, your race cannot be considered but the context of how you dealt with race issues is fair game.

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Two things immediately jump out reading your post.

One is that you are a very strong student and are doing very well. You are at least competitive at pretty much any university. You also appear to write quite well.

The other is that you are considering being a premed student. Even if you do not end up in medical school, neuroscience is a major that pretty much screams “graduate school”. Master’s degrees are typically not funded. A two years master’s degree might be less expensive than a four year MD, but it is still two years of additional education cost. PhD’s usually take longer but are also usually funded.

As such you need to budget for at least 6 years and possibly 8 years of university. You should find out whether your parents are okay with funding a full 8 years of university without any of you taking on debt. If not, then it is likely to be easier to save $$$ during the first four years rather than during the last four years.

In terms of being “adopted from Hong Kong but raised in a White/Hispanic (Mexican) household” I think that I would just say “other” and explain it somewhere. In terms of “how does that even work” some of us are just too mixed in too complex a way to fit into the categories that universities in the US want to use. Actually, most of us are probably mixed in a complex way if you go back far enough and look at the details.

On the other hand, being fully bilingual is quite valuable for a doctor, or for other health care professionals.

The University of Kansas is a good university. It is unlikely to be the highest ranked university that you can get into. However, it is still very good. You are likely to save a ton of $$$ if you go there, and will get a very good education and be very well prepared for medical or graduate school. You can get into very highly ranked and very good graduate programs with a degree from the U of Kansas, or any one of way more than 100 other universities. Some members of my family have done exactly that (not from Kansas, but from other schools that are ranked between 100 and 150 in the US).

Some premed classes are going to be very tough, and being at least in the top 1/2 and preferably top 1/4 of the class is going to help in terms of maintaining the grades that are needed to get into medical school. If you instead end up doing graduate work in neuroscience, then again good grades will help your applications.

Also, being a very strong student is likely to improve your chances to get to know your professors and get involved in research, and this can again help a lot in graduate school admissions. One daughter just started her PhD earlier this year and the combination of having gotten to know her professors and getting involved in research as an undergraduate student were both very important in terms of her getting accepted to a very good graduate program that is also a good fit. What you do as an undergraduate is going to be way more important than where you do it.

As such I would take the University of Kansas very seriously as an option.

And I do think that you are realistically competitive for Stanford and WUSTL and Northwestern and other highly ranked universities.

You might have a tough decision to make when the acceptances come in. There is likely to be a tradeoff between ranking and cost of attendance. Looking for a good fit is going to be very important. I think that you are likely to do very well with a degree from any university on your list.

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Your only question is UVA vs. Rice - which would you rather prefer?

And then - for a pre-med neuro degree, is UVA better than Kansas Honors - which is highly rated - because you’re not going to four years of school but 8 and the last 4 will be $400K.

I just visited a top academic hospital where I live for a treatment…the Residents don’t come from top undergrads - in fact, one or two were either KU and/or K State - and it’s a top hospital where I went.

So they can help you pay $80K for UVA, but should they ?

Those are my two questions:

  1. You have to decide if you like UVA or Rice better

2 For a neuro/pre med person, does spending more make sense, even if you can?

But the list itself is fine as you have multiple acceptances - I just don’t know if they’re “smart” acceptances.

Good luck.
.

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On the Common App you will be able to select your birth country and it asks how long you have been in the US. Select Hong Kong. There is a section about languages at home and I would put both languages there.

I think noting dual citizenship, when you came to the US, being fluent in 2 languages, and being from Kansas will be enough to explain it.

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We are from TX, but otherwise my D22 had a similar profile - also top grades and 35 ACT, also lots of music ECs and some graphic design background (not as extensive as yours). D22’s Spanish was less advanced than yours, and she didn’t have your interesting cultural/ethnic background, but she was aiming for a less competitive humanities major and had some notable ECs to support that area of interest. And KU was her safety also! She was accepted to UVa EA (legacy) and Rice RD (attending), so I don’t think you are delusional, though both are still reaches as you know.

In addition to the good advice you’ve already received, I would add a couple of things:

  • Both are obviously outstanding academic institutions, but the cultures of these two schools are quite a bit different, even more than I realized after initial campus visits. D22 has found Rice to be delightfully nerdy and quirky, the kind of place where students feel free to celebrate their weird passions for Hungarian food or obscure comic books or kazoo collecting or whatever. The culture revolves around the residential colleges, which are by definition inclusive - everyone gets randomly assigned as freshman, so there’s a place for everyone to belong and no one is just left out of the system. UVa, where I went to grad school and thus had more familiarity at first, is a more traditional “college-y” scene, with pretty visible and influential Greek life, more sports focus (both varsity and intramural), and a generally more social vibe.

  • It sounds like cost won’t be a major issue, but for the record, Rice financial aid would likely be much more generous than UVa. Our family is solidly middle-class, and for us Rice was ~35k/yr cheaper than UVa out-of-state. If you are full-pay, then the costs will be comparable.

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Did you visit UVA and Rice? I could not find an answer from your post. I am only asking because the cultures of both are different, as noted above.

I think you are a competitive applicant. If grad school/med school is a possibility…you will be paying for more than 4 years. That is also something to consider.

I agree about giving the University of Kansas serious consideration.

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You can put any combination of races and ethnicities, although it will not matter for admission.

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