Chance a delusional stem major

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Stats & Demographics

  • SAT: 1520 (e:750, m:770)
  • Ethnicity: Chinese, Hong Kong, domestic
  • I’m currently studying in Hong Kong with us citizenship
  • Expected cost per year: <40k
  • Intended Major: Architecture (prefer BArch) / Mechanical engineering
  • Yr of graduation: 2027
  • GPA: No, HK schools do not give GPAs
  • We have grades but they don’t work the same as the USs, basically impossible to get anything higher than 3 out of 4. Mine would be straight 2s
  • APs: 7 (calc(5), precalc(5), stats(5), phyC(5), phy1(5), human geo.(4), envir. science(4)) (school does not provide ap courses, all self-study)

ECs

  • President of school STEM Team

(Organized school stem-related events and leading joint school projects)

  • Vice-President of the Students’ Association

Organized many large-scale (~500ppl) school and joint-school events, managing ~50 exco members)

  • Vice-President of school Publicity and Publication Committee

Involved in school publications: school magazines, social media content, etc.

  • Vice-President of school Physics Club and Visual Arts Club

Organized multiple internal and joint-club events.

  • Chief designer of school Design Committee

Involved in designing promotional materials for school and joint-school events, with over 5k followers across a few school organisation accounts)

  • 5 excos positions across arts, geography, English, bazaar and economics clubs and societies

Awards & Accomplishments

  • 5x Champion Team of large scale Hong Kong STEM competition, with over 100+ competitors each (one with 1300+ competitors).

  • A total of 11 awards in STEM competitions.

  • Third place out of 500,000+ teams in national STEM competition (China), solo with a project related to helping the disabled gain access to nature.

  • 2 times Hong Kong representative for the BETT Show in London, showcasing my award-winning projects.

  • Developed a Chrome extension that deals with digital illiteracy.

  • 2x Champion Team of inter-school radio drama competition, with over 500+ teams each.

  • Internationally-verified Taekwondo black belt, grade one

LORs: School principal, STEM teacher x2

School list

  • Princeton
  • UPenn
  • Cornell (ED)
  • Rice
  • ⁠Yale
  • Columbia
  • ⁠NYU
  • UMich
  • Stanford
  • UChicago
  • Harvard
  • Northeastern
  • Northwestern
  • Duke
  • Brown
  • Dartmouth

Only applying to top colleges cuz if I don’t get accepted I’m staying in Hong Kong. Probably will ED Cornell, not much idea what schools to EA. Are there any areas that I should focus more on?(perhaps graphic design?)

2

You already have many responses to your identical post from September. Go back and read those.

The ED deadline is in a few days. Is your Cornell ED application finished? Did you create a portfolio to submit if you’re trying for Architecture?

Did you check the Net Price Calculators to see if any of these are affordable? The sticker price at every single one is way more than your stated budget.

3

Can’t help with chancing but if the most you can get is 3 of 4 and you have straight 2s, it doesn’t sound great. Your AP scores and SAT show you are strong.

You note architecture and MechE - two different things.

Then you mention Graphic Arts, that’s another thing.

You should decide which path to pursue before applying.

Most schools you list won’t have EA and aren’t necessarily the strongest in the field. U Michigan will be double your budget plus so you can remove unless you have in-state residence but it does not sound like you do for any state.

For example, for architecture you might sub in or add USC, Syracuse, Miami, Carnegie Mellon, even Cooper Union, which is a unique school. Not even sure if U Chicago has architecture vs a studies program and it doesn’t have MECHE. Others can comment but you picked universities by an overall rank vs strength in the major. I left off Va Tech due to cost. Like Michigan, it won’t hit.

For MechE, you might look at schools like UVA, and really other top ones will be out of reach due to cost. But there are many solid schools, depending on how your grades get computed that will hit cost - in the South - from an Alabama to Ms State to LSU to Kansas in the Midwest and more. In the U.S., the name matters little in the major. It’s the accreditation you want. A school like Purdue or Florida would be a bit over budget. CMU and USC would be two great private additions that meet need. Kids turn down reaches for safeties every day, by choice (like mine) or given a limited budget like you have.

So here’s the thing - for your list, which consists of privates and the schools I ga e you which has only UVA as public - all these schools meet demonstrated need. UVA and UNC (not for you) are the two publics that do.

You need to have your parents run the net price calculators.

That will determine if you can go for $40k or not. If not, except for a few that offer merit, you will need to alter your list or stay in HK as you note.

Here’s an NPC example. But your parents need to do for each and every school. So admission is one tough thing with your list. But then your limited budget complicates it a bit more.

Good luck.

5

Duplicate thread. Chance a delusional student [US citizen outside the US, <$40k, BArch]