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

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.)
  • Chief designer of school Design Committee (Involved in designing promotional materials for school and joint-school events)
  • 5 excos positions across arts, geography, English, bazaar and economics clubs and societies
  • Internship in Tencent, one of the most valuable companies in China

Awards & Accomplishments

  • Third place in national STEM competition (China), solo with a project related to helping the disabled gain access to nature
  • Lead my team to represent HongKong showcasing the above mentioned project in an international tech fair (in the UK)
  • Developed a Chrome/Google extension with 10k downloads, deals with digital illiteracy
  • Two champions and a few other awards (2nd & 3rd places) in regional (Hong Kong) STEM competitions, with the two above mentioned projects and another one related to an architectural-based solution to the heat island effect
  • Volunteer tutoring (english), provided cheap & affordable tutoring classes
  • 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. Is there any areas that I should focus more on?(perhaps graphic design?) Probably going to write about balancing hobbies and leadership in my essay(?, should be quite decent, I genuinely enjoy the stuff I listed.