Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Competitive public school
Cost Constraints / Budget
Full pay
Intended Major(s)
CS but I’m open to math for finance too
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 97-98%
Class Rank: Top 5, school doesn’t report
ACT/SAT Scores: 1510 but retaking
List your HS coursework AP Classes:
AP Seminar: 4
AP Calculus AB: 5
AP CSP: 5
AP Chemistry: 5
Grade 12 Coursework:
AP Physics 1 & 2
AP Calculus BC
AP CSA
AP Lit
AP lang
Awards
2021: Gauss 8 Award of Distinction, School Honor Roll
2022: Girls Who Code Scholar Certificate, Kode With Klossy Scholar Certificate, USACO Silver, School Honor Roll
2023: Cayley Award of Distinction, Girls Who Code Scholar Certificate, Kode With Klossy Scholar Certificate, Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Training Program Certificate, Canadian Senior Maths Contest Award of Distinction, School Honor Roll
2024: Hypatia Award of Distinction, School Honor Roll, AP Scholar With Honours
Extracurriculars
Unpaid finance internship/shadowing at a top bank in Canada (12)
Starting this week, should be exciting
Internship at one of the top 3 universities in Canada (11, 12)
I work as a full stack developer for one of their labs and write code for the research projects that they conduct.
Typically only 3rd year and above students are accepted into the lab, so I’m the only high school student working with them
Starting library programs for kids in my city (9, 10, 11, 12)
I founded a library program that works with multiple branches and provides free coding classes
We’ve reached over 400 kids in the span of 4 years and raised >1k in grants for purchasing equipment for our classes
The leading organization for free coding classes in my city
Robotics & Coding Instructor (9, 10, 11, 12)
I teach students aged 7-16 about Python, Java, and web development (HTML, CSS, and Javascript)
Just became the manager of my branch
Led every robotics team I’ve led to competing at provincials (so far )
Teaching Coding Online (8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
Teaching students aged 5-14 about Scratch and Python programming.
Managing online classes using Zoom.
Volunteering to teach underprivileged students about coding for free.
Working With a Non-Profit to Write Articles (8, 9, 10, 11)
Collaborating with different people every week to finish our tasks
Managing the website for quality control
Meeting weekly to discuss improvements and changes
Volunteering At My Dance Studio (12)
Working on our studio’s website
Outreaching to different venues to hold events to boost student registrations
Employing social media and marketing strategies on our social media accounts
Dance, piano, small things
Summer Activities
Kode With Klossy
Girls Who Code
Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Training Program
Selected to volunteer with Health Canada
Invited along with around 10-20 other students around the country to fly to Ottawa and give feedback on a game being developed by Health Canada for high school students
Essays/LORs/Other Letters of Recommendation:
9/10 - My teachers like me I’m pretty sure
Essays:
8/10 - I talk about being a model and how it taught to me embrace failure which led to how I began coding. I think it’s pretty unique but I’m not the best writer so it’s a little iffy. Supplementals should be fine I hope.
Schools
Cornell ED
Cambridge
I’m not sure where I want to ED2
UMichigan
UofT
UWashington
Berkeley
UCLA
UBC
Princeton
CMU
Stanford
McGill
Waterloo
Thank you for reading all of that! Please let me know if you have any more schools you think I should apply to or how I can strengthen my application
Obviously it’s difficult for everyone but I think you have a good chance at Cornell ED. As long as you don’t use terms like girlie or demure in your essays
I just wanted to add that you do you have a very varied background which is good and strong, but I didn’t see high school coursework in the “F” requirement for the UCs.
If you’re applying to any UC, make sure that you have taken a full year of a graded course. Given your background, you may be able to petition to get the F requirement waived, but many students who are out of state/country don’t understand that the UC’s are very strict on their admissions requirements.
“Courses must be directed at acquiring concepts, comprehensions, and skills in the arts disciplines, rather than using artistic activities to fulfill non-artistic course objectives.“
A large part of your application is the ability to pay. As long as your parents are comfortable with paying $75k-$90,000 a year, then your chances are as good as any other student applying to those competitive schools.
It’s nowhere near a certain or even likely admission, but a full pay Canadian with your stats is an attractive applicant. I grew up in Toronto and went to boarding school, we sent kids to Cornell every year. Admissions has definitely become more difficult but there are still a lot of Canadians at Cornell. Maybe bump your SAT up a little, but overall you seem strong to me.
Score of 3, 4 or 5 on the AP Art History, Art and Design (2-D Art and Design, 3-D Art and Design or Drawing) Music Theory exam; score of 5, 6 or 7 on any one IB HL exam in Dance, Film, Music, Theatre Arts or Visual Arts
College courses
Grade of C or better in any transferable course of 3 semester (4 quarter) units that clearly falls within one of four visual/performing arts disciplines: dance, drama/theater, music or visual art.
This question has been asked a lot by OOS students who want to major in CS. What California wants to see is graded coursework that has artistic themes-first and foremost. I’ll defer to @Gumbymom for more info.
A CS class may incorporate some design features, but those courses do not prioritize a “fine art”. Hence the “F” for “Fine Art”.
Also the UC’s will look at your 10th and 11th grade coursework for admissions requirements. Some of those A through G admissions requirements are required to be taken in 10th and 11th grades. You’d have to go on the UC website to confirm.
The UC application is a beast of its owns. You’re going to have to write some powerful responses to the PIQs.
Are you sure you want to write all of those applications for all of those elite colleges? That’s a lot of time.
I think that you are a very competitive applicant. Cornell is a reach for everyone, particularly for international students. However, you are as competitive as anyone and have a very strong application. The large majority of applicants to Cornell, Cambridge, and other top universities will similarly have a very strong application.
I think that you are close to being a shoo-in for Toronto, McGill, UBC, and Waterloo. A bachelor’s degree at any of these four excellent Canadian universities plus a master’s degree at a top university in the US is a strong option and will most likely cost less than just a bachelor’s degree in the US. I have known multiple people who got a bachelor’s degree at one of these excellent universities in Canada, and then a graduate degree or two in the US, at very good universities including any of Princeton or Stanford or U.Washington. One daughter got her bachelor’s at a small primarily undergraduate university in Canada and just started her PhD at a very good and well ranked university in the US. In her case the “total cost to educational quality” ratio is really, really good (her PhD is fully funded, which is very common of course). Graduate admissions in the US do seem to know how strong the Canadian universities are.
I can understand why some students might prefer Cornell, Cambridge, Stanford, or Princeton to the excellent Canadian universities. I might even say the same about CMU or UC Berkeley for CS or for math. I do wonder about why you would prefer some of the other US schools compared to the excellent Canadian universities at 1/4 the price.
MIT might be the obvious omission from your list. However, MIT is a lot of work and is a “fit” school. Personally I liked Stanford better although some of this might just be my point in life at the time (I got my master’s at Stanford and was ready to work that hard – I loved it).
Do not expect to be allowed to stay in the US after graduating from a university in the US. International students are typically required to return to their home country after graduating. Do not expect that graduating from a famous US university will provide any advantage in terms of finding a job in Canada after graduation. At least in my experience, which occurred a very long time ago, Canadian employers seem to prefer to hire graduates from Canadian universities.
Both schools are test blind and need blind. Your competitive SAT will not be used for admissions or scholarship consideration, only for course placement.
UC Berkeley HAAS Business school admit rate was 4%.
UCLA does not have an Undergraduate Business school but offers Business adjacent majors: Business Economics or Economics in the College of Letters and Sciences. The College does not admit by major and the overall admit rate was 11%.
Updated: Forgot to add the CS admit rates for UC Berkeley which was 1.9% and UCLA which was 3.1%.
Thank you for all the input. If I got into Cornell I would definitely attend because it’s my dream school, but for any RD/EA schools I will be considering going to Waterloo instead. The cost for Waterloo is very low for me and my brother graduated from there with a Software Engineering degree. The thing stopping me from committing to Waterloo entirely is that I want to work in the US, but the latest stats from Waterloo co-op show that only around 20% of the class was able to find a co-op first year
The legal right to work in the US is the thing that is really, really difficult to predict. I do not know how anyone could figure this out 4+ years in advance. There is a lot of politics still to come between now and when you graduate university.
Employers in the US do understand how strong Waterloo is. Some US companies have facilities, including software engineers, in Canada. There is one strong software engineer who I have worked with who was from India, and was in the US on a temporary work visa. When his visa timed out, our company was not able to renew it. He ended up working for the same company but in Canada with a permanent visa of some kind. He had the choice of either returning to India or going to Canada, and I am not actually sure why he chose Canada (nor whether he still wanted to stay there after experiencing his first Canadian winter).
Most international students are not able to stay in the US after graduation - I believe that only about 11% get a visa that allows one to stay and work (that is after undergrad). Internationals who graduate from US masters programs are somewhat more likely (23%) to get a visa which will allow them to stay and work here. Either way, you should not count on being able to work in the US whether or not you attend school here.
That’s also very true. A degree from Cornell will serve me well in both Canada and the US I suppose. My brother works at Google with his Waterloo degree which was due to his co-op opportunities. Like how the statistics suggest, American companies aren’t looking for co-op students from Canada these days, which is why I want to go to Cornell because it is more likely to open doors in both Canada and US with name prestige
Would this combination be easier to get into than CS? I was thinking maybe data science + math, but my top choice would be something that opens both SWE and finance opportunities
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