Chance a Firefighter for ED to UChicago, ED2 NYU Stern [1560 SAT, 3.91 UW]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US domestic
  • State/Location of residency: PA
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Public
  • Other special factors: N/A

Intended Major(s): Economics, sociology (?)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores:

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.91
  • Weighted HS GPA: (4.00 scale) 4.27
  • College GPA: (for transfer applicants)
  • Class Rank: N/A
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1560
  • Applying no aid

List your HS coursework

  • English: AP Lit, AP Lang, Honors x2
  • Math: (including highest level course(s) completed): AP Calc BC, AP Calc AB, AP Stat, Honors pre-calc & algebra II
  • Science: (including which ones, such as biology, chemistry, physics): AP Physics C EM, AP Physics C NM, AP Enviro Sci, Honors Chem & Bio
  • History and social studies: AP Euro, AP Macro, AP Micro
  • Language other than English: (including highest level completed): French 4
  • Visual or performing arts: Chamber violist til senior year, 9 yrs. viola
  • Other academic courses: N/A

Awards:

NAQT & IAC Quizbowl Team Captain ā€“ Qualified for National & International Championships (Top 3%)

National Merit Commended Scholar

Extracurriculars

  1. Volunteer firefighter (3 yrs, 7-10 hrs. per week) responded to 50+ calls and certified in FF I (which is the national standard for career-level firefighters), tasked with emergency duties on engine crew, ran community/public-good events like fundraisers and safety demos

2. Research Assistant at State University. (1 yr. 3-4 hrs per week) Wrote papers and devised methodology on LLM AI for improving learning outcomes at college level courses. Under mentorship of universityā€™s accounting professor. Will likely get co-authorship (if this thing ever gets published :sob: )

  1. Media director & Merch Manager of nonprofit operated by the Pennsylvania state Biotechnology Center. (2 years, 3-ish hours a week). Designed 3 murals and 20+ videos with learners. Raised about $4K. Also one of many co-founding members of the nonprofit.

4. Social Media Intern at Biotechnology firm. (1 yr. 3 hours a week) Designed media around protein-ligand binding & molecular visualization. Pitched 20+ social-media formats, expanded 25K+ views, cut turnaround time 66%

5. Chapter president of orthodontic/community service nonprofit (2 yrs. 2 hrs a week). Led 12 to donate/fundraise to local community groups, sent around ~5K hygenic products (toothbrushes, pads, etc.) to 4 community providers

  1. Founder, Tutor, SAT Peer Prep Club (2 yrs. 2 hrs a week) Personally tutored students on how to improve the SAT for free, Created 150+guidance/tutorial videos, increased club median SAT 230 pts. 25 members

  2. Line Chef, Barista, Assistant-baker (16 hrs a week, 3 years on-off)
    Worked at my local Country Club as a line chef, a barista at a Korean bakery, and the assistant baker of a nearby bagel shop. Nothing special, but took a lot of time

  3. Primary caretaker of elderly grandparents (4 yrs, 7-ish hours a week) Cooking for them, making sure they take their medicine, driving them places, taking them to appointments, interpreting for them, assisting with some functions of daily life, lots of stuff.

  4. Violist, (9 years, 1 hour a week) played in countyā€™s Orchestra, helped setup school concerts, wrote program notes, assisted music departments of nearby middle schools

Essays/LORs/Other
(Optionally, guess how strong these are and include any other relevant information or circumstances.)
I donā€™t want to share my completed essay, but itā€™s on the topic of community service (from caretaking my elderly grandparents and tying it to my job experience as a line chef at a country club.) My teacher said itā€™s a 10/10, but thatā€™s highkey glaze. Gonna go with 6-7/10, with a 10 being ā€œwow we gotta admit levelā€
Letters of Rec: 1 from AP Calc AB teacher (hopefully, very strong, she once told me iā€™m one of her best students ever), 1 from AP Macro teacher (also hopefully very strong, his letter helped me land my internship)

Schools
EDing Uchicago, also ED2 to NYU Stern.

Other schools I care about are Cornell, Columbia, Brown, Berkeley, UCLA, & Duke

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You are certainly a competitive applicant for U.Chicago.

Your SAT is very good. It appears to be equal (if I got this right) to the 75th percentile of students who submitted SAT scores. However, since U.Chicago is test optional, these were almost for sure the students who had higher SAT scores and students with lower scores most likely did not submit. This suggests that your SAT is probably slightly better than the 75th percentile for all students at U.Chicago, if all had submitted scores.

You GPA is competitive.

Your ECs look very good to me.

One daughter had a friend who went to Chicago, and I think that your stats are probably not too far off from his. He did come home for Christmas a few times complaining about how much work it was, but I think that at some level he did like it.

ED acceptance rates are skewed by the fact that recruited athletes are typically included in the ED pool. Thus the ED acceptance rate for non-athletes is hard to guess. Allegedly Chicago does like ED students.

Just my guess, I think that acceptance is entirely possible, but rejection is also. I doubt that your chances are as good as 50-50. My wild guess is lower than this (rejection is more likely than acceptance), but acceptance is still entirely possible. This really could go either way and whatever happens you probably will never know why you either got in or did not get in.

There is not a safety on this list. Hopefully you are also applying to safeties which you have not told us about.

If you do get into U.Chicago and attend, expect it to be a LOT of work. Expect to be surrounded by students who are just as academically strong and driven as you are. You will need to work very hard to do well there, or even just to keep up and survive. Make sure that you want to do this. Given how many reaches you are applying to, hopefully the desire to work that hard for a full 4 years is deeply embedded in your soul.

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I appreciate your insight. Honestly, hearing my chances might even be close to 50-50 is shocking to me, since I have it in my head that nobody is ever greater than around 30% without a hook. Thanks for looking out about my other schools too, I didnā€™t put in my full list just because I wanted to settle my anxiety about my high reaches, but my safeties are places like Drexel, UW, UMD, & Pitt, with like 6-ish targets (depending on if youā€™d consider USC a high-target).

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Couple of questions:
-did you do a US history course?
-did you do any formal VPA courses at school? (Required for UCs)

I think the firefighting is an unusual EC that also speaks to community service and will get the application noticed.

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Hi! Yes I did take one honors US history in 9th grade, but I unfortunately did not get APUSH in junior year due to a scheduling conflict.

Also, I did strings/chamber orchestra class in school for 3 years up until senior year, which I hope meets the UCs requirements

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It is possible that I might be too optimistic. However, I think that you are a competitive applicant and if U.Chicago is really your number 1 top choice then it was perfectly reasonable to apply there ED.

Best wishes. Plan to work hard when you get to university and take advantage of the opportunities that will be available to you regardless of where you end up.

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Congratulations on your achievements.

You can be a competitive applicant at any of the schools on your list. The UChicago supplemental essays are important, so take your time and do a good job on them. Essay Questions

I expect you will get into at least one school that you listed, but I donā€™t know that for sureā€¦admissions can be unpredictable at single digit acceptance rate schools.

Do you have at least one highly likely school on your list? Target schools? Do you want suggestions for those?

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Many schools specifically require a US history course and the UCs require one year of VPA, so was just double-checking you had those.

Good luck - keep us posted on the outcomes.

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Thanks, it truly means a lot. None of my schools are even remotely interested in me, so I canā€™t say that thereā€™s any that Iā€™m highly likely to get into. But other schools on my list that are at least more forgiving include USC, Boston University, UC San Diego (which did actually call me but Iā€™m sure it was part of some random outreach), UC Irvine, UMD, and UPitt. Going to wildly stretch the definition of target here, but I also think CMU Tepper + UNC Chapel hill will be favorable towards me since they take a few from my school. If you wouldnā€™t mind giving your input on those, thatā€™d be greatly appreciated

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This is not a thing, especially for unhooked applicants.

Did you get your Pitt app in already? If not, do so ASAP. Also make sure to make the EA deadline for UMD. Good luck!

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You are a competitive applicant for any college. Absolutely take your shot and give it your all. Sounds like you have a good overall list (assuming affordability) and agree with the advice to apply early to EA/rolling schools when possible.

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As long as you have a sure thing for admission that you would be happy to attend, that is affordable, then yesā€¦apply to the schools in your first post here. Really, you are a very strong student, but so are the others who apply to these schools. You could get accepted to allā€¦or none. I think you have a good chance of acceptance but you never know with reach schools.

I see you have some less reachy colleges you are considering. Make sure you hit the deadlines for those (and especially UMD where EA is where they accept most of their incoming class), and for Pitt (where you might get some merit aidā€¦and itā€™s rolling admissions so you will hear back fairly quickly).

I would suggest you read the thread Iā€™m going to link here. The student in it was a NMF, top student in his class, excellent GPA, almost perfect SAT score, excellent LOR and ECsā€¦really a top student.

No one expected him to be rejected from every college he applied to his senior year of high schoolā€¦but that is what happened. He did land well on his feet after a great gap year, but his senior year in high school was not a happy time. You donā€™t want to be in his shoes. So make sure you have a sure thingā€¦just in case.

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Thank you. I will definitely check that out.

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Same goes for the UC PIQs. You sound great. The PIQs are where you sell yourself!

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Congrats on your achievements.

Like others, I think you can get multiple acceptances but you can get shut out too. What is the ultimate goal for after school? I have a guess.

UNC is a reach because state law limits the # of OOS students - I think to 18%.

That you have UMD puts you in great position no matter what if itā€™s affordable (you said not seeking aid but sometimes parents set different budgets for different schools) and youā€™d love to attend.

Best of luck.

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Thanks!

As for my post undergrad goal, a year ago I wouldā€™ve said finance/business, but to be honest Iā€™m not so certain right now. Thatā€™s what the appeal of UChicago is to me, cause it being a liberal arts institution means I have a whole year to explore every discipline and decide at the end what major I like. Then again, Iā€™d sell my soul to get into NYU Stern or Berkeley Haas, so business still has my heart I guess.

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Then why ED Chicago if itā€™s b school you really want ?

On the flipside, if you like the ability to explore, why not have open curriculum schools like Rochester as a back up to Chicago ?

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In my case, I just happen to like the city of Chicago and have other factors like living near relatives. If Iā€™m really getting into the weeds of ā€˜why Chicagoā€™, I also just find their particular brand of intellectual curiosity and uniqueness more personally enticing than other schools. Not to say any of them are bad, just that I have a particular attachment to Chicagoā€™s style.

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Ok so you wouldnā€™t sell your souls for NYU

There are other schools on either angle is the point.

Good luck

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OP- NYU Stern is about as opposite as you can get from U Chicago if you are looking at the ā€œhighly rejectiveā€ group of colleges. Seriously. People who love Chicago generally love an entirely different set of schools.

Stern is pre-professional to the extreme, highly competitive (with each other, not just meaning the work is hard), very wired in to Wall Street but not ā€œlearning for learningā€™s sakeā€. Stern students arenā€™t spending time pondering the meaning of life, or getting excited about the philosophy course they are taking which has radically changed the way they view history, society, politics, etc.

Kids who love Chicago often love Rochester, Haverford, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, Rice, JHU. Kids who love Stern generally love Wharton, Villanova, BC, Babson, Northeastern.

I think the bread-baking Firefighter who takes care of elderly family members could get admitted anywhere (no guarantees of course) so If Chicago is truly a love- maybe reconsider Stern? Other than being in the middle of a city and having a couple of similar looking buildings they have very little overlap in terms of the intellectual focus and experience.

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