Chance a sad Penn deferred student for WashU (ED2), premed. [1590 SAT, 97.2 GPA]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US domestic: US Citizen
  • State/Location of residency: East coast
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Competitive public high school (many acceptances to Cornell, others to MIT, Stanford, Duke, Yale, Northwestern, NYU etc in EA/ED round so far)
  • Other special factors: None

Cost Constraints / Budget
None, parents make 500k+ (Very grateful)

Intended Major(s)
Biochem, molecular bio, usually some form of bio but changes depending on school.

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 97.2/100
  • Weighted HS GPA: None
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1590 superscore, 790 EBRW and 800 Math

List your HS coursework

14 AP Classes w/senior year course load of AP Macro, Micro, Gov, Psych, and Physics C. DE Calculus 3 and Linear Algebra at CC.

Awards
Nothing special, NHS, AP Scholar, PVSA, Honor Roll, Spanish Honor Society

Extracurriculars
Published legitimate research in quality journal in field (Environmental Science), other abstract accepted at prestigious conference. Top Science Olympiad and DECA placer at states. Lots of shadowing and clinical experience. Part-time job at fast food place. Lots of volunteering with food pantries and refugee organizations. Trumpet and two varsity sports: Track and basketball, not too good but not bad. Secretary of Asian Culture club (ngl I don’t really do anything) but aside from that no leadership.

Essays/LORs/Other
Essays are okay I would say, very good LORs.

Schools
Looking at WashU for ED2 round, was just deferred by Penn to RD. Am hoping that a deferral means my application is decent. Also considering Emory and UChicago, tbh like all of them roughly equally but think I have best shot at WashU.
For reference: RD schools I’m looking at are JHU, UChicago, Duke, Brown, Boston College, Boston University, Emory, Tufts, and Cornell.

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You are of course competitive at any university in the US, and most likely any university in the world that teaches in a language that you speak.

However, for the top ranked universities such as U.Penn and WUSTL the large majority of applicants are also competitive applicants, and admissions is not just strictly based on academics. It is very difficult or perhaps impossible to predict whether or not you will get into WUSTL, but you are of course a very strong applicant.

The main thing that comes to mind is that I expect that you will do well pretty much regardless of which university you attend. There are a lot of very good universities and colleges in the US (at least hundreds). There are a lot of research opportunities and strong premed students and good professors at many, many universities.

Another thing that comes to mind relates to something that my youngest daughter experienced. She was a biology major and briefly thought of being premed. However, sophomore year of university she needed to take four lab courses at the same time, and discovered that she loved lab work and is good at it. She pivoted rather quickly to focusing on biomedical research. As a result while her premed friends were getting medical experience, my daughter was in a lab (for example at one point growing cancer cells and then figuring out how to kill them or inhibit their growth). Her focus on research while in university was also helpful for getting a research job after graduation, and then getting accepted to a very good PhD program. This sort of adjustment of primary focus is very common for university students.

You might at some point similarly want to decide whether to focus on research opportunities or on medical shadowing. Many of the classes that you take would be the same either way, but the experiences that you will want to focus on outside of class might vary, and there will be quite a few interesting and valuable options available to you.

Another thing that comes to mind is that you will want to make sure that you apply to safeties. I do not know whether BC or BU are safeties for you, but I do think that your chances are good and I do know someone who got into BU perhaps 12 years ago with slightly lower stats.

And of course you can get a very good education at any university on this list, or at any one of many, many other universities.

And best wishes.

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Thank you so much for the kind and thoughtful comment! I haven’t been feeling great and I really appreciate your words. I’ve already gotten into two safeties, Stony and Pitt, and I definitely do not think BU or BC are safeties haha. Gonna work hard on RD essays and hope for the best :slight_smile:

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Why do ED2 at all? You’re going to get into good schools with this profile. Why lock yourself into Wash U (which is a very good school) when you might get into Penn or any number of other schools RD.

The marginal benefit of ED2 is not worth giving up seeing all of your results in my opinion…especially in a case like yours.

I’d just apply to all of those RD. You see if you get into a few and then pick the one you really love and still have the ability to go to Penn (which was your first choice) if you get in there. ED2 only benefits the school…it doesn’t benefit you.

Best of luck.

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This is also something that I am contemplating but honestly I am pretty afraid that I’ll just be rejected from every RD school. I understand that this is probably irrational but I’ve heard a million horror stories. There’s nothing wrong with my safeties it just feels like I’ve worked really hard throughout high school and I guess I want it to pay off? Additionally, I would probably choose WashU over most of the schools on my list aside from Brown, Duke, and of course Penn. I will definitely continue to think about this for the next few weeks. Also been wondering if it would be possible to switch to ED2 at WashU after UMich comes out (and I don’t get in) but I’m assuming it’ll be a little late. Thanks for the advice!

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Best of luck. I think you’re going to get into at least one of your choices with your stats. I don’t think you need to ED to Wash U to have a good shot to get in. Honestly, if you’re applying to Wash U, it is a no brainer to apply to Emory. Those schools are basically the same school in different cities (I’m an Emory alum).

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It always does pay off, though - if not during admissions, then during college when you find that you are prepared to excel in higher level work and to take on new challenges with skill and confidence. Admissions isn’t the goal: the goal is a solid education and admissions is just one stop along the way. Your hard work will keep paying off as you go on this journey no matter how admissions plays out.

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It’s not uncommon for strong students to have had little experience with disappointment , and that may be true in your case. It sounds like you want to do ED2 at wash U to have a bette chance of success, even though you really want Penn. if you have any additional information to send Penn ( any additional awards, achievements, first semester grades,etc) then do it. What schools have you already gotten into?

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Yeah that is probably true lol… I’ve gotten into Stony and Pitt so far and I’ve maintained very good grades for the first semester. Nothing much has changed for ecs/awards since November but I should be able to improve on some ecs or gain more awards at the start of the new year. I like WashU a lot, I’ve visited, and I really feel like I would be happy there. Of course I would rather go to Penn but I’m afraid that if I skip ED2 I’ll have neither of the schools to look to.

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So my S24 was in a similar position this time last year. He is Bio with interests in Classics and Econ as well. Deferred by Yale, really liked WashU too, thought about ED2 at WashU, but ultimately decided to stick with RD. His reasoning was he wanted the RD shot at Yale and also was not 100% sure WashU would be his favorite offer.

Long story short, he didn’t get into Yale RD, did get into WashU RD along with some other great colleges. He ultimately visited WashU, Carleton, and Vassar post-offer, picked WashU, and is now having a great first year there.

OK, so was he guaranteed to get into WashU? No. Would you be? No. But he was very likely to have multiple good choices because he was a strong candidate who applied to a reasonable list of Reaches and Targets, and his Yale deferral indicated he could write a good application too.

That said, would it have hurt him if he applied ED2 to WashU? Turns out no, since he ended up there anyway. But would he always have wondered about Yale, and maybe other colleges? Possibly!

So it is entirely up to you, of course, and I don’t think there is a wrong answer. But I do think you should carefully consider the upside of having all your choices in front of you, of in fact being able to reflect on your choices when they are real offers and not just hypotheticals, before committing. And to me it does not really sound like you know it should be WashU. Maybe, but maybe not.

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Oh, random additional note–have you considered William & Mary?

I am asking because my S24 and a lot of similar kids we know ended up with broadly similar lists to yours, including having Pitt as one of their Likelies. But at a high level, it could be a bit of a struggle finding really suitable Targets in between the Pitt sort of option (which to be fair is a very compelling option for Bio stuff and in general) and then the Reachy schools like WashU and Emory.

In theory some of the Boston schools SHOULD be in that range, but being in Boston they get crazy numbers of applicants, there can be observable anomalies sometimes known as yield protection, and so on.

OK, so at least for the sorts of kids who like Yale, Penn, Brown, WashU, Emory, and so on, some of the universities that actually do fit in that zone are Wake Forest, Rochester, and Case Western. All of which basically are very strong academically, but are not in Boston and so have a lot less unpredictability, and in fact Rochester and Case have merit. So you could consider those.

But personally, my favorite of all the ones that our kids would put in that zone was William & Mary. It has a great campus in a really nice location (like, proximate to beaches and significant cities). The size and format is much more like a medium-sized private than a typical public. The student culture is academicky but quirky and fun. It is relatively undergraduate focused. It has a variety of academic strengths, but Life Sciences were one of them. Even OOS, they are less expensive than full pay private. And then they have a type of Honors program, the Monroe Scholars, with a really nice dorm preference and also special research opportunities.

Of course maybe you have already considered all this and decided against it. I just thought I would mention it as I do think this sort of college (along with the others I mentioned) can help make it feel less risky to not do an ED2.

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I will definitely research and consider William & Mary, it looks like a fantastic school! I did apply to Case Western but was deferred last Thursday but I’m assuming it was yield protection of some sort. Going to continue weighing the pros and cons of WashU ED2 until apps are due (sigh) but definitely a little more apprehensive now. Thank you so much for the advice!

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Case definitely has a reputation for taking demonstrated interest seriously, and it is always hard to know what that means in practice.

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Penn is urban. WUSTL isn’t.

Would you rather be at Penn ? If so, then don’t ED2.

Tufts will love your $$ worst case.

Good luck.

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Among your current acceptances, Stony Brook is well known for biological sciences.

As suggested above, I believe you would enhance your chances of additional quality acceptances by diversifying your list, even if this were to represent just a modest refinement to your current choices. For biochemistry / molecular biology, I’d recommend Wesleyan, for example. Or go for the superb premed advising that a purely undergraduate-focused school such as, say, Middlebury would offer you.

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You are a great applicant. You’re already into two excellent safety schools, both great places for premeds wanting to do research. While I can certainly understand why you would have ED’d to Penn, now there is no reason for you to ED2 to Wash U unless you love it much, much more than any of the other schools on your list. Do you? Then go ahead and ED2. But don’t do it to try to play the game of thinking that you’d get in there ED2 and not RD, and that at least you’d have someplace that you might prefer to Pitt or Stonybrook.

BTW, all that’s gonna matter when you apply to med school is going to be your GPA, your MCAT, your research, and the appropriate ECs. It won’t make a difference if you’re applying from Stonybrook or Pitt, or from a more selective college.

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I note WashU is located on the St Louis city border in a former “streetcar suburb”, a type of development form sometimes also called “semi-urban”. I tend to like that term because it helps distinguish such areas both from denser central city locations but also later-built auto-centric suburban areas.

Anyway, there is a walkable commercial district, along a restored street car line actually, the Loop Trolley (seasonal only):

There is also Forest Park immediately across the border, which has a LOT of amenities.

And there are also Blue Line Metro stations basically on either end of campus, which you can use for quickly getting into the Downtown St Louis area, or transfer to the Red Line for access to the airport:

880Ă—587 61.5 KB

Just some details in case people are interested in the quirks of WashU’s setting.

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Excellent! Two fine colleges…and you know you are going to college!

The rest of your list is very top heavy, but you are a strong student, and I’m hoping you get accepted to at least one of them.

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Stony and Pitt are great schools. They were a really good choice of safeties.

I agree with others who say you shouldn’t ED anywhere unless you actually would be really thrilled to attend.

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My son’s school don’t all overlap with yours but he too considered ED2, decided against it, and ended up with some good choices last spring. He applied ED to Williams was rejected and ultimately accepted to Colby, Carleton, William and Mary, University of Rochester, UVM honors, Hamilton, UMass and maybe more I don’t remember now. His profile was weaker than yours. I think you will have options in the spring but I realize it is hard decision. Good luck!

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