chance an ORM for ivies and safeties

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Demographics: Indian [Male], Upper Middle Class
Residence- Illinois

Interest- Healthcare (the aim is to open a clinic in rural India one day, dont know if that’s already cliche)
Schools-
Reach- [Harvard, Cornell, UPenn, Stanford, Northwestern HPME and Brown PLME]
Less Reach - [Boston University, UC Berkeley, JHU, Georgetown]
Safeties- [Notre Dame, UVA, George Washington University, UNC]

Numbers-
Unweighted GPA: 4.0
Weighted GPA (5-point scale): 4.65
Class Rank: our school doesn’t rank
ACT- 36C (36R, 36W, 36M, 36S), 10/12 essay
SAT - 1570 (800M, 770RW), 24 essay (will not submit SAT)
SAT II - Math 2 [800], Bio M [800], Chemistry [770], Physics [770]
AP scores- Human Geography [5], US History [5], Calc BC [5], Language and Composition [5], Biology [5], Physics 1 [5], Physics 2 [5], Psychology [5]

Extracurriculars-
-Debate [4 years, Co-Captain of one of the largest programs in state, All State team, NSDA qualifier (school doesnt do national circuit tournaments, so we couldn’t go)]
-Math Team [4 years, starter on top 10 in state team]
-Track and Field [4 years, Frosh/Soph 2 years, Varsity 2 years]
-Cricket [4 years, founded school cricket team, now top 5 in state]

-Hospital Volunteering [2 years at local hospital, reception and discharges, 100 plus hours]
-Northwestern Research Internship [2 years in Preventive Medicine Lab, was offered paid position but had to turn down because of my job :/]
-Genetics Research [1 summer in India, did own DNA extraction and analysis]
-Midwest Math Circle [founded a registered NGO that tutors kids in the region in mathematics, around 40 weekly attendees]

Unique-ish hobbies - weightlifting, fishkeeping (own 4 large freshwater fish tanks, breed species)
Other - had the opportunity to shadow 4 different types of healthcare professionals, 1 clinical, 1 laboratory research, 1 gen physician, 1 surgeon, so I’m not getting into medicine without knowing what the field is like

Employment- Jewel-Osco Clerk [1 year, don’t do anything special w the money]

Essays- no clue yet, gotta find a way to not sound like every other indian male aspiring to go into med, might write about our caste (literally field slaves) and how that has always been kind of a label WITHIN the indian community

Just lay it on me- are my school choices reasonable?

2

UC Berkeley is a reach for all. Not sure why you think it’s less of reach for you than Cornell and Penn.

3

UC Berkeley is a “money is no problem” choice - no financial aid for out of state. Is that you? Have you looked at the financial picture at any of these schools?

You don’t have any truly safe safeties – you are either out of state or the school admits fewer than 50% of applicants at your listed “safety” schools.

4

BU - yield protection could be your bane - watchout. BU waitlisted a bunch of high stats kids in past couple cycles… Cornell/Penn would say being target school for you - your stats look like a fit for them . Apply ED UPenn if you really like it, you should get good odds in that round

UNC - OOS but you have high #s… still need to watchout for yield protection/waitlist. Same with UVA.

UND - will like your stats… but you need to line up the ECs and why ND is your school being the top focus. ND is not a safety for “pure high stats” kids. They look for smart kids with high stats AND the character that aligns with the school ethos.

JHU could be an interesting fit, they do care about the stats a lot and “far” easier that PLME/HPME (even your ORM status, esp. pre-med, will not help with JHU app). I know a fair # of PLME/HPME applicants in past years, the admission rate for those is well in the very low single digits or worse. The activities and scores you have are fairly common with Asian applicants for those programs, you should get an invitation for interview but these programs are not just looking for kids with the stats but the character, the true passion for pursuing the degree.

Harvard, Stanford both need not to say. Maybe more specifically why these two schools. Perfect stats will not get you into these schools. They want distinguish specials. You have the distinguish part on scores, it is the “special” part that’s missing. I can implant another Asian app. with your stats and activities fairly easily.

Have you looked at scores hungry schools like Vandy? I didn’t see WUSTL on the list. If you are interested, make sure you apply for the scholarships and write the essays for WUSTL even you don;t need the money. I had a couple of kids with really strong stats and got waitlisted by WUSTL because they didn’t spend a minute to write the additional essays. WUSTL just put them on ice even they had stats quite similar to yours. WUSTL is not a safety If you show little interest. JMHO>

5

@preppedparent idk why exactly, must’ve been a misconception. thanks for clarifying

@aroundhere money shouldn’t be an issue, im an only child. ill try to rework safeties, thats exactly the feedback i was looking for

@BigflowerSusie i didnt know upenn would be in reach. i was planning on EDing brown PLME, would upenn be preferable over that? i guess i have to find more true safeties as well, is there anything i can do at this point to “not be the stereotype”? im confident that ill shine through in essays and recs

6

@preppedparent well UCB is easier to get into than UNC yet he has UNC as a safety. I think GW is your only true safety on the list. Who knows about Harvard, UPenn, Stanford and Northwestern. I think you will get into all of the other schools for sure.

7

Safeties - [Notre Dame, UVA, George Washington University, UNC]

NONE of these are safeties. I’ve seen kids with your stats rejected at each of these schools, including GW where the student was WL’d, presumably for yield protection.

8

If you intend to attend medical school, be aware that it is very expensive, and selective enough that you cannot count on being able to choose a less expensive one or find scholarships (all MD medical schools in the US are reaches for all applicants, and only half of applicants get even one admission). You may have to spend many years in medical practice in the US to earn money to pay off several hundred thousand dollars of medical school debt and save some money so that it will be financially possible for you can open a clinic in rural India (presumably where many poor people live).

9

Agree with @BigflowerSusie you’ve achieved quite a lot but, as you yourself have noted, might not have that unique quality that the HYPSM tier would be looking for - same goes for those two BS/MDs in particular. I might throw in schools like Duke and Rice in addition to Vandy/WUSTL so you have more options in between the ‘Reach’ and ‘Less Reach’ category. BU also has a BS/MD program that’s worth considering. If you decided to go the ED route, I think you’d have a pretty good shot at Penn, Cornell, or Duke but obviously you’d want to think carefully before deciding something like that

10

BU and GWU are the closest thing to “safeties” on your list, though the former might be better classified as a “low match.”

ND is at least as hard to get into as Georgetown. Both UNC and UVA are tough admits for OOS students; neither can be considered a “safety” for such students, even if–like you–they have high stats.

11

U Mich could be a solid match.

All your matches should be listed as reaches, and safeties as matches. Being high stats, there are no “match schools” where your test scores are perfectly in range but you have a reasonably high chance of acceptance. Safeties for you should be UIUC, Purdue, Wheaton, and UMN Twin Cities.

12

Even if you don’t think it is going to be an issue, have a talk with your parents about your education budget. You may not have as clear a picture of their income and debts as you might think. (Many parents keep their finances private.)

If your parents have saved up a college fund for you, and you choose an less expensive undergraduate program, you can talk about using any excess towards medical school.

13

@ceilingroofgoat good to know, i have a lot of reworking to do w safeties. apologize if the list came off as pretentious- it was due to a lack of research

@suzy100 yep. gotta redo the safeties list now. thanks for letting me know now, wouldve been bad if i got rejected from all schools but one

@ucbalumnus med school is gonna be very expensive, yeah… i doubt well get much financial aid, maybe i should look into schools that finance more

@dblazer BU bs/md is something i forgot to put on my list, i think itd be a good fit. im trying to figure out whether to ED a bs/md right now, gotta do some more research

@MrSamford2014 i might apply to browns bs/md, so even that would be taken out of my safeties list… oh well, back to the drawing board. thanks for the heads up

@Studious99 U mich? will definitely look into this. UIUC would also be a good match (in state), thank you for taking the itme to list other schools!

@AroundHere thats a solid tip, i will definitely have this convo w my parents… didnt think id find a life tip on this thread

14

@BurntKnight Based on my observation with my students, UPenn ED is workable for kids with high stats (really high stats) and not a whole lot more special stuff on the resume. Make sure you are really interested 1st then decide. As for stuff to do from here to beat the crowd… the answer is don’t do anything you wouldn’t do normally. Winning another science award will do little… getting another research internship will pretty much a big so what given you have already. More “forced” volunteer activities won’t help. The answer is probably on - what makes you “YOU”. Show that in the essay. I am not sure it is a good idea to mention about the “systems” of your ethnicity, unless YOU have an unique experience, a real life story to tell. AOs don’t care one wit on whatever unjust or just stuff that doesn’t demonstrate YOU as the central of the story. Look for mundane stuff, things that seem uninteresting to other people, but things that demonstrate YOU as the individual. I had an Asian student some yrs ago wrote about her collection of pink shoes and colorful dresses, seriously… She is now an alum of Brown. So, be original with the essays. If there is something that makes you tick, something that your friends could immediately ID - yup, that;s him - then go for it. Seriously, all those winning science fair, research experience essays are pure eye-rollers for AOs. So don’t go there. . JMHO.

15

You have no safeties on your list except… perhaps… GW… if they don’t think you are using them as a safety.

ND, UVA and UNC are not safety schools for you. I agree that you should put Vanderbilt on your list because they “like” high test scores… but you need to recognize the very low acceptance rate. Not sure if you are interested in Vanderbilt…

16

I think your schools are about right, you will get accepted at a couple of them at least. UCB is not a reach for you, its a match, I don’t know of any 4.0/36 applicants that got rejected, especially since you don’t seem to be going into engineering. Go to the UCB accepted thread and take a look. Beware of getting advice from people who have a special place in there heart for particular schools, apparently no one gets into them.

17

There are schools that look like safety schools on paper… but they are not safety schools. This does not mean that the student won’t get in… It just means that it’s not a safety school… even with perfect stats.

18

^^Exactly.

19

I agree with many other people on this list. GW is your only “true safety”, and they might even reject you for yield protection. Maybe look at University of Michigan (although that wouldn’t be that safe a bet either), or even apply to UIUC. Also, if you ED to a med program, and you get rejected, you are still binded to the actual college. For example, if you get rejected from the PLME but get into Brown, you will be binded to the regular Brown undergraduate studies. Good luck! Maybe chance me back? http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/2006599-what-are-my-chances-ohio-state-michigan-nyu-cwru-george-washington-northwestern-tulane.html#latest

20

@BigflowerSusie wow, thank you so much for the advice… will definetely keep that in mind when writing essays (common app went down today so I have time to brainstorm at least)

@twogirls if GW figures out im “using” them as a safety, will they reject? never knew that was a part of applications

@CU123 i will take a look at the UCB thread, and yeah, i figured some people have a sort of survivorship bias towards some schools