Chance Canadian for Stanford REA w 3.97 UW and 1520 SAT

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • Canadian (from Toronto)
  • Large competitive public school
  • Full pay

Intended Major: Symbolic Systems/CS

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.97
  • School doesn’t rank
  • SAT: 730 English 790 math (1520)

List your HS coursework

Took 3/5 APs (wasn’t able to take other 2 because of scheduling overlaps), took calc AB (highest school offers), have max rigour and apart of gifted program

Awards

Not my strongest, all years honour roll, 5k from ministry of education, and ARCT performers for piano.

Extracurriculars
I’ll be vague so I don’t get doxed

  1. ⁠Founder and CEO of AI startup with 100k+ users, raised 6 figures, also gotten many dropout offers from notable VCs such as a16z for 750k.
  2. ⁠ARCT pianist, was ranked #1 in my province (got the gold medal from RCM), played for 13 years.
  3. ⁠Startup consultant, helped friends raise 6 figures and hit 7 figure ARR.
  4. ⁠Growth advisor to director of education at my school board, helped create a 20x500 grant program for students just starting out.
  5. Made computer in Minecraft using redstone and also created Minecraft clone using Java.
  6. ⁠Varsity athlete
  7. ⁠Idk if this counts but I’m ranked globally on a lot of video games.

Essays/LORs/Other
Apparently all my essays are really unique and well written, people who have looked at essays for a long time said they’ve never seen anything like it and were really “witty” so ig 9 or 10/10?

LOR: AP lit 7-8/10, chem 9/10, startup mentor 11/10, he’s very prominent in Silicon Valley and has mentored a few of the guys on stanfords notable alum list and compared me to them

Schools
REA Stanford and rest of the ivies for RD

Safeties are the Canadian schools.

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Unlikely to all but give it a try. You never know.

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Do you have any budget constraints at all?

Unless you are offered a lot of financial aid, a bachelor’s degree from Toronto plus a master’s degree from Stanford might cost quite a bit less than just a bachelor’s degree from Stanford (and I do know two people who have done just that). Of course you would need to do very well at Toronto (or Waterloo, or McMaster’s, or McGill, or any one of a long list of other very good universities) to get into a graduate program at Stanford.

You have a chance for admissions at Stanford, but it is a reach. I would be surprised if your chances are all that different from the overall admissions rate.

Stanford is not in the Ivy League. The eight Ivy League universities are not all the same, and are not equal in terms of how good they might be for CS or symbolic systems. The same could be said for other non-Ivy-League schools such as MIT. You really should be thinking about which of these universities are likely to be a good fit for you, and do not just go by overall rankings.

With your stats I do think that your chances at any university in Canada are very good. Again, look for one that is a good fit for you.

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You might like these - as a guide -

computer science open rankings