Chance/Match Me: Texas, 94/98.5 GPA, 1570 SAT, 18 APs, Publications and STEM Major [top 25% rank]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • Gender: male
  • Race/Ethnicity: south asian
  • Residence: tx
  • Financial Aid: probably bare minimum/none
  • Type of School: small magnet-school
  • Hooks: N/A really :frowning:

Intended Major(s): Neuro, Human Biology (main one) and possibly Neuro/History.

Academics

  • GPA (UW/W): 94 unweighted, 98.5 weighted (3 B’s 1st sem and 3 B’s second sem Junior Year!!!)
  • Class Rank: 60/240 (majorly low due to middle school inputting the wrong grades to my credit’s, impacting my gpa and idk the updated one)
  • AP’s: 18 AP’s!!
    Test Scores:
  • 1570 SAT (790 English, 780 Math)
  • 36 ACT (36/36/35/36)
  • Mainly 4’s and 5’s for AP’s

Btw I don’t know if it helps but I got a huge thing to put into my additional comments because all of this happened in my junior year for the most part due to extraneous events, being ADHD diagnosis, parents going out of country for half a semester leaving me to cook and feed my uncle, and teachers not being lenient about surgery that happened end of junior year causing late points on assignments.

Extracurriculars/Activities: The only reason i was dtm was cause i genuinely enjoy the workload cause I’ve figured out a good balance, and just like to see more opportunities for me to do what I like (ik this is lowk bad)

  1. Internship at Local Cancer Lab, worked in the lab for about 2 years and got 1 publication out of it, was a pretty interesting experience and located at a local prestigious health facility. Presented my work and have a interesting time there. (presigious-ish Program)
  2. Research (again!!) at Local Aging Lab, worked and created 2 separate publications and presented my work in local presentations and at competitions, worked there for around 4 years and have a interpersonal relationship. (Same health facility)
  3. HOSA, made ILC and state x2, will see what happens this year but chapter president and rep at my school, been in for 4 years, placed at the international competition. Also have barbara james vol hours (250+) award 2x.
  4. CCNA + CCMA, worked in school and am a certified CCMA, did CCNA outside of school, did the CCNA just because I wanted to gain more experience in the field and lowkey enjoy it a lot. (like 400ish hours, + worked a job senior year for it)
  5. Research Fundraising Comp, National Fundraising comp of global nonprofit org, (yes I know people hate these), won major award and secured giant bag for this corp (mainly from businesses surprisingly), got like 250 vol hours from this and won something out of 40-50 applicants.
  6. Volunteer Program at Hospital, in general work with hospital, Got the ability to watch multiple surgeries and scrub in for them, view a literal golden ticket view of numerous different surgeries, accumulated around 800 hours over 3 years. (went over weekends). Got to do CPR and enlist in numerous different areas.
  7. Band, winning multiple accolades and awards, being able to play in stadiums with a band and as a soloist, additionally performing in large concert halls and being a officer in my current band. Could not do marching due to time commitments! Additionally in a prestigious side program which only select 3 of my instrument out of numerous candidates.
  8. Science Fair, 1x did amazing in regions and was a state finalist in the State Level, did not qualify for ISEF but had a good chance.
  9. Decathlon Lowkey the most time spent with less reward, just did it for the fun of it due to the numerous interesting subjects in it. Got to nationals as a team and placed.
  10. History Day Was a major event that I went to state for 3x, became a finalist and had the ability to lead to nationals.
  11. Nonprofit, I just had a idea I refused to sleep on and turned it into a nonprofit, over 32 chapters in 8 different states, with over 600 members. Was not able to spend all the time I liked on it but did get some hours through, thoroughly enjoyed working with my co-owner of it, and was just a fun experience that helped bridge gaps between disparities of income and health advice and materials.
  12. Shadowing, Shadowed a surgeon and a doctor, learned some valuable things from it and got to do tons of hand on assisting. Not really worth mentioning but I enjoyed it a ton!
  13. Red Cross Club, Regional coordinator and president of the club, just made it enjoyable and spread it out through the community with my members.
  14. Also have JHU GHLC Student Speaker Series I guess (program with 9% acceptance rate around)

Awards/Honors: (not as good as other people i’ve seen in this reddit)

  1. International Comp Gold Medal for medicine health and A&P
  2. International Finalist in Medical Competition
  3. Placed Internationally at HOSA ILC
  4. 3rd Place in State level competition for science
  5. Top 10/350 in State level science competition for health related activities.
  6. Pres and other Volunteer Awards (barbara james, red cross, etc.)
  7. Research Award (basic, just out of my group)
  8. got some random ones I got listed, just cant remember, of like medium relevance.
  9. Research Competition winner
  10. Another research competition winner
  11. Won a competition for Rice university on research, got published in their magazine.

Letters of Recommendation

  1. ap chemistry teacher (10/10)
  2. ap biology teacher (9/10)
  3. Two separate ones if needed, from my research mentor’s (8-9/10)
  4. counselor, she was pretty chill and she liked me a ton (7-9/10)

Essays?

I hope their good lolol

I’m only listing my reaches and dream schools, but if you have any additional schools you think I should apply to please let me know!!

Where I might apply:

  • John’s Hopkins University
  • Duke
  • UCB/LA
  • Cornell
  • HYPS (no M)
  • Vanderbilt
  • Some BS/MD’s
  • U Chicago
  • Rice
  • Wash U
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For better help with your chances at the UCs, you can calculate your three UC GPAs here, following all directions on the page: GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub

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3.9/4.0, idk if thats good for california univerisites

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There are three UC GPAs, and the UCs you listed will look at all of them. (Unweighted, weighted capped, and weighted uncapped)

Since the UCs don’t look at SAT, the GPAs have more importance. So it’s helpful to list them for us :slight_smile:

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Okay, thanks!

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UCs will give you the latter. Personally, I wouldn’t choose UCs for premed due to the very high level competition and high price. Consider Emory, WUSTL, CWRU, Tufts, UMiami, URochester, NYU. These are all near medical centers, have good research access, and are not known for grade deflation. If you want to live the Cali life, consider a private like USC, which would be more affordable with the national merit scholarship of $20,000 per year.

Rice is genuinely about as good as it gets for premed - near the world’s largest medical center, strong premed culture, plenty of research access, etc.

Maybe I’m from a different income strata than you, but I would have a very hard time justifying most of these over UT Dean’s and/or polymathic scholars, especially considering medical school is going to cost another $400k on top of that. Granted, it’s not a terrible idea to take loans for med school if you do the repayment math with a $300k starting attending salary, but still.

EC 2 seems better than 1 due to the longer commitment. I would also move the nonprofit higher up - that level of scale is truly commendable and stands out much more to me than HOSA or the fundraising competition.

Vanderbilt likes “normal” activities within the school community like band which show you aren’t a prestige-maximizing automaton. Consider emphasizing this in your Vandy-specific supplements.

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Unfortunately, they are both going to be expensive. $99,139 - $20,000 is not significantly cheaper than $80,628. (and I’m not seeing national merit in the stats above? maybe I missed it.)

I agree 100% that schools with in-state tuition or merit scholarships would be great picks.

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Sweet! I might end up staying away from those than, and look more at vandy. I’ll keep all those in mind, thank you!

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*they’re

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Ummm, that’s not a low GPA. Maybe low for the T20 schools, but not low.

Advice - don’t whine in the extra section about what people didn’t do for you. You could write something about how junior year you had to take on responsibility, etc., but leave out anything that blames teachers or your parents for lower grades.

Hard to chance you on any of those schools. I think you know that others applying will have a higher GPA and similar test scores. Your activities and honors are strong. Perhaps one of those schools will take a chance. If not, there are thousands of schools that will happily take you!

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Great SAT’s and activities!

Are you familiar with your official transcript and whether the 6 b’s jr. year actually show as 6 b’s? If they do show up that way, I might focus on larger test optional and test required schools with more formulaic admissions practices, despite your activities (for the higher end). McGill>UCLA for example.

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How many total semester Bs (or lower) in core courses does your 6 semester transcript show? Please calculate your unweighted GPA on a 4 point scale, core courses only.

Also, use the UC GPA calculator above to calculate your 3 UC GPAs. It will be difficult for people to chance you without unweighted GPA on a 4 pt scale. And impossible to give you feedback on UCs until we have the UC GPAs.

Have you asked your school to fix the middle school grades? Does your 6 semester transcript show the 60/240 rank? Will that be updated before you apply to colleges?

Even though you have strong ECs and high test scores, they will not compensate for your grades. Your list is very reachy for someone with at least 6 semester Bs and a rank around the 25% mark. I would encourage you to rethink the reaches you list above…applying to 13+ reaches [of that level especially] does not make sense (IMO).

What BSMD programs are you considering? You might join the discussion here: ***Thread for 2025-2026 BS/MD/DO Applicants and their Parents ***

Have you spoken with your HS counselor about putting this in their LoR?

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In my opinion, your school counselor should address most of this in their recommendation.

It’s really not possible to chance you with accuracy for these reach schools you listed above, but in my opinion, your GPA will be a factor in admission to these colleges. Fact is, they decline admission to 90% or more of applicants…so just be prepared for that possibility.

Your ECs are fine and your standardized test scores are fine, but they won’t make up for your GPA.

If you are happy with your sure things for admission and affordability…and you are sure you will be admitted and can afford these sure thing colleges, then apply to reaches if you so choose.

And keep in mind that you can take the required courses for medical school applicants at almost every four year college in this country, arts conservatories excluded.

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If you want U Chicago, apply ED. Same for WashUStL.

Prior to reading your list of schools, I thought that you should give serious consideration to applying ED to any desired school which gives a meaningful boost to ED applicants.

My best guess is that UCLA & UCB (UCs do not consider SAT/ACT scores) are unlikely as is Princeton.

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Given your list of schools in your original post, you should consider them all to be high reaches.

However, here are the two important parts of this response:

First, you need to apply to safeties. You listed 11 schools in your post all of which are reaches for essentially everyone, and all of which are unlikely for someone who has quite a few B’s junior year.

Secondly, you sound like you are a serious student and a potentially very strong student. You had one so-so year, that’s all. Many, many students have successfully come back from far worse and done very well. You can also and I expect that you will.

To me reading your post I thought that I noticed a sincere desire to do well in your education. This is definitely possible. This is possible attending any university that is very roughly ranked in the top 100 in the US, and probably any university ranked in approximately the top 200, if not more. I for example know or have known a lot of people who attended universities ranked in the 50 to 150 range for their bachelor’s degrees, and then got graduate degrees (including master’s degrees or doctorates) from universities that were either in the Ivy League or ranked in the top 10 in the world.

Also, both neuroscience and biology are fields in which some form of graduate degree seems relatively likely. You can attend any one of a huge range of universities for your bachelor’s degree, and then go on to attend very highly ranked schools, including the schools on your list, for graduate work, or at very good graduate programs that were very good fits for the student.

Does your guidance counselor know about your struggles junior year? It is probably better for them to describe it rather than you. On the most part universities will want to know that these struggles are due to issues that will not reoccur once you get to university.

I think that you have a compelling and interesting story, with some very significant accomplishments. I think that your story is unusual enough that it is difficult to predict your chances of getting into a highly ranked university straight out of high school. However, I think that one way or another you have a good chance to be quite successful and that you can overcome getting a few B’s along the way.

Also, if medical school is a realistic possibility, then definitely budget for a full 8 years of university and expect the last 4 years to be expensive. You definitely will want to avoid or minimize debt as much as you reasonably can. Also, as mentioned above, there are a huge number of universities that are very good for premed students, and that also will be quite academically demanding for premed students. If you attend a school that hypothetically might be ranked somewhere in the 100 to 150 range, you will find premed classes to be demanding and will find premed classes to be full of many very strong students. Then if you do eventually get to a very good medical school, you will find that the other students in the same program got their bachelor’s degrees “all over the place” (and this is a quote from a very good doctor who I once discussed this issue with).

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Many Texas public universities are assured admission for your rank and test scores. Are some of these your safeties?

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Class rank 60/240. I think this is 25%ile. Which Texas colleges are assured with this class rank?

This student already said they have sure things

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Most Texas public universities are assured admission for Texas residents with top 25% rank either alone or with a high enough test score, and 36 ACT or 1570 SAT is high enough in those cases.

Obvious exceptions are UT Austin, UT Dallas, and Texas A&M.