Chance Me: 5'8 Male, Econ or Finance Major at T20s and other top schools [TX resident, 3.93 UW, 1590 SAT, 36 ACT]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Just want your opinions and maybe some advice, anything is greatly appreciated

Currently a junior and am planning to apply to the T20s next year, probably going to ED to Penn or Cornell

Other Schools I am applying to outside of T20s.

UMich (Ross)

UTAustin (McCombs)

Some safety schools as well

Demographics: 5’8 South Asian Male in Dallas Texas (upper middle class income), no hooks, no legacy, extremely competitive private school (almost a feeder school)

Intended Major: Economics or double major with Econ and Applied Math if possible (will major in finance if going to a business school)

Stats:

Cumulative GPA: 3.93/4.0 UW (max of 4.33 since A+ counts as 4.33)(school has no class rank and doesn’t weight GPA, although my counselor said I am somewhere in the 20-25th percentile of my class, again highly competitive private school). (3.85 both freshman and sophomore year, 3.96 junior year and will try to hit 4.165 first semester of senior year to have best chance in RD)

Course Rigor:

Max course rigor in 11th grade and planning max course rigor next year also (4 APs this year and 4 next year) (decent course rigor with some honors classes in 9th and 10th grade, no APs available those years).

Total AP Courses:

AP Chem, AP Bio, AP Physics C, AP Calc BC, AP European History, AP Gov, AP Stats, APES, will most likely get all 5s on the four that I am taking this year

Test Scores:

SAT: 1590 (800M, 790RW)

ACT: 36 (36R, 36E, 36M, 35S)

ECs + Awards (IK I have to only choose 10 ECs from this list, I still have to decide):

400+ hours of community service throughout high school, President’s Service Award Silver 1x

2x High Honor Roll (will end up getting it all four years of high school) (very selective award given to high achieving GPAs at my school)

Cofounder and VP of nonprofit organization which raised thousands of dollars through shoe collection, donated over 600 pairs of shoes to local shelters, and earned a $7,000 grant and mentorship at my school’s VC Pitch Competition (ended up winning the competition out of over 25 teams)

Owner of Art Commerce Business, where I sell personalized art as well as merchandise such as T-Shirts and water bottles with prints of my artwork on them, as well as a gallery and offering of services (made over $2,000 in just 2 months, will probably be making around $2.5k-$3k a month by the time I apply to colleges.

Varsity Soccer 3 years (freshman to junior year) - second place finish in Conference this year

Club Soccer at the highest level (ECNL for 4 years) - 1st place finish in Conference this year and qualification for huge tournaments such as Dallas Cup and ECNL playoffs

Developed a soccer training app focused on helping amateur and recreational players (unique from other sports apps due to heavy dependence on AI in areas such as a personalized coach/tipgiver as well as computer vision to analyze player form and provide personalized feedback) (generates around $5k a month, may go up to around $6k by the time I apply to colleges)

Sector leader of $250,000+ healthcare sector in my school’s business club, real money (write monthly stock reports, educate other club members about writing sector reports and analyzing a stock’s performance, and work with leaders of other sectors)

Completed two online introductory college courses in computer science and Statistical Learning Using R and earned certifications for both

Cofounder and Secretary of Philosophy Club

This summer:

  • I am doing a personal directed Study for a local University’s Finance Professor this summer.

  • I am also attending LaunchX and UPenn LBW summer programs

  • Conducting research under another mathematical finance or statistics professor and may get it published in a journal

  • Interning for my school’s advancement office, will be responsible for raising over $30,000 for the school through alumni and donor interactions and cold-calling

Last summer:

  • Interned/worked for a local business (net worth of around $10 million dollars) - Tasks included managing spreadsheets, cashing checks for employees, running payroll for employees, and helping connect clients to employees

Letters of Rec:

  • Probably going to ask my AP Stats teacher and possibly my AP Gov teacher, I am not expecting anything too crazy, although they should be solid

Final Note:

I am working on getting some awards, either for art or writing, or maybe some business awards by the time that I apply to colleges to make me more competitive. I still have some time before I apply and would really like to know if my chances would improve if I applied ED to Cornell, Penn, or maybe another Ivy like Dartmouth. I feel like I have some good ECs and very good test scores, but my GPA and estimated class rank may put me out of the running for these colleges. Also my GPA for EA/ED will be 3.89 or so, since it won’t include my first sem of senior year. Please let me know if you think that I am overreaching or if you think I have a genuine shot at these schools. Thanks!

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i normally don’t read chance me threads. but yours caught my attention because you listed your height in the title. You don’t appear to be applying as a recruited athlete, so how will your height impact admission chance?

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Oh IDK, I just saw a lot of people on reddit doing it so I did it as well. I should probably remove it.

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Statistically, a 5’9 male would fare better - because as you know, height is the statistic weighted most importantly on your app - more than GPA!!! So start doing pull ups and stretch your body.

Normally, your rank would leave you on the outside looking in but because you go to a private school - that’s where you should start your chance me. They know where kids like you get in whereas we don’t.

I don’t think awards make you more competitive. I think what you do to win the award does. In other words, you win the downhill skiing gold medal - is great - but what it’s really saying is you were the fastest amongst hundreds of skiiers and fastest in the world.

ED helps at schools that fill over half their class…but make sure you can afford the school you ED and make sure you have visited. Penn is urban. Dartmouth is 100% opposite. You will be somewhere four years - day after day. That matters. And if you get into UT - well if you got in Dartmouth, you couldn’t go if you ED’d.

And yes, I think you’re overreaching - but you say you have safeties.

SMU would be a good choice - it does well in IB. Arizona State has the IBIS program. And then there’s Indiana Kelley - if you love a large b school - it’s top 10 and your stats make you auto admit - so zero risk.

But hear from your counselor.

PS - where is your foreign language?

Good luck.

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Yeah I don’t know what I was thinking putting my height in but yeah, thanks for the response. I am definitely applying Kelley, since I am auto-admit, and SMU would be a good option that I am considering as well. As for foreign language, I have been doing Spanish in high school and will have completed up to Spanish V by the time I graduate. I talked to my counselor, and he did say that some of the lower ivies like Cornell and Dartmouth could be considered reaches for me, especially given my school’s history of sending fairly similar applicants like me to such schools (most of them did ED tho).

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Also I have toured Penn, Cornell, and Dartmouth, and I thoroughly enjoyed all three, even though they were all different from each other. I could easily see myself at each of those schools for the next four years.

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:joy: :joy::joy:

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Yeah IK I’m an idiot

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No, you’re definitely not. But you gave me a good laugh. Thanks!

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:grinning: Don’t worry. You are not the first to include height in a Chance Me title this year. It seems to be the new attention-grabbing trend… and it obviously worked. Best of luck!

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A few things:

  1. I would not recommend applying to all T20 schools plus UMich and UTAustin. Find the ones that feel like a good fit for you. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin on applications…a number of the T20 schools will have 7-8 supplements you need to complete…so you could be looking at 140+ supplements to apply to them all. Quality would be likely to suffer and with these schools being so competitive/rejective, you really want to make your responses as individualized to the schools as possible. And don’t forget that you’ll still have your full courseload and school activities to be completing at the same time as doing these apps.

  2. Make sure you would be happy to enroll and attend your safety schools and that they are true safeties (i.e. extremely likely to admit you and be affordable). When most of the schools you’re planning to apply to accept fewer than 20% (and generally, far fewer), odds are that you will be attending a safety. (Not a guarantee, but that’s what the odds indicate, even though you’ve built an amazing profile as a high school student.)

  3. Think about your own personal makeup in terms of how you handle rejection (which you may not have much experience with considering what a strong applicant you are). For some people, rejection serves as a fuel to make them even more amazing where they land as they try to prove to the rejectors what a big mistake they made by rejecting them. For people like this, it can be a reasonable choice to have a very reach-heavy list. For many, however, rejection can be a big mental and emotional blow. I find that most people tend to do better with more acceptances than rejections, but this very much depends on the individual. So I would think about this issue and talk with trusted people who know you well when deciding how to balance your college list amongst reaches/targets/safeties.

Use your guidance counselors! They are best placed to chance you as they know your school and its history (long-term and recent…and for many “feeder” schools, recent history has been different than the long-term history).

It sounds like IU-Kelley is one of your safeties, and it’s a great option, if you’d be happy to attend. I suspect that SMU would be a likely admit, though I don’t know (as in I’m not doubting, I just don’t know) whether an admit to Cox is likely.

You may want to find some schools that aren’t necessarily high reaches that reject 90% of strong applicants plus safeties. Below are some possible schools to consider, several of which are reputed to hit above their weight in the world of investment banking, if that’s an interest of yours:

  • Fairfield (CT): About 5k undergrads
  • Providence (RI): About 4200 undergrads
  • College of the Holy Cross (MA): About 3k undergrads
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You mentioned you have some sure things on your application list as well. Are these colleges that have the courses of study that interest you?

Yes to auto admit to Indiana Kelley.

I agree that SMU might be a good addition.

What about Fordham?

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With respect to your interest in economics, these analyses may help with college selection:

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Yes, I looked into Fordham and like it as well, it is on my list of safeties as well.

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Did I miss your budget for college costs? IOW, what can your parents afford to pay per year.

I only ask, because a safety has to be a school you like, that has courses of study that interest you, where you have a high chance of acceptance…and are affordable.

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College costs are not really an issue for my parents. Our family makes very good income each year, and I don’t think I’d qualify for any form of financial aid either. I did speak to my parents about this as well, and they are on the same page.

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That’s terrific. Please give your parents a big hug and a thank you for funding your college costs anywhere you get accepted. Some families don’t do this even if they can. So please thank your family for this investment in your education!!

Any chance you are a national merit contender? What was your PSAT score?

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PSAT was 1430, wasn’t that great honestly. I don’t think I am a national merit contender since some of my friends with similar scores didn’t get any national merit.

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For this combination of interests, you may benefit from considering colleges with an available major in data science. This major combines math, computing and an applied domain, such as economics. Such an approach would not preclude an additional major in economics.

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