I’m a rising senior from NY. A lot of my choices are reaches but I want to get a rough idea of where I stand.
Demographics:
Hispanic, male, upper middle class
Intended Major:
Math, economics, or both. Maybe applied math or CS instead of math depending on the school and whether I change my mind. I’m looking to go into research.
Academics:
SAT: 1570 (800 Math, 770 R/W, 15 Essay)
GPA: 93.7 out of 99.0 (8th: 90.7, 9th: 93.4, 10th: 95.0, 11th: 96.0)
APs: Chem (5), Macro (5), Micro (5)
I go to a mid size (200 person) selective public school where ~45% of people end up at T20s. We don’t rank and are somewhat limited in the number of electives we can take, but I’ve taken the most rigorous possible course load.
Extracurriculars:
Neuroscience Internship: Worked full-time over the summers and part-time during the school year, will have worked 1200+ hours by the time I apply. Have a fully independent project and was largely responsible for supervision of another HS student, including for a period of time where our mentor was away. I am a co-author on an already submitted paper and will likely have one or two first-author publications. I also plan on submitting to competitions in the fall.
Model UN: Sporadic attendance during 10th grade, consistent participation during 11th grade. Third most important leadership position for 12th grade, shared w/ two other people. Minor award at CMUNCE (fairly competitive multi-day conference run by Columbia).
Economics Club: Since beginning of 11th grade. Qualified for team by test. Member of runner-up team in the Ricardo division of the National Economics Challenge. Same team was also ~10th seed at HPEC (econ competition at Harvard).
Columbia Science Honors Program: Since beginning of 10th grade. Selective program (by test, 30% admit rate) at Columbia in which students take 2.5 hour classes on Saturdays. You take a different course each semester, and they are mostly taught by PhD students and postdoctoral fellows.
Math Team: Sporadic participation at best, did qualify for AIME though (103.5 AMC 12) and was part of the Purple Comet team that was first in NY for our school size.
JV Soccer: 9th grade lmao
Recs:
Math (9th/11th): Should be very strong. Teacher liked me a lot and credits me with significantly changing the classroom dynamic for the better.
USH (11th): Teacher likes me, has said that I am a good writer, and has told me that she appreciates my efforts to introduce alternative interpretations to class (I lean somewhat away from the politics of most of my peers). I was a very active participant in her class.
Lab Mentor (postdoctoral fellow, maybe to be cosigned by head of lab): Should be very strong. I have shown ability to work very independently, pick up concepts quickly, supervise/teach others, and make intellectual contributions to experiment design and analysis (i.e. I didn’t just do grunt work).
Schools:
Stanford (REA, legacy)
MIT
Princeton
Yale
Brown
NYU
Carnegie Mellon (CS and non-CS)
I know that my list is a little top-heavy, but I have good reasons for choosing each of the schools there and have safeties beyond them. I don’t have many matches bc one of my safeties is international and is actually a match in quality. I will know by the time I apply domestically whether I was accepted there.