Chance me as a transfer student?

jkim3265
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 01:44:20 +0000

The only thing that’s throwing me off and making me really uneasy is that I’m applying for transfer into their sophomore class as a Radio/TV/Film major in Northwestern’s School of Communication, which is apparently, to quote their website, “highly competitive admissions”.

Objective: (transferring in as a sophomore)

-SAT I (breakdown): 2340, 800 Math, 760 Reading, 780 Writing (One Sitting)
-SAT II: 800 Biology, 790 Math II, 780 Chem
-High School Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.78, 4.26 UW
-College GPA (First Semester): 4.0
-Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): School doesn’t tell us, but definitely top 5%, if not 3%
-AP (place score in parenthesis): Calc BC, US History, Psychology, Macro, Micro, English Lit, English Lang, Biology, Physics C Mechanics all 5’s; Spanish Language N/A (CollegeBoard botched my scores, so I had to take a refund or a projected score of 4)

College Freshman Year Course Load:


-First Semester (18 Credits): Intro to Computer Science, Intro to Creative Writing, First-Year Russian 101, Intermediate Microeconomic Analysis, Intro to Linear Algebra, First-Year Seminar
-Second Semester (15 Credits): Compsci Data Structures, First-Year Russian 102, Intro to Film, Creative Writing: Digital Storytelling

Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.):


-Full Ride Presidential Scholarship to Rutgers University;
-NJ Science League Biology II Division Ranked Third Team in State, top 10% individually;
-JETS (Junior Engineering Technical Society) 11/12 Division, ranked 31/816 teams nationally;
-Won an essay contest to attend a TEDxYouth Conference in 2011

…a lot of my awards and the like were in Freshman and Sophomore year of high school, but for the transfer common app, we’re only really allowed to mention the last two years of high school

Subjective:

Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): Not much in high school (most of the things were in the first two years)


-Founded a billiards club at Rutgers, so I’m the president/founder of that, increased membership to around 23 people
-Rutgers University Undergraduate Student Alliance of Computer Scientists, member
-Muslim Student Association, been a member in college and a member for the latter two years of my high school organization as well
-Screenwriters’ Community of Rutgers, member
-FBLA senior year of high school, was a regional representative in the state Economics competition
-Math Honors Society member junior year: basically just tutored kids in math
-Science Honors Society member junior year: basically just tutored kids in science
-Key Club member junior year

Job/Work Experience:


-A tutor at Mathnasium for ~3 months into the beginning of college
-A cosmetics packer for some small, independent business (under-the-table job) for 5-6 months

Volunteer/Community service:


-EMT-Certified Associate Member of my town’s rescue squad, been going for about 2.5 years and have put in about 300+ hours
-ER volunteer at local hospital, 60+ hours
-Volunteered at the library tutoring elementary kids for about 15 hours

Other

State (if domestic applicant): NJ
School Type: Large Public, my class was around 715 people
Ethnicity: Asian (anti-hook, yay)
Gender: M
Income Bracket: ~100k


General Comments:
I’m hoping that by giving up my full ride it shows a level of commitment to the school.
I think my essays were somewhat compelling; I had sound academic reasons for transferring because Rutgers had dismal opportunities in film. I explicitly chose to double major across schools (Weinberg and Communication) at Northwestern between Computer Science and their RTVF major, something that I really couldn’t do at a lot of schools, so I really narrowed down on that in my essays. And I was looking to get an angle on kind of intersecting the possibilities between a double major in the two fields, since they are two things pretty random to major in together – that, and I sincerely DO believe that there can be some amazing things done by combining these two passions of mine.

I’m just worried because I only decided what I wanted to pursue in college and I’m afraid my lack of actual experience shown thus far in my academic record concerning film would count against me. That, and my GPA was a lot better (like a 3.85 UW) in high school, but I really slacked off in my second semester senior year.

I think my essays were pretty straightforward and formal, I’m just somewhat disappointed that, as directed on the advice of friends and professors, I couldn’t really experiment creatively with them.