<p>I’ve already applied early to UChicago (first choice!) but I plan on applying to Caltech, Cornell, Columbia, CMU, and Harvard on regular.</p>
<p>My ECs and standardized scores are pretty solid, but my GPA… well just read on.</p>
<p>Awards:
NYU InnoVention Semifinalist
National AP Scholar
Confucius Grant recipient (like $5k to go study Chinese culture at a uni during summer)
National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist</p>
<p>Stuff:
Academic Team, captained Yale 1st place FaCT 2012 (not a huge deal but it sounds cool…), GSAC 5th place individual score
Chess, captained NJ High School Championship winning team 2012 (didn’t have the budget to go to nationals…), got some individual stuff in there but idk how impressive any of that sounds in comparison.
Founder/Captain of Teamspeak, interscholastic organization with branches in 3 states that sponsors a semipro videogaming team.
Head Content Writer for the biggest online community for SMITE (another video game, we’re pretty much the official website for them…)
Rock climbing, pathfinded a few ascents up the Andes and Shaanxi mountain ranges, nothing too crazy
Holder of 2 pending (should go through… not in time for apps, like 2014 or something) Chinese technology patents, one on aligning fiber-optic gyroscopes and one on building them
Built a working Stirling engine! (hoping for cool points at engineering colleges)
Play violin and bells year round, doing charity concerts something like 8 times a year in total for both. I’m not amazing at either of them, but I just really like playing music in general.
Spent 2 summers working at radar company, ended up creating the advance concept for something that’s probably going to be worth 7ish digits worldwide, didn’t know how else to talk about that so ended up writing one essay about that
Qualified to play MLG for League of Legends (a videogame, putting that on because why the eff not?)</p>
<p>Essays:
I don’t think I’m a great or terrible writer, so just assume I’m kind of average.</p>
<p>SATs:
2400
770 Bio
780 Physics
790 Math II</p>
<p>GPA:
Here’s where it gets tricky… I’ve got like a 93 GPA across all 4 years. Senior year gets a bit better, 94? but it still averages out to about a 93. This is coming from a school where something like a third of the class has a higher grade than me. It’s all honors/AP courses and what not, but still, class reporting makes me look really bad. </p>
<p>So… think I’ve got a shot? I have a sister who attended Harvard if that counts for anything more than a tiebreaker… Last year we had like 6 kids with 2400s and GPAs from 95-98 none of whom made Harvard and the only 2400 who applied UChicago got rejected. I’m just kind of freaking out about my GPA because honestly it’s bad and I know I could have done better. Bleh.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for looking!</p>