ACT/SAT Scores: 34 super score (33 non super score)
Was hit by a car sophomore year and father had issues, so GPA did dip throughout high school.
List your HS coursework
Freshman Year:
World Studies CP
Biology CP
English 1 CP
Geometry CP
Gym/Health
Freshman Seminar
AP Human Geography
French 1 CP
Sophomore Year:
Honors English 2
Honors Algebra 2
Honors Chemistry
Honors US History 1
French CP
Drivers Ed/Gym
AP Computer science principles
Exploring Art
Junior Year:
Pre Calc Honors
AP physics
AP lang
AP environmental science
AP seminar
AP US History
French 3 CP
AP psychology
Senior year:
AP biology
AP chem
CP stats
AP Research
AP lit
Anatomy and Physiology
Awards
AP scholar with honor
verified listener certification
Honor Roll
AP capstone diploma candidate
American Heart Association Basic Life Support (BLS) Certification
Extracurriculars
Cross Country (3 years) - Only JV but ran in several meets
EMT (volunteer) (1 year) - volunteered for over 125 hours where I rode in the back of an ambulance and participiated in over 50 cases. I did various tasks such as doing RIG checks, performing CPR, and when to use what tool in what specific scenario.
3 Cancer papers under hematologist oncologist (2 years) - published as preprints on ResearchGate and then were sent to springer nature journal for potential publication. I talked about the fact they were sent to research gate on an update sent to colleges on March 4th.
Nonprofit founder (2 years) - raised 1k+ for pediatric cancer research, spread awareness of pediatric cancer with an organization of 35+ volunteers. Helped 4 families out with necessities in local area. Donated 100+ toys.
HOSA Club cofounder / executive chairman (1 year) - founded HOSA club at our school that had about 30 members. Ensured that everything would function the way it would need to in the club by overseeing operations. Hosted fundraisers.
Per diem job at a hospital as nutrition service employee (1 year) - tasked with the responsibility of prepping meal trays, cleaning plates, taking meals to patient rooms, and cleaning the place up once done. Assisted with training new employees.
Volunteer / Anonymous Evaluation Team (Quality Control) / Safety Patrol (1 year) on a platform where I helped over 200 people struggling through self-harm, depression, and anxiety through conversations. Worked to develop the academy’s courses and resources. Guided over 25 trainees through programs and provided them with evaluations and feedback regarding how they can provide proper feedback to listeners.
Health Blogging (2 years) - wrote 25+ blogs about various health careers from personal research and shadowing experience (50+ hours_ in order to educate those with a lack of shadowing opportunities. Total of 50,000+ readers.
Summer tutor for children with disorders (1 year) - worked with and made individuated materials for children with autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, apraxia, and other disorders.
Created my own advisory board to tackle issues of homelessness within my community (1 year). Led over 15 members to donate nearly 200 pounds of nonperishable goods and donated 100+ clothing within my community.
Essays/LORs/Other
I felt my essays were really strong and at a level of 9/10. LORs, I know 2 were really good, the other one I am not so sure about.
Schools
Rutgers NB (Accepted)
University of Pittsburgh (Waitlisted)
Amherst College (Rejected)
Swarthmore (Rejected)
Johns Hopkins (Rejected)
Emory (awaiting)
Brown (awaiting)
Harvard (awaiting)
Yale (awaiting)
Princeton (awaiting)
Dartmouth (awaiting)
Cornell (awaiting) (predicting rejection)
Columbia (awaiting) (99% rejection as found error in my application)
UPenn (awaiting)
I would really like to make it to an ivy. I would leave to go to any other school besides Rutgers NB for roughly the same costs, however with my results that I have gotten so far, my chances seem grim. I am thinking about honestly just applying for community college and then transferring out to an ivy or something, but what should I do and do you guys think I got a chance at any ivies?
May I ask why you are so focused on an Ivy? Other than bragging rights, what specific criteria are you seeking? A 3.65 is a perfectly reasonable high school GPA but it’s not in the stratosphere of competitive for Ivy admission, unless there are major unreported bits of supporting info. While schools can sometimes be downright arbitrary, being waitlisted at Pitt (which is a great school, but empirically less competitive than most of your list) doesn’t bode well for Ivy admission. Your list is exceptionally top heavy, which is totally fine if you’re happy at Rutgers.
Community college for a few years is a great way to save money, but far from a high probability strategy to an Ivy transfer.
My suggestion is wait out the rest but get excited about Rutgers.
You also didn’t cover the financial side of the equation exception with a passing reference to trying to get other schools to be close to the cost of Rutgers. What is the budget?
More so just want to go to an ivy due to the fact that I feel as if the connections and resources they provide you with is a vast amount and that you’re able to do what you want with it. Smaller population and everyone there honestly is really ambitious and has like some type of thing if you know what I mean.
I have no financial budget. Rutgers just gives me a nice cheaper price of like around 20-30k. The only issue I have is that from the premeds I’ve heard about that have went to Rutgers have said that they wouldn’t do it there again. The chemistry department is very bad and fries the GPA. I also know that the population there is very big so I also don’t really feel as if I’ll have the opportunities to build the connections that I want to build with the professors either. That’s mainly why I threw in 2 liberal art schools into my application in the first place.
So just to be very blunt with you, your transcript as described was always going to be an extreme longshot at the most selective US colleges. Stranger things have happened, but usually there is some really compelling thing such an applicant offers that they can’t get from someone else with a more competitive transcript. And again, just to be very blunt, nothing like that leapt out to me from your description.
OK, so you will find out soon enough, but I would emphasize for now that you can make Rutgers into what you are describing. Choose a competitive major, network aggressively, and so on, and you can in fact develop the connections you are describing at Rutgers.
I would not recommend you start in CC in the hope that will somehow get you to a much more selective college than Rutgers. If you start at Rutgers and make the most of it, I suspect you will realize you don’t actually need to transfer at all. But even if you do decide it isn’t the right sort of college for you, likely your transfer options will just be different, not necessarily more selective.
Like, there are plenty of excellent Liberal Arts and Sciences Colleges besides Swarthmore and Amherst. If an LAC is right for you, and you do well at Rutgers, and then cast a wide enough transfer net, I am sure you can get some good LAC offers to consider.
But really, it all starts with making the most of the opportunities you do get. So again, you’ll know soon enough what those are, and then you can run with whatever is your best offer for now. Then you can revisit transferring if, but only if, it really isn’t working for you.
Neuroscience is a field in which some form of graduate program is relatively likely.
Transferring into any Ivy League or equivalent school as an undergraduate student is exceptionally rare and unlikely. In four years at MIT, and one year at Stanford (master’s degree) I never met any student who got there as an undergraduate transfer student.
However, getting your bachelor’s degree at Rutgers and then attending an Ivy League or equivalent school as a graduate student is a far more realistic goal. This would require that you do very well at Rutgers, and that you have a good explanation of why you want to study in graduate school, but it is possible.
I got my master’s degree at Stanford. The other students in the same program had come from a huge range of undergraduate schools. Of all the students that I knew when I was a graduate student, there was only one single case where more than one student had come from the same undergraduate program. This was three students who had gotten their bachelor’s degree at Rutgers. This was probably a coincidence, but certainly made the point that it is possible. These three students frankly made Rutgers look very good just based on how they were as graduate students. I have since met quite a few other Rutgers graduates who also have made Rutgers look very good.
This is relatively good, particularly given the hardship that you needed to overcome. This is quite low for your long list of reach schools.
However, if you attend Rutgers, and do very well, complete your bachelor’s degree, and then apply to graduate programs, they will not ask and will not care what you did when you were in high school. They will not care much at all whether you got your bachelor’s at Rutgers, Harvard, or somewhere else. They will care how you did and what you did when you were an undergraduate student.
And your hard work in high school has helped to prepare you to do very well as a student at Rutgers, or at any one of a long list of other very good universities.
I think that you are underestimating how excellent Rutgers is, and how many opportunities you will get there.
Premed classes will be tough at any good university, including anything ranked in the top 150.
One daughter for example referred to organic chemistry as “the most difficult B- that I ever had in my life”. This B- did not stop her from getting accepted to multiple DVM programs (she is currently a veterinarian).
My other daughter started off freshman year of university taking “biology for biology majors” (the first premed class many students take) and the class average on the first mid term exam was in the mid 40’s. I took this as the professor doing a favor for the many premed students in the class – the professor made the point that most of them were going to need to up their effort significantly. This particular daughter was not premed, but instead is interested in biomedical research, but many of the undergraduate classes were the same.
This is normal for premed classes. It does seem however that different students may react differently to these tough classes, and different students might find different classes to be the tough ones.
Also, at a highly selective school such as Harvard or Johns Hopkins there are a lot of very strong students in the class, whereas at a large school such as Rutgers there will still be a lot of very strong students in the class, alongside some other students who are not quite as strong (and who might be the ones complaining on social media). It is the very strong students who might be headed for an MD program (or DO or DVM or PhD program) and they will (with a lot of work) be able to handle the tough courses regardless of whether they start at Harvard or Rutgers or somewhere else.
A main point of your hard work in high school is to improve your chances of being one of the students who do relatively well in these tough classes. Some B’s along the way will most likely happen, and I am pretty sure that there are some doctors who picked up a C or two somewhere along the way.
I don’t understand this either. Premed and chem classes are tough at any school…IME there are no students at any college who don’t say the chemistry classes are weeders and/or the curve harsh. Bottom line, you want to be at a school where you can succeed both academically and socially. I expect Rutgers can be a good fit for you.
I agree with others that your GPA is low for your college list, and if there are C’s on your transcript that would be even more of a negative impact. Beyond the GPA, choosing stats over calc senior year is likely hurting you in admissions.
You have excellent activities and I have every confidence you can ultimately achieve the goal of going to med school, if that is the path you choose to stay on once you get to college. If Rutgers is affordable, I would encourage you to attend there with every intention of making your best effort to succeed. Good luck.
Almost every year I encounter highly ambitious New Jersey kids who can only imagine themselves at an Ivy and say Rutgers “isn’t that good a school.”
To them I point out: if you put that much weight on rankings, Rutgers is ranked around #45 by U.S. News, and there are roughly 3,000 four-year colleges in the United States.
That places Rutgers in the top ~1.5% of colleges nationwide.
Yes, I didn’t want to belabor it, but not continuing to Calc, and possibly also not continuing with French, might be a bit of a transcript issue on top of the grades themselves.
However, the OP’s preparation for doing a pre-med track at Rutgers looks very solid. They can take Calc and Calc-based Physics concurrently, which is the more or less standard track. They may need to be a little careful with Chem placement, but the bottom line is having both AP Bio and AP Chem as prep is good.
There is a lot to unpack here, but the first thing I would like to say is do not underestimate Rutgers.
Next, please do not listen to people who say that the chemistry dept is “bad” and “fries the gpa.” Many students find organic chemistry to be difficult regardless of the college, and blaming the school is not a good look. Premed classes require work, and the truth is that everybody has their own strengths and weaknesses. Some students do exceptionally well, while others might not. That is true everywhere and is often what drives students to drop their medical school vision.
You can build connections at large universities. Start by getting to class early (if possible) and sitting front and center. Going to office hours regularly, even if not needed, is also a good idea.
Rutgers has a LOT of opportunities for premed/prehealth students. Your job is to take advantage of them.
I think your list is reach heavy. I also think that you can succeed at Rutgers if you put in the the time and work. Good luck, and congrats on your achievements!
Yeah, I am not sure aspiring pre-meds are always aware of how many kids choose a highly selective college which is supposedly “good for med school” and then end up not even applying to med school. Again some of that is just kids learning about other options they prefer anyway, but also . . . pretty much all these schools have a certain ruthlessness about the process, not least because they don’t want poor statistics at the application stage. Some formalize this with committees, some just know their classes will do the work, but one way or another they know a lot fewer kids will emerge as med school applicants on the back end than started as pre-med aspirants on the front end.
So I truly think “good for med school” is a bit of a mental trap. If you want to be equally ruthless in your pursuit of a possible med school enrollment, you need to first think in terms of “good for me”, as in schools where you are confident you are well-prepared to be one of the better students in the more difficult required classes. AMONG those schools you can then look for other things that might be helpful. But it all starts with being confident about the classes.
Translation: “The chemistry department has high academic standards and the courses are rigorous, so they require sincere effort from students. If you just phone it in, your grades will suffer.”
Did you get an interview for Yale? If not, that probably signals you as being non-competitive for at least Yale and probably the other Ivies.
As other have mentioned, now is the time to figure out how you can best succeed at Rutgers, an excellent school, which can easily be a gateway to med school or graduate studies. There are no assurances about your future even if you get in an Ivy or other equally prestigious school. Outcomes are driven by your efforts.