Chance me for Ivies, UChicago, Case Western, Brandeis!!

Chance Me / Match Me
1

SAT: 1560, 21 writing
ACT: 36 (35E, 36M, 36R, 35S, 8W)
SAT II: 760 Bio, took Math2 and Spanish but unreleased yet
AP: 5’s on Enviro, English Lit, US History, World History; 4’s on Biology, Chemistry, English Lang, Stats, 3 on CompSci A
GPA: 97.xx on unweighted 0.00-100.00 scale
Rank: top 5% out of ~270 students
Senior Course Load: AP Calc BC, AP Physics, AP Gov, AP Spanish, Finance, Entrepreneurship, Creative Writing

EC’s:
FBLA (3x chapter officer[VP junior year, Pres senior year], state officer, state committee member, national winner)
Board Member of local volunteer organization (one of 8 students to be appointed from a pool of 400+ volunteers, help new volunteers, “faces” of the program, emcee for annual volunteer awards ceremony)
Cultural Performance Club (officer, organize annual cultural arts/dance performance show for student body, perform 3 different types of dances)
Ethnic dance (trained for 6+ years outside of school, also perform during cultural performance club)
Yearbook (2x Editor)
Biology Research (first author on research poster, presented at symposium at local university, only did it for sophomore year b/c discontinued due to funding issues)
Science Olympiad (2x captain, regional awards)
Cultural Collaboration (partnership between local schools to build cultural unity, one of 25 students selected to represent our school)
Varsity Track and Field (quit after sophomore year)
Piano (played for 10+ years, won local awards, mostly just for fun)
Host Student (selected during freshman year; transfer students could shadow me around the school)
Math Club & NHS (I’m just a member tho)

Work experience:
Teen Journalist for prominent local newspaper (paid stipend per piece; however, the newspaper decided to get rid of the teen section this year for economic reasons)
Internship at local hospital, worked 8hr shifts 3x a week
Internship at local university in biological engineering

Awards:
Presidents Volunteer Bronze Award
FBLA - multiple state awards, one national award, first 2 levels of BAA and CSA)
Science Olympiad - multiple regional awards
AP Scholar with Honor
National AP Scholar
**99% chance I also qualify for NM Semifinalist but that isn’t released until September

Intended Major: Business or Global Studies or Linguistics idk man u tell me (actually based on my info which major do you think suits me best?!)
Reaches: Harvard (dream school but idk if should SCEA), Yale (global affairs major), Brown (BEO major), UPenn dual-degree Huntsman and then Wharton (probably ED), UChicago (will ED II)
Matches: Case Western, Rochester, Brandeis, Boston University, Northeastern (yeah I like Boston a lot)
Safeties: not gonna say

2

Are you first generation college, planning to be recruited for a sport at Harvard, or related to a head of state, or have another hook you did not mention?
If the answer is no, then apply to Harvard RD (or just cross it off ) , so you can apply to matches early to show interest. If you apply early to Harvard you will mess up your chance to apply early to Case Western, Rochester or one of the Boston options. You can still apply RD to Harvard and it may give you a slight edge as whatever you do in senior year, will count in your favor.

Do you want to study the math side of business, like Finance? Case is strong for that, but the Boston schools are pretty good.

What sort of job are you after, Wall Street or banking or something else?

Linguistics is an interesting major. If you develop a passion for it, and can write an essay about why you want to study it, that might help your applications to your reaches. Can you take a second foreign language in support of your linguistics interest? Summer school to study Arabic or Chinese or some other structured language other than a Romance Language?

MIT offers a very good linguistics major.

http://linguistics.mit.edu

One problem with a business major at any of the Ivies is about half the kids want to major in economics,
so its a pretty boring application, without some sort of detail on what you plan to do with your econ major from
an Ivy school. Its really vanilla to want to major in “business”.

3

You are a very competitive applicant. Your stats are great and your ECs are pretty good. Write amazing essays and you could get accepted to any of these schools

4

You will be a competitive applicant anywhere you choose to apply. Obviously reach schools are just that, reaches, but I don’t think you waste anything trying SCEA at Harvard.

5

Competitive academic stats, just not sure about the “extras” that will set you apart from other Harvard and Yale applicants. The kid from my DS HS accepted to Harvard this year has similar academic stats, but his extra is being the founder of a local food kitchen - grown from an one person venture to a 15-person team (in 5 years), source local farm products use to prepare, serve, and deliver free meals for veterans, home alone elderly in the local area during weekends and holidays etc.

You maybe better off to use the EDs on schools being more academic stats sensitive, like UPenn (general). UC admission clearly have strong academic stats focus, the key for the the application is the essay. UC application essay is extremely important. If you are creative, thoughtful, and “interesting”, you probably has a shot at UChicago.

What is your major? The ECs seem to demonstrate a strong science interest. Are you into medical, pre-med, bioengineering stuff? I don’t think the schools in your match category care much about AP scores. The ones in the reaches may potentially consider those. An applicant relying on strong academic stats to get into those reaches are likely to have very clean compelling profile overall, and that means 5s across APs being the norm. Just something to consider.

6

@Mickey2Dad Actually I plan on majoring in business, though for some schools that don’t have a business major I’d probably choose a similar major (such as economics) or possibly one that involves both STEM and humanities (ex. Harvard has a Humanities & Sciences major that I’m really interested in).

7

“I don’t think you waste anything trying SCEA at Harvard.”

Except your ability to apply ED somewhere else where you’d have a better chance at actually being admitted. ED isn’t the right choice for everyone (do not even think of doing it if you aren’t 100% sure you’d be delighted to attend if accepted or if you need to compare multiple financial aid offers), but if you are able, it can greatly increase your chance of admission at certain schools, some of which are on you list already - such as UChicago.

8

ED Penn
ED2 UChicago
RD everywhere else