Chance Me for UCSD?

ShyProdigy
Tue, 11 Aug 2015 03:42:46 +0000

Caucasian Male, 17
Visually Impaired* (Right eye blind & limited sight in left eye i.e. no eastern horizon)

UC GPA: 4.08-4.16 (Not sure if my Chem Honors is UC approved)
ACT: 36 (EN:34, M:36, R:36, SC:36)
SAT: 2200 (M: 760, WR: 700, CR: 740) (Not sending, ACT is way better)
APs-to-date: 3 (AP World History 5, AP US History 5, AP English Lit & Comp 4)
Quick note to make, my school offers almost no APs before Junior year (or in general - very small school), so I could only take APUSH and AP Eng Lit this past year.

Senior Schedule
AP Calc AB
AP Statistics
Computer Science (Gonna try taking the AP CompSci A test)
AP Physics C
English (Trimester Electives (World Lit I/II & Graphic Novels) + I’ll take the language AP)
History (Trimester Electives (Vietnam (F) & Modern Asia Research (S))
Quantum Theory (W) (Substituting for one of my history electives)

Total-APs: 9 (AP World History, AP US History, AP English Lit & Comp, AP Calc AB, AP Stat, AP CompSci A, AP Physics C, AP English Lang, AP Psychology*)
*Skimmed a practice test and got a majority of questions right. So I’ll just study on my own for that.

I don’t want to ramble because I tend to do that, so I’ll try to keep it short. I don’t know if this actually affects admissions decisions, but my high school is nationally ranked as one of the most rigorous private schools in the country. Anyway, I loaded up my Senior year with courses I like and hope that works well now that I’ll be writing less.

As you can probably gather from my course loadout, I like math. My ideal major is Computer Science or Mechanical Engineering. Other interests are Economics, Robotics, Psychology, and Creative Writing. I intend to pursue a Masters degree.

ECs/Job Experience
-I started a non-profit where I grow and deliver food from my garden and neighbors orchards to a local senior center back in 2007 and have been going strong since. Its expanded to include a retirement home that I’ve helped to renovate over the past 18 months (just painted the lobby last week, actually) Both places have received nearly 6 tons of produce over the past 8 years.
-I’m a youth ambassador for No Barriers, an organization dedicated to reinvigorating people born with birth defects or involved in accidents that left them disabled. We summit a 13,000+ft. mountain every year, accompanied by fellow visually impaired/totally blind members, paraplegics, single/double/triple-amputees, vets and everyone in between, and attend workshops with revolutionary assistive and medical technologies (Hugh Herr from MIT is the chairman). I raised $46,000 swimming from Alcatraz (which was an enormous fear of mine) in September of my sophomore year to spread awareness and help fund another summit. I recently committed to another one at the end of this school year.
-I was involved with a startup as the Interface Architect (basically designing the user interface, but not coding it) and Content Provider for an app the summer after my sophomore year. Due to a swindling development team, the app failed. It was supposed to provide the user with information about current events and gather metadata based on their responses to questions after reading a thread, but we ran out of money and time. However, the experience taught me tons of valuable lessons about business management, credibility, expectations and design.
-I recently interned at Stanford’s proteomics lab for a week. While I’m not a huge bioscience kind of guy, I find the subject interesting and wanted to see what life in the lab was like. An opening came about and I couldn’t pass up on it, so I helped analyze DNA and protein structures in the urine and blood plasma of kids with Kawasaki disease and studied the effect on knock-out rats who had a 45 base pair gene removed from the hypothalamus region. It was a lot of fun.
-Fencing (since sophomore year)
-Movie Analysis Club (Co-founder)

Awards:
Founder’s Award (Honors the student who exemplifies the ideals of the school/does something inspiring)
Silver Award aka Unsung Hero Award (Local town recognition for the Alcatraz swim)
Margie Burke Speech Tournament: Medalist (Silver and Bronze)
National Latin Exam: Honorable Mention (Not really worth writing)

I’m sure I’m missing stuff, but these things are what matter most/stick out to me. Please let me know if there’s any questions and sorry this is so long. My bad : )