Chance me: HS junior, 4.0 UW, 1570 SAT, International, Asian female, Biology/Public Health, Yale REA

Chance Me / Match Me
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1

Demographics

  • International student - working on the US permanent residency (around late October 2025)
  • Private boarding school in the US
  • Asian female

Intended Majors: Biology, Public Health, Bioengineering, Neuroscience

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 4.0/4.0
  • Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 4.32/4.0
  • Class Rank: not provided
  • ACT/SAT Scores: SAT 1570 (R:770, M:800)

Coursework
My school doesn’t offer APs but the Advanced classes are equivalent to the AP level

APs:
Sophomore year: Calculus BC 5, Chemistry 4;
Junior year: going to take Statistics, Biology, AP USH

Course Enrollment: currently taking Multivariable Calculus at school, planning to take Differential Equations and Linear Algebra in senior year.

Foreign languages: Mandarin native speaker, French 3 Honors (stopped at sophomore year)

Awards

  • 2024 AMC 12A - top 5%, AIME 12 (potentially), USAMO qualifier (potentially)

  • 2023 USABO Certificate of Merit (top30%)

  • 3 years Heads of School Recommendation List (No letter grades below A-)

  • Tri-M Music Honor Society

Currently working on ISEF and other writing competitions

Extracurriculars

  • State House Intern on the Senate Committees of Finance and Education, with a focus on marine microplastic resolution. 3h/week
  • Leader of a state-wide public health NGO under the American Lung Association, went to the state house to spread educational information to legislators and conducted health sessions at local middle schools. 3h/week
  • Internship at a lab at Boston University (Remote intern for an info session) 1h/week
  • Pioneer Research Program on Neuroscience/Biology, Receiving 2 college credits from Oberlin College
  • Project manager at a student-run online brain injury NGO conducted seasonal webinars with speech therapy organizations to spread awareness of brain injury and interviews with brain injury patients and families. 1h/week
  • Online research with Yale professor, published literature review on synesthesia and major neuropsychiatric diseases, indexed by CPCI
  • Engineering Summer at Penn Biotechnology Program 2023 Summer, got an A-
  • School Newspaper Science and Technology Editor. 1h/week
  • All State Choir - Alto singer, placed 7th in the state
  • School A Capella and chapel choir group leader: 4h/week

Currently applying for summer programs like Notre Dame Leadership, RMP and SRA, SSTP at University of Iowa

Essays/LORs/Other
Strong Letter of Rec from math teacher, potentially getting a LOR from a state senator

Cost Constraints / Budget
Could afford most private and public schools, but preferably not schools like Columbia and NYU with high living expenses

Schools
Looking for schools with great Pre-med and Consulting/Investment Banking resources

Planning to REA Yale, EA UMich-Ann Arbor and Georgia-Tech

  • Safety: still haven’t figured out
  • Likely: UW-Madison
  • Match: BU, BC, Case Western Reserve, Northeastern, Georgia Tech, Tufts, UCSD, UCSB
  • Reach: Yale, Stanford, Duke, Brown, UPenn, WashU St. Louis, Notre Dame, Emory, Georgetown, Rice, UCLA, UCB, USC
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I actually prefer medium-large schools; suburbs/college towns; great research, premed, investment banking/consulting resources; Greek life doesn’t really matter

3

Your academic interests immediately made me think of Pitt as a more likely option you might want to check out. Very strong in those areas, doesn’t really yield protect for admissions, might offer you merit, has an Honors program (not one of the really fancy ones but some useful perks), great support for pre-med with lots of walkable experience opportunities, great location in the East End of Pittsburgh which is basically like a big college town including also CMU and some others . . . just seems like a solid option for you to consider.

Plus they do rolling admissions so if you apply early you can find out long before you need to apply most other places. I note some kids with high numbers end up liking Pitt enough that an early admit there lets them cut their lists WAY back, which can be nice.

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Thank you!

5

Great profile - I agree with your assessment on Wisconsin. Of course your test won’t help you at the UCs. Your $$ will help you at Tufts.

I agree with Pitt and but given pre-med but wanting IB access - and it seems like you want a more urban school - most your list is that -

SMU could work (safety) as could Rochester (match). A U Denver (safety) as well for your top schools and Wake Forest maybe a tad easier admit than your reaches. You have 3 Boston schools - Brandeis, a bit smaller, would be a likely. Elon is a safety but it seems more rural than the others on your list. but could prove another safety.

If you’re pre med, are you planning for 8 years of expense - so not just the four - because then you can go to schools where your budget stretches to help cover the last four years. For example, U of Alabama (safety) has the McCullough Pre Med Scholars. Other schools, such as FSU, has an LLC focused on health careers. These schools are in essence substitutional to other large flagships - especially if pre-med is the thing. For an IB, they are possible and place - but yes, they’re not Michigan (nor close) - but if you get in the groups that help manage the student funds, etc. they are placing. I point these out - from the POV, if you have 8 years budgeted, is all. There’s really lots of flagships that work here - a Pitt for healthcare and Delaware gets a lot of love on this website for pre-med.

Best of luck.

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Congratulations on your achievements.

I can’t chance you but you have a strong profile. I second the school recs made so far.

You mention REA at Yale (it’s actually SCEA), EA at both UMich and Ga Tech, that’s all fine. But don’t miss the EA deadlines at UW Madison or any other public that makes the list. If you apply to Pitt (you should!), get that in by end of August and you should have an acceptance in October.

You can also apply SCEA to Yale and to private schools with EA, as long as they notify after Jan 1…so that puts USC and Northeastern EA on the table (assuming they have similar release dates for class of 2025 that they did for 2024), so make those deadlines too (and any others with similar EA decision release dates). Here are the Yale SCEA rules: https://admissions.yale.edu/single-choice-early-action

You need two core teacher LoRs for some of your schools, so get those nailed down before summer. You can ask a state senator for an LoR, but not all schools will take extra LoRs. You can send it to those that do accept additional LoRs, but having an LoR from a state senator likely won’t move the needle anywhere.

For your ECs: figure out a way to get your math competition and ISEF into this section. Are you doing the math comps on your own or as part of a math team? Ditto ISEF…alone, or as part of science olympiad? Use the additional info section if you need to.

If affordability is an issue, I would rethink USC. Maybe also Georgetown, UCLA, Stanford, UCSB, and UCB too…all are in high cost of living areas. Of course the UCs have lower tuition/room/board costs than the private schools, so maybe that will work for you.

Good luck.

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Are you on the fence amongst these career paths? For IB I think some other schools such as Fordham or BC might be options to consider.

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I would reconsider the UCs if you’re serious about premed (or consulting, to a lesser extent). California is the worst state for premeds even if they’re instate, let alone if they’re OOS. Do look into strong Honors colleges - UMICHIGAN LSA Honors comes to mind.

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I see you already have BC on your list.

Just an FYI, you can do the required courses for medical school applicants at just bout every four year college (arts conservatories excluded). That being the case, if you really are interested in IB, you should concentrate your applications on schools that are good feeders for that.

Question…you say you don’t want to live someplace expensive like NY. Is that just for college, or are you hoping to find an IB job or something that is not located on a large city? I’m a little confused about that.

I’ll defer to @Catcherinthetoast to provide more info, but I’m concerned you won’t have time for internships related to IB (very important in terms of future work) and things like shadowing doctors, volunteering with needy populations, working in some kind of patient contact medical place, etc. Those last few things are expected of all medical school applicants.

How will you do this all?

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Great profile. Would look good to keep french thru AP. Schools know your Mandarin is native, will expect to see foreign lang study foreign to you.

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It’s extremely difficult for internationals to gain an acceptance to US med schools.

Last year only 143 internationals were accepted into all US med schools combined. Approximately 85% of the 143 were Canadians.

There are several barriers to admission for internationals. First only about 40 US med schools will consider internationals for admission. Most accept 0-2 internationals/year, mostly internal applicants. There are about 12 med schools that accept 4+ internationals/years. There is extremely limited financial aid for internationals. You must be able to fund 100% of the cost of your medical education. International students will be asked to place 2 or more years of tuition & fees (some schools also require 2 years of living expenses) placed into a US bank escrow account ($250K or more) before being allowed to enroll.

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@Catcherinthetoast this student is hoping to have permanent resident status by October 2025. Would NOT having that preclude them from doing IB internships?

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Should be ok by summer junior year for internships which is usually the most important window.

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Will they be applying to college as an international if their permanent residency isn’t established until October 2025 (as mentioned above)? That would definitely lessen chances at some of the reach schools.

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thank you for the school suggestions! I prefer to stay on the east coast but definitely considering some state schools with a cheaper tuition considering the 8 year budget for pre-med. I’m not sure if I really want to do pre-med or pharmaceutical consulting or IB in general, so I wish I could have more room and time to explore. Thank you again!

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How is it that you anticipate getting permanent residency status by October 2025. This will impact a lot of what you are trying to do here.

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High level, this is the sort of thing which can be tough to combine with larger colleges just because they tend to have to be more structured in terms of who is majoring in what from an earlier point. Not impossible, and some larger colleges are easier for what are sometimes called “internal transfers” than others (like, Pitt is not so bad for that). But the most exploratory schools tend to be at the more medium sized, and many are actually small LACs.

And often the medium sized ones are tough admits. Like, Yale and Brown sound great for you, but those are hard admits. Definitely apply, but you logically should want some solid alternatives. Similarly, you are also looking at a lot of Boston and California schools, and those also tend to be very hard admits relative to peers just because those are such popular locations. Again, not saying you can’t apply to any, but it is helpful to have alternatives that are neither Ivy+ nor in Boston or California.

Case is a solid choice, though, for getting outside that box. I think in some ways Rochester is even more in the Yale/Brown family and has a curriculum structure designed for exploration. Wake Forest is another like that you might want to consider. Marquette might be worth looking at.

As a final thought, I think a lot of people interested in consulting and IB get a little obsessed with getting into the most selective positions for graduating college students, which even at the top few business programs (Wharton and such) only a few people actually get. But you don’t have to do it that way, you can do things like get a normal job in a real business, work for a few years, and then if you are still interested, do something like an MBA and move into consulting or finance then. But a lot of people stick with real businesses at that point, because real businesses can be a lot of fun and very rewarding.

So it is up to you, but I would personally choose my college more for it being a good place for your biology/bioengineering/neuroscience/public-health interests, but also being good for exploration of other options. Then if you do decide to go into business, having a solid undergrad education in something interesting, and then an MBA or whatever down the road, will probably work out well anyway.

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Congratulations on making yourself a very strong candidate!

The college counselor at your boarding school is probably best placed to chance you for the schools you are interested in, as the counselor will know details about your school and how it performs at the schools of interest and how students like you from the school have performed in the past.

Are you going into your junior year, or are you already a junior and you’ll be going into your senior year?

I suspect that places like UCB, UCLA, Stanford, and the Boston schools can also have high rents, just as NYC does, at least based on the prices of housing.

I’ll think more about your stated desires and will return with some school suggestions.

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That’s a good point. I note the sorts of non-Boston/CA colleges I was naming above will also tend to be significantly lower in terms of other costs, particularly off campus housing.

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Below are some schools that I would consider likely or extremely likely for someone with your profile. I suspect it’s fairly easy to transition between engineering to business to other fields at most of these schools, but that is something you would want to investigate further to be certain.

  • Binghamton (NY): About 14k undergrads. ABET-accredited in multiple fields, including biomedical engineering. It’s a very strong school overall, with particularly popular bio and neuroscience majors.

  • Duquesne (PA ): About 5100 undergrads in Pittsburgh…so if you’re visiting Pitt or CMU, this is an easy add-on. It’s ABET-accredited in biomedical engineering, has a lot of resources devoted to health fields.

  • Fairfield (CT): About 4800 undergrads. ABET-accredited in multiple fields, including biomedical engineering. It offers a public health major and has historically had ties to investment banking.

  • Lehigh (PA ): About 5600 undergrads. ABET-accredited in bioengineering as well as multiple other fields. Has all your other areas of interest covered.

  • Loyola Chicago (IL): About 12k undergrads. It’s ABET-accredited only in general engineering, but one of its three specializations within that major is biomedical engineering. Offers prehealth and has a popular finance major.

  • Rutgers - New Brunswick (NJ): About 36k undergrads and strong in many areas of your interest. I have no knowledge of how challenging it is to switch between departments here, but perhaps @DadOfJerseyGirl knows?

  • Santa Clara (CA): About 6100 undergrads, ABET-accredited in multiple engineering fields, majors in public health and a popular finance major.

  • Southern Methodist (TX): About 7100 undergrads, ABET-accredited in several fields, and its business school is very well respected. Transferring into business is probably harder here than at the other schools.

  • U. of Miami (FL): About 13k undergrads, ABET-accredited in multiple fields, including biomedical engineering. Has all your other areas of interest covered.