Chance me: [NY resident, 4.0 UW GPA, top 5%, 1510 superscore SAT, -1500 SAI, Econ] for my applied colleges pls!

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics: Female, Wasian (uyy philippines :philippines::philippines::philippines::philippines::eagle:), born and raised in BKK, Thailand and transferred to upstate New York before my junior year, approx. 20k a year for household of 2, few assets, SAI of -1500

Intended Major: Econ (want to double major in Engineering although maybe unlikely, pre-law)

Awards/Distinctions: not much - College Board commendation, QuestBridge Finalist (not matched but doing RD for a number of schools), local and international Model UN awards, school-level academic excellence awards, Cambridge IGCSE Distinction Prize

GPA: UW 4.0, W 96.57, Ranked 5/110

SAT score: 1510 superscore, Math 760, English 750

Other academics: AP Lang- 4 (school only offers one AP), I’ve taken/am taking 6 dual credit courses (Calculus, English, US History, Sociology), 9 IGCSEs in my old school and got 6 A*s and 3 As

(Also might be an issue) ECs:

  • was the Model UN club VP before transferring schools, founded a Model UN club in my new school and have gotten awards for international MUN competitions

  • was the editor-in-chief of school newspaper

  • officer in Key Club

  • Guitarist in school rock band

  • stage Crew in Drama/Musical production

  • Varsity Basketball and Track&Field

  • volunteered at a farm for a summer

  • volunteered at an English-learning centre for low-income families in BKK regularly for a year

Personal Essay: I’ve asked multiple people about this and received positive feedback, so I’m guessing it is strong. very narrative-heavy, about how I moved from Bangkok to rural NY and tied MUN into it.

Supplements: Varies with schools. Some are really generic while some are much better imo.

LORs: I literally have no clue for my teacher evaluations. I have two additional LORs, from an MUN advisor and a teacher coordinator of the newspaper team, that I submitted to some schools that I think are pretty good though.

Applied without QuestBridge RD: NYU, BU, University Southern California, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC San Diego, Claremont McKenna (in hindsight, I think the UCs are way too expensive as an out of state applicant so pls ignore those)

Applied with QuestBridge RD: Harvard, MIT, Stanford, UChicago, Northwestern, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Tufts, Duke, Cornell, Amherst, UPenn, Dartmouth, John Hopkins

Intl Apps: McGill, Imperial College of London, University College of London, University of Manchester, University of Edinburgh, King’s College London

I’ve applied to a few non-prestigious and state schools aside from these and got in so I’ve not mentioned them.

What are my chances for schools I applied to? Are there any colleges outside of the US that are affordable for low-income intl applicants that can work as safety (safer than the ones I have applied to already)?

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Is your other parent alive? If so, many of the colleges in your list want both parents’ information for financial aid purposes (including net price calculators).

Have you checked the net price calculator on each college you are looking at?

Just to be clear, you are a US citizen or permanent resident, correct? This is implied by having an SAI and applying through Questbridge, but it is best to explicitly state that.

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I am a US citizen, yeah. My other parent is alive but I haven’t met him until very recently and for a brief period of time. I live with legal guardians and was classified by FAFSA as an independent student, although I have listed down both parents’ finances in CSS profile.

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Have these schools delivered a low enough net price after financial aid and scholarships?

You may have to check how each college handles this situation for financial aid. This may require doing net price calculators differently according to how each college handles this situation.

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You are very accomplished. Congrats. Glad you notice the UCs.

I hate to say it like this. You may get into some but you may get into none.

If you want to do engineering, Chicago and Amherst seem odd choices.

If you have time, you might add UVA and maybe much lower rank schools like Prairie View or Alabama A&M if deadlines not passed that offer full rides based on your stats.

I hope you get into one but what’s the plan if you don’t ?

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I was thinking the exact same thing.

I expect you to be accepted to McGill. I would be quite surprised if it were to turn out to be affordable (assuming that you are not a citizen of Canada nor France nor a few other francophone countries).

For the universities in the UK, I have no idea whether they will be affordable.

You are a competitive applicant for all of these universities. You math SAT score is a bit low for MIT, but I am not sure to what extent this might be offset by other factors. Otherwise I think that it is hard to know whether you will get an acceptance, or a few acceptances, or no acceptances from this list. At least in my experience these schools are looking for students who are a good fit for them, and they get it right quite often (thus for example the very high graduation rate for all of these excellent schools). I think that this could go either way, but I do think that you have a chance at these schools.

You will not be penalized for this. The top universities understand that some high schools do not offer APs. I attended a high school that did not offer any AP classes. One daughter attended a high school that did not offer APs. We both still did fine on applications to universities. The fact that you have multiple DE classes will also offset this.

I also like your ECs. To me it looks like you did what was right for you, did it very well, and got along with others. This is exactly what you should do with respect to ECs. I like the fact that you were stage crew. This is helping other people, which is a big part of ECs. I like the fact that you volunteered on a farm for a summer.

I spent part of my career (mostly the last part) doing quite a bit of work with lawyers that focus on high-tech issues. At least in my experience patent lawyers almost always have a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field (math, computer science, or engineering). If you want to be a patent lawyer your undergraduate major will matter. Otherwise, you can major in almost anything and apply to law school, and economics would be a good choice if you find this interesting and if you are good at it.

I was a math major. As a graduate student I took one single class that was not a math class. It was econometrics (ie, quantitative economics). I liked it quite a bit. I liked the fact that quantitative economics seems to take economics out of the area of competing opinions into an area that can be verified with actual data. There is a fair amount of math in econometrics. For at least some forms of economics it appears that multi-variate calculus and linear algebra are at least useful.

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Definitely not for the non-prestigious private school I applied to. I did get accepted to Buffalo State which has provided financial aid and is technically affordable but it doesn’t cover housing, living costs, etc.

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Engineering’s not exactly a priority for me and is a more of a footnote in my applications. My supplements are highly centred on econ. Thank you for the recs, I’ll look into them.

figuring that out lol. The only colleges I can afford without a scholarship are in the Philippines, so maybe that. As an NY resident, SUNY schools are tuition-free but I will probably not be able to afford housing and other costs.

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Is there a SUNY/CUNY near home ? Commute…

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I live with legal guardians and because of personal circumstances, I’d have to move out when I graduate HS. My parent lives abroad.

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A couple of questions/thoughts:

-Did you rank the schools in this list? If so, MIT and UChicago should have automatically rolled all unmatched finalists into their EA rounds.
-These are among the most reachy of QB schools. Do you still have time to apply RD to other QB schools that are less reachy? For example, Skidmore, or Oberlin, or U Richmond. Check QB options and deadlines here: Options Following the Match | QuestBridge

This is not technically affordable because you can’t afford the room and board costs. Beyond the colleges in the Phillipines that are affordable, have you considered working full-time and attending your local CC part-time? That plan is contingent on finding affordable housing though, since it sounds like you can’t continue to live with your guardians.

You MUST contact the FA office for each of the colleges you applied to that require CSS and ask them if you should include your parents’ info on CSS. Some will not require that. If you do include your parents’ finances are you still SAI -1500?

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My thought as well. I think you have a chance everywhere, but there seems to be a huge gap in selectiveness between your reaches and your safeties - it would be nice to have some still-selective but not-so-brutally-rejective schools in the pipeline. Did you consider the women’s colleges? Since being single-gender cuts the applicant pool in half, these have higher acceptance rates relative to their reputations. Wellesley (1/5 deadline) is top-notch for econ and has cross-registration with MIT, Babson, Olin, and Brandeis. Smith (1/15 deadline) is excellent as well, has its own engineering major in addition to strong econ, and is part of the MA 5-college consortium. I’ve also heard that they allow students who need to to remain in the dorms over breaks.

You applied to Columbia but not Barnard, even though they’re literally the same university, physically adjacent and combined in terms of academics and extracurriculars. You could still toss an app at Barnard but the deadline is today.

You’re a great candidate and I hope one of your current schools works out; they just have very low acceptance rates. Good luck!

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My main issue with McGill is securing a large enough scholarship. If that does not happen, I’m definitely not going to McGill. Same thing with the UK schools.

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I got deferred from both for EA round.

I can’t apply to any more partner schools through QuestBridge, I’d have to do it through CommonApp.

I’m pretty sure my SAI would be the same either way, so do I still contact my colleges? I’ve already submitted my CSS profile to 6 schools, including my parents’ finances, so do I contact them as well?

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Yes, I would recommend that.

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