<p>I am enrolled into Independent Study at my high school but want to go to a top private school. I am using the Template made by Tristan101 in the QuestBridge thread, thank you Tristian101!</p>
<p>Through scholarship, I applied early in Stanford, UPenn, Yale, Brown, Northwestern, Caltech, and MIT. Thank you very much for your time.</p>
<p>Decision: Deferred to Regular Decision</p>
<p>Objective:[ul]
[<em>] SAT I (breakdown): -
[</em>] ACT: 30
[<em>] SAT II: 650 Chemistry, 580 Math Level 2
[</em>] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.9 (one B [one semester] in AP Chemistry)
[<em>] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 12 of 991 (top ~1%) [has changed for the better recently, i’m sure]
[li] AP (place score in parenthesis):[/li][</em>] IB (place score in parenthesis):
[<em>] Senior Year Course Load: 9 Units of College, Independent Studies, APS, Econ, World Lit, One Elective
[</em>] Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): QuestBridge Scholarship Finalist, Life Member of California Scholarship Federation, Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) for Universities of California
[/ul]Subjective:[ul]
[<em>] Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): Badminton (10th, 11th, and 12th grade, 1st Year JV Captain, 2nd Year Varsity Captain), Philosophy Club (12th grade only, President, Activities Coordinator), Korean Connection Club (12th grade only, Vice-President, Activities Coordinator), Badminton Club (12th grade only, Founder, Activities Coordinator), Cross Country (12th grade only, Junior Varsity), Local Baptist Church (Member for 7 years, Charter, Youth Group, Soulwinning Ministry, and Choir Member)
[</em>] Job/Work Experience: Cashier at Movie Theater, ~2 years, ~10-20 hours per week
[<em>] Volunteer/Community service: 501 Hours
[</em>] Summer Activities: college courses (3 units fresh-soph summer, 3 soph-jr, 9 jr-sr), work
[<em>] Essays: double-life high-school/college-“batman secret identity”-independent-study/villain-father essay, computer/technology-curiosity-but-not-materialistic essay, elaboration-on-independent-study essay, broken-household-hatred-between-mother’s boyfriend-and-brother essay
[</em>] Teacher Recommendation: old principal of a school near ~5k students for over 20 years, math professor from college (took stat and calc1 from him as a sophomore, i assume his rec was poorly written)
[<em>] Counselor Rec: average to strong
[</em>] Additional Rec: independent studies teacher (teaches all subjects, but really weak. she misspelled my name for one of my schools and made grammatical errors…)
[<em>] Interview: for MIT only, went really well. over an hour, we laughed and talked about everything
[/ul]Other[ul]
[</em>] Applied for Financial Aid?: yes
[<em>] Intended Major: chemical engineering (i know…with my HORRIBLE SAT2 scores -_-)
[</em>] State (if domestic applicant): california
[<em>] School Type: public high school
[</em>] Ethnicity: filipino
[<em>] Gender: male
[</em>] Income Bracket: 40-50k, single parent
[<em>] Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): abusive father, independent study, 2nd year college student (in my ~35th unit of college as a senior), both college/high school “social adeptness”
[/ul]Reflection[ul]
[</em>] Strengths: independent study, maybe…essays?, college experience&credit and not just college credit
[<em>] Weaknesses: …independent study, horrible test scores, only 12th grade club extracurriculars, horrible test scores, low actual high school courseload, but high college class burden…, no APs (but instead ACTUAL college classes AT college), horrible test scores
[</em>] Why I think I was deferred to RD: i’m not sure…maybe i’m too different, maybe independent studies kills my chances…maybe my horrible test scores…
[/ul]General Comments: my independent study essay justifies my decision to leave high school one quarter into my junior year because I was “always grouped with students of varied learning speeds” and felt “limited in my potential to exceed” and therefore “looked toward the challenges of the college experience”. i have no one to compare my situation to and am really worried…</p>
<p>I applied into UC Berkeley, LA, Davis, and San Diego. I plan on applying regular decision to the same schools listed at the top of the post. Through ELC, I am guaranteed admission into Davis, so that is my super safety school. But please chance me for my other schools! Because of my low SAT2 scores, I do not send them to private schools, since they allow for me to send ACT only. Is this wise?</p>
<p>also, another question:</p>
<p>Do you think it would be wiser to apply EA into Caltech and MIT, or ED into Northwestern? I feel like my chances of getting into Northwestern are higher because they won’t look at my horrendous SAT2 scores…(650 Chem, 580 Math2). I have a 30 on my ACT and declared Chemical Engineering (I know, with those SAT2 scores…) as my major. Northwestern doesn’t require me to send my SAT2 if I send in ACT, which I think is a major plus since my scores are really low.</p>
<p>I’m retaking the same subjects this Saturday, but standardized tests are definitely the death of me…I doubt I’ll do much better.</p>
<p>which school is of little importance to me…i just need to get in somewhere with generous financial aid…</p>
<p>thank you very very much! if you have any questions, or if you need to know any additional information, please leave your comments in the thread. I promise to check back often! thank you!</p>