CHANCE ME!! pretty please?

sintralin
Wed, 02 Nov 2011 01:42:24 +0000

Thanks in advance for the feedback! Be as harsh as you need to, I would like an honest assessment and whether or not I need to change focus for my applications.

I’m a Chinese-American girl, thinking of doing pre-law or business.

SATs - superscore of 2320, 800 Reading, 770 Math, 750 Writing
SAT IIs - Chinese - 800, Literature - 780, Math I - 800 (yeah, I took the wrong math on accident)

Taking the hardest courses my school has (IB/AP classes)- as of senior year, I will have taken (plus AP scores):
IB/AP AB Calculus (5)
IB/AP Chemistry SL (4)
IB/AP English IV (Lit-5, Lang-5)
AP Government (4)
IB/AP US history (5)
AP Statistics (TBD)
IB/AP European history (5)
IB/AP Chinese V (5)
IB/AP Economics (TBD)

My grades kind of went to hell junior year, I dropped about 20 ranks and am now 31/586 students, GPA is a 3.9 unweighted out of 4, and a 5.44 weighted out of 6. I really wish I had tried harder junior year but it’s kind of late now.

Extra-curriculars:

Debate team president (130+ members, 4 years as a member), I do policy debate competitively on the national circuit, consistently end up top 32 teams and/or final/semifinals at a tournament. I spend most of my time doing stuff for debate - researching, etc takes up ~50 hours a week so I really don’t do many other things…

Chinese Club president (45+ members, 4 years as a member) - I speak the language fluently, and I co-founded the club during Freshman year. We meet twice a month to do tutoring for beginners in the language, learn chinese history, games/movies etc

National Honor Society - member as of senior year,
IB Student Organization member,
Mu Alpha Theta member as of senior year

Volunteering -
Most of this is also debate related, I attended a summer camp where we taught and coached incoming debaters for around 12 hours a day for three weeks, added up to about 300 or so hours.

Every other week or so I do judging and coaching at local debate tournaments, Friday-Saturday for about 8 hours a day.

IB CAS hours require some other stuff, so I have a few miscellaneous ones volunteering with Red Cross - CPR training, food shelters, water stand for a marathon.

Awards -
National Merit Semifinalist (PSAT - 235), will probably get Finalist but those haven’t been announced yet.
National AP Scholar
Graduating Summa Cum Laude from my school, although that’s only recognized by the district so I’m not sure how much that really matters (side note - should this be on my common app, or do I just leave it out?)
Chinese Knowledge Contest finalist - sophomore year, the Chinese government hosted a knowledge/writing contest internationally and invited the top scorers for a free trip to Sichuan. I was invited but turned it down since it was in the middle of the school year.
Lots of debate stuff - individual tournament trophies, “Superior Distinction Award” by the National Forensics League, etc.
Piano - I used to enter competitions until about junior year, never did super well - won 2nd place at a statewide festival junior year, and got Solo contest “superior” awards.

My recommendations should be fairly strong, one teacher loves me but not so sure about the other one. I really like my common app essay but haven’t actually done the others yet - will probably start if I get deferred from my ED.

Most of my focus has been on debate during high school, but I’ll probably continue doing it if I get into a college with a strong debate program (like this one). How do my extracurriculars look? I’ve been lurking on threads of other “chance me’s” and there seems to be a lot of contradicting opinions regarding what’s good or bad.

Thanks! If I missed anything crucial, please tell me instead of just skipping it!