Chance Me T20s-30s

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Low income (36k), Asian male, 1st-gen college student, Elite public NYC high school

All Schools I’m Applying To: UChicago, Dartmouth, Cornell ILR (ED), UMich Ross, UVA, NYU Stern, WashU Olin, CMU, BC Carrol, Wake Forest, Northeastern, SUNY BInghamton

Academics

GPA: 89.6 (93.5 in senior year thus far)

SAT: 1580, PSAT: 1500, SAT 2 Math: 800

AP Bio: 5, APUSH: 5 (self-studied)

Honors/Awards

National Merit Semifinalist (12th grade)

NYSSMA Level 6 Score: 99 (10th grade)

National Spanish Exam Level 3 Bronze Medal (10th grade)

Extracurriculars (by date, not importance)

Pub Sec of Ethics Bowl (2019 - Present)

  • Discussed 15 hypothetical ethical cases weekly
  • Took notes from various perspectives on cases and recruited new members

Founder/President of School’s Rubik’s Cube Club (2018 - Present)

  • Can solve Rubik’s Cube in under 15 seconds
  • Taught beginners how to solve the Rubik’s Cube, taught more advanced techniques to intermediate solvers, raised funds through school luncheons/petitioning the PTA, held school-wide competitions

Member of TASC (2018 - Present)

  • A nonprofit charity organization that raises money using interesting community events
  • Helped organize a 3v3 basketball tournament and art gallery, raised ~$500 in each
  • Participated in beach cleanups and created online video lessons

Writer for The Point Magazine (2018-Present)

  • Held weekly meetings, wrote pieces for magazine regarding sports/politics

Music Producing/Audio Engineering (2017-Present)

  • Learned how to use music creation software, composition, music theory
  • Posted instrumentals on Youtube/Soundcloud, music used on Youtube channel w/150k subs

Bassist For Church Youth Group (2016-Present)

  • Played bass for church youth group, learned using Youtube videos

Cello (2014- Present)

  • Participated in school groups (Jr. Orchestra, Strings, Chamber)
  • 1st stand 11-12th grade
  • NYSSMA Level 6 Certification

Kendo (2017- 2018)

  • 1st black belt, mentored younger students

Internships/Jobs

Tutoring Job (10th-grade summer)

  • Tutored elementary school kid over the summer in English and math
  • Selected books for her to read, taught her new vocabulary

Minkwon Center YEP (9th-grade summer)

  • Minkwon Center: advocacy group for Asian Americans and immigrants.
  • Learned about the history of Asian American immigrants, and advocated for/collected signatures for bills supporting immigrants i.e. Greenlight bill

Essays

  • Common App: About how I grew as a person while creating the Rubik’s Cube Club (8/10) (this is just my guess so take with massive grain of salt)
  • Haven’t written all my supps yet

I posted yesterday but didn’t get much. Reposting to update info and for visibility.

2

Do you know how your grades would compare with others at your high school? The problem I have evaluating your chances are the difficulty in comparing your high school with our local schools.

Where we live even at a very good public high school an 89.6 average would not put you in the top 20%. This would make “UChicago, Dartmouth, Cornell, UMich Ross” as well as NYU and WUSTL seem like very high reaches to me. I also wonder whether the out of state public universities will end up being unaffordable.

Your guidance counselor would know better than I what your chances are at SUNY Binghamton. I think that I would add another safety (assuming that you even have a safety, which I am not sure). I do not know Wake Forest at all, but other than it and SUNYB I do not see a safety.