Chances at Top schools?

Chance Me / Match Me
1

I’m currently a senior and plan on applying to ten schools. I may cut down if it seems my credentials aren’t good enough (my goal here is to not waste $70 on an application when my chances are relatively low.) I’ve spent all summer writing my essays so I feel a bit more prepared. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

GPA 4.0 weighted 5.0976
Class Rank 4th out of 670 (as of february of junior year)
Gender: female, race: vietnamese asian

Standardized testing (plan on retaking)
SAT Superscore 2100 CR 680 Math 710 Writing 710
ACT Composite 30
SAT Subject tests: will take in October (math level 2, bio, chem

AP Courses: Human Geo 3, Bio 4, Psych 5, World history 4, Stats 5, Calc AB 5, English Lang 5, US history 4, Chem 3
Senior year Course Load
AP Macro/ US Gov, AP Micro/ Comparative Gov, AP Physics c, AP Calculus BC, AP English Literature, TV Production 4
Orchestra Honors

Extracurricular
Key Club: secretary 11th, even coordinator 12th, attended district convention about 300 volunteer hours, most notable is 79 hours at a local hospital
TV Production: 9th-12th grade, anchor for school news 11th-12th, a few awards for videos
Orchestra: 9th, 11th, 12th 2nd chair , had solo for MPA in 11th grade
FIRST Tech Challenge team 8614: founder, team captain (i basically do everything for the team such as contacting sponsors, signing up for meetings, ordering supplies etc.) 11th- 12th, state rank 88th out of 128 (i know it’s bad but this is from our first year and we barely had any money)
Honor Societies: NHS, NTHS, SNHS(secretary 12th), NEHS, Mu Alpha Theta(competition president 12th), Rho Khappa
Science Olympiad 9th-10th, went to state

Awards
• 4th best score AMC 12 at Olympia High School 2014-2015
• Various Science Olympia awards
• 1st place at Orange County Media Festival (documentary, 2014) (listed below), 3rd Place at Orange County Media Festival (news report,2015)
• Distinguished Club Member (Key Club) (2013-2014) (2014-2015)
• AP Scholar
• Semi-finalist Nordstrom Scholarship
• Orchestra MPA Superior: 9th and 11th

Employment
Tutor/teach vietnamese, reading, math, writing

Applying to university of Miami, university of florida, Yale, harvard, duke, columbia, vanderbilt, washington state, johns hopkins, northwestern

Hopefully I didn’t forget anything!

2

also intended major is biomedical engineering, doing premed as well (potentially medical school after)

3

Your test scores would make these schools more of a reach than they already are:

Yale, harvard, duke, columbia, vanderbilt, johns hopkins, northwestern

4

I’m planning on retaking and expect higher scores, especially with ACT since the score was based off my first time taking it. I’m more concerned with extracurriculars and course load

5

"(my goal here is to not waste $70 on an application when my chances are relatively low.) "

Your chances, like everyone else’s, are very low at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Duke, JHU (especially biomedical engineering which is notoriously tough), Northwestern. What do you mean by ‘relatively low’?

When schools accept less than 15% of applicants, basically everyone who is applying has terrible chances. Nobody can expect to get into any of these schools.

It seems that you don’t have any EC’s particularly related to medicine?

Best not to reveal your high school name as you could be easily identified.

6

@rdeng2614 by relatively low i really mean zero chance. I’m still thinking about pre-med; it’s not for sure. My extracurirculars are geared towards math and science since I’m more interested in engineering. Is there much I can do in the next few months before applications are due?

7

Can’t really say it’s 0 chance as those schools are a crapshoot, but chances aren’t high either.
If you’re interested in medicine, volunteering at a hospital, shadowing a physician, doing any research in that area would all help demonstrate an interest in that field.
If you don’t want to do that, just don’t mention pre-med and focus on engineering in your application as your EC’s are mainly geared towards that and it help support your case better. At most of those schools, you can probably easily transfer from engineering to the sciences.

8

@rdeng2614 Thanks for the help! have done 79 hours of volunteering at a local hospital just FYI.