Decision: Accepted
**Date applied: ** January 10th
Date decision postmarked/received: March 25th
Which school/major at USC: Dornsife - double major in mathematics and philosophy on the pre-med track
Scholarships: I didn’t really apply early enough
Objective:
SAT I (breakdown): Didn’t take
ACT (breakdown): 33 (Math 35, English 34, Reading 34, Science 28 (lol))
SAT II (place score in parentheses): 740 Math2, 720 Bio, 700 Lit, 780 US History (I’m not sure if I submitted my subject tests or not though)
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.64 (strong upward trend though w/ a weighted GPA 4.23)
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): n/a my school doesn’t rank
AP (place score in parentheses): Note that I didn’t submit any AP scores… APUSH (2… don’t judge, I didn’t take the class), Enviro (5), Bio (5), Lang (4), Euro (4), Latin (5), Calc AB (5), Physics I (3)
IB (place score in parentheses): n/a
Senior Year Course Load: AP Lit, AP Psych, AP Stats, AP CSP, AP Calc BC, Creative Writing
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): I’m not really sure
Subjective:
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parentheses): mainly swimming (I’m planning on walking on at USC)—that takes about 35hrs of my week. My creative writing class also takes a ton of time—we are one of the highest ranked lit mags in the country and I’m a senior editor. I run my schools “pride” club but we don’t really do much, and I’m also part of the robotics club but we also don’t do a ton there
Job/Work Experience: n/a
Volunteer/Community Service: I used to volunteer at my local rape recovery center for about 10hrs a week, and I used to teach swim lessons over the summer to families who couldn’t afford it
Summer Activities: Swimming about 35hrs a week
Essays (rating 1-10, details):: They were great! Personally I’d give myself 10/10s my common app essay was about how I felt all this pressure to be perfect and how I struggled with being biracial and gay. One of my supplements furthered that and talked about how I didn’t feel like I fit in growing up in Utah which is very white and very Mormon while I’m gay, Buddhist, biraicial, etc… and my why USC basically talked about the programs I was interested in.
Teacher Recommendations (rating 1-10, details):: I’m not really sure since we’re not allowed to read out letters of rec. But if I had to guess, my physics teacher was probably like a 6 - I know it was definitely really nice but I’m pretty sure he also might have written the same thing for everyone, and my english teacher was probably a 9 or 10.
Counselor Rec (rating 1-10, details):: Again, I didn’t read, but I’m really close to my counselor and I would guess around a 9 or 10.
Additional Rec (rating 1-10, details):: My swim coach wrote me one and it was really nice and talked about how’ve much I’ve grown since I was younger (he’s been coaching me since I was about 11), and it was generally pretty great. Maybe like an 8
Interview: n/a
Other
Applied for Financial Aid? Yes (and I received a pretty good package!)
State (if domestic applicant): Utah
Country (if international applicant): US
School Type: Private (and tiny)
Ethnicity: White/Asian
Gender: Male
Income Bracket: Well my parents are divorced and my mom is around 50k and my dad is very wealthy around 250k+
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): n/a
Reflection
Strengths: Well, I think my essays were really strong, and I have had a strong improvement throughout high school, always taking difficult classes but having a steady improvement in my grades. My ECs are also pretty solid, while I don’t have a ton of them, the ones I do have I invest a lot of time too.
Weaknesses: Well, with my grades not being super great my freshman and sophomore year, my gpa is not super high. While I do have high test scores, they’re not super high. I don’t know though, I think I’m pretty well-rounded. I’m not super great in anything, but it’s not like I’m bad at anything either.
Why you think you were accepted/deferred/rejected: Just read above. I know I spent a lot of time on my supplements and I think it showed.
Where else you are applying or have already applied: I have heard back from everywhere now! UMich (Accepted), Tulane (Accepted), NYU (Accepted), Cornell (Accepted), Yale (Accepted), Princeton (Denied), Georgetown (Denied), Virginia (Denied), Oxford (Denied), Yale-NUS (Denied)
General Comments/Advice/Hindsight: Go Trojans! So excited to be a part of USC’s class of 2021!