Help Chance Me: Navy(USNA), Army(USMA), Air Force(USAFA), GATech, Notre Dame, USC; Decent Sports & Good EC's but Lower Grades [GA resident, 3.62 GPA, top 54% rank, 34 ACT, aerospace engineering]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

Naturalized US citizen (Born in India)
Georgia, Northeast Atlanta Area
Very Competitive Public HS (Top 300 National School, 630 in Senior Class)
First Gen American, Family Hardship, Triligual (Idk if it counts for anything)

Intended Major(s)
Aerospace Engineering

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 3.62
Weighted HS GPA: 3.87 on a 5 scale (However it’s Impossible to get a perfect 5.0 since some on level classes are required for graduation)
Weighted GPA by Year (Will be important later)
9th: 3.5
10th: 3.6
11th: 4.6
Class Rank: 333/622
ACT Scores: 34 ACT (32 Math, 34 Writing, 35 English, 35 Science)

List your HS coursework
19 AP Classes and 2 Dual by end of senior year
English: Honors 9th & 10th Grade, AP Lang 11th, AP Lit & Adv Comp 12th
Math: Honors Algebra1/GeoA 8th, Honors Algebra1/GeoB 9th, On level precalc & AP Stat 10th, (Math Gap year 11th), AP Precalc & AP Calc AB 12th
Science: Biology Honors 9th, On level Chem 10th, AP EnvSci 11th, AP Chem, AP Physics 1, & AP Physics 2 in 12th.
History and social studies: AP Human 9th, AP World AP Psych & APUSH 10th, AP Euro AP GOV US & AP GOV Comp 11th, AP Macro & AP Micro 12th
Language other than English: Spanish 1 in 8th, Spanish 2 & 3 in 10th

  • Visual or performing arts: Visual Comp, Drawing & Painting I, Ceramics I, Sculpture I, IB Visual Arts SL (Year 1 & 2)
    Other academic courses: 4th Year Engineering Pathway, 3rd Year Film Pathway, 3rd Year Computer Science Pathway (APCSA)
    College courses taken while in high school: Journalism 1000 & Politics 1000 at GSU in 11th

Awards
Keep (My City’s Name) Beutiful Award
National Merit Commendation
2x Gold Presidential Volunteer Service Awards
Georgia State University President’s List
Order of the Arrow (Boy Scouts National Honor Society)
NHS, RhoKappa, & NTHS
Honor Roll
Star Employee
AP Scholar with Honor & Distinction
Dharma Medal Award

Extracurriculars
Sports:

  • Squash: 5 years, 3rd Junior State, 2nd Junior Southeast Regionals, 2022 top 1000 in U17 mens ranking, School Club President/Captain
  • Cricket: 10 years, play for community team in city league, School Team Captain
  • Taekwondo: â– â– â–  certified Blackbelt, Former Instructor
  • Wrestling: School Varsity Team
    Clubs in School
  • Cricket Club President
  • Squash Club Founder & President
  • Flight/Aviation Club Founder & President
  • FBLA Competiter & Team Lead
  • TSA Electrathon Team
  • Mock Trial Team Artist in 11th
  • JV Academic Bowl in 10th (State Champs but I wasn’t at the Final Tournament)
  • NHS Member
  • 10th grade Class Co-Representative
    Organizations outside School
  • Founded a chairity & serve as chairman (over 3000 meals worth $15,000 donated to shelters in our city)
  • Medical Research Organization (Social Media Team Manager, 150+ members around the world)
  • Boy Scouts (6 years, Eagle Scout in November, ASPL Quartermaster & Chaplin for 200+ scouts)
  • Temple Group (Voluntered and led volunteer teams for 3 years)
    Community Service
  • Unnamed National Volunteer Organization (Led event groups, have over 500 service hours with them, over 600 members in our city’s chapter)
  • Adopt-A-Road (Adopted a road near my home and cleaned it every weekend, had a sign put up with my name on the road by the city in honor of my work)
  • 2 PVSA Awards
  • 730 Total Service Hours
    Jobs
  • Chick-fil-a (Trainer & occasional closing shift lead, worked in both FOH & BOH)
  • Electricain’s Apprentice (Apprentice helping master electricain with work, sometimes lead other employee teams when boss isn’t availible, worked with dozens of clients)
  • Family Business (Do bulk of behind the scenes work, deliver food for events with over 1000 attendees, helped my parents start it 2 years ago)
    Misc
  • Build & Sell Drones (Custom Drones, self designed software, fixed and roter winged, can semi-autonomously fly, can deliver cargo)
  • Freelance Music Producer (Produced 34 beats different for clients, 5 genres worked in with a focus on trap and rock)
  • Data Analyst (Google Certified)
  • Tutor ( Used to tutor for volunteering but then shifted to doing ACT test prep as a side gig)
  • Journalism ( Write articles on defense strategy & doctrince, focus on the indo-pacific, 5 articles published so far on American strategy and the roles of our allies)

Essays/LORs/Other
LOR’s
AP Euro Teacher (One of the best ever students in his class in his words)
AP CSA Teacher(Likes me pretty well)
AP Lang Teacher (Taught me for 2 years)
Scoutmaster
Apprenticeship Master
Essays

  • Wrote my USNA essay about how much I want to be a navy pilot and my passion to serve and give back to the country that took me in and about how much I loved the academy enviornment and people when I came for a candidate weekend.
  • Had my interveiw with my BGO and made a great impression, we had great vibes and just chatted for almost 2 hours over our love for flying
    Family Hardship
    In the first two years of high school, my father had to leave home for some months at a time to deal with family and business problems, leaving my mom to care for two kids alone. She had to work overtime to make up for the loss in secondary income, which took away the time she normally used to take care of us.
    Knowing that she could not do everything alone, I did his best to help her. I would get up at 5 in the morning every day, wake us up, cook us all breakfast and pack lunch, get my brother ready for school, and drop him off at his bus before going to school myself. When I came home, I would clean the entire home, do all the dishes, cook dinner, & spend hours helping my brother with the homework, make schedules, and do everything else mom would normally do. It would usually be around 10 pm when I finished all of this. When they all went to sleep, I would stay up until the morning trying to finish all the homework I didn’t have time to do until then. I would repeat this every day for months at a time so that my mom didn’t have to overwork herself and sometimes had to miss school days to fix something like a broken door or supervise repairs which my father would normally do but wasn’t around at the time to. It really handicapped me to have to do all of this while having to balance school and sports, and while mom did try to help him when she could, she just didn’t have enough time.
    When we finally resolved the issues that caused this situation, my father was able to be at home again, and mom could go back to my normal work hours. My grades improved significantly with me overloading my class schedule to make up for lost time taking 14 AP classes in Junior & Senior year getting mostly A’s.

I had to condense it for USNA since its portal only allows 250 charecters but I know my counsiler will explain it further in his rec letter.

Schools
Reach

  • USNA
  • USMA
  • GATech
  • USC
  • Notre Dame
  • UMich
    Target
  • UGA
  • Texas A&M
  • Rutgers
  • FSU
    Safety
  • KSU
  • UNG
  • GAState

I really appriciate any of you guys who read through all of this and would be super grateful if even a little bit of good adivce is given. Im about to submit the final application package and just want to get a quick check of my chances. TYSM!

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Hey Everyone I forgot to remove a part of the template on Visual / Performing arts just a Disclaimer that I DID NOT DO any visual or performing arts that section is a artifact from the template post I used. Thanks!

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You are an impressive candidate. Are you hoping for the service academies? They are all military, all the time.

If you don’t get into the academies, are you going to do ROTC? Have you applied for the ROTC scholarships? Those can open a lot of doors for even more money through matching scholarships from the universities themselves.

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Paging @ChoatieMom

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I can’t chance you but wish you good luck in admissions.

One thing you might make sure when you complete your activities list is that you don’t have a very high number of outside of school commitments, all year long, every year.

I assume you put your family responsibilities as an activity for years 9/10 (if you didn’t you absolutely should)…it doesn’t sound like you would have had much time for activities outside of those responsibilities, but your list of other ECs is long. So, give a thought to that. My point is, don’t submit an activity list that has 80-90+ hours per week of activities for extended periods of time, especially during the school year.

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Do you have any cost constraints?

Also, which USC?

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No since I have the ROTC Scholarship. The USC im applying to is Southern California.

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Yes I am applying for all of them and my order of preference is Navy, Army, Air Force. I’m very prepared and willing to be apart of the community they have there including the military life. My only concern would be my spotty attendance at the start of this year but that was mostly due to needing to attend interveiws, physicals, and having an injury. The whole time I kept in contact with teachers and did my work from home but don’t know how to convey that in my application.

I already got ROTC for Navy pending acceptance for Army.

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Also in your opinion do the extracurriculers make up for the lower grades at the start and my class rank?

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You don’t have to answer here, but do make sure the nature of your injury (nor the meds you took/are taking as appropriate) are not disqualifying for the military academies…you do not want to find that out in May at academy physical time.

IMO no, although schools will take your family responsibilities into context for 9/10. Your safeties are safe (assuming there are no D’s/F’s), the grades are likely going to have some impact at the rest of the schools on your list.

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Medical standards for US military service obviously apply to ROTC and enlisted military service as well as the service academies. They can be found at the linked document below.

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Note that DoDMERB may issue a DQ that an academy may waive. DoDMERB does the first evaluation and issues automatic DQs for any issue found on the list, but the academies review the DQs and may request further information from the candidate/physician to determine waiverability. Also, what is a DQ for one academy/branch of service may not be a DQ for another such as vision correction, flat-feet, color blindness, etc. Even epilepsy may be waived if the candidate has been seizure-free for at least five years without anti-seizure medication.

As for chancing, I will simply post a link to one of my many repetitive responses to service academy chance-me posts. This one may be especially relevant if the candidate dreams of flying (for any branch of service). Our son was appointed to both Army and Navy, but chose Army and is currently about midway through his nine-year commitment. I am happy to answer any specific questions the OP has either on this thread or via DM.

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I checked with my officer and was told im all clear for the Dodmerb.

I did have 2 C’s in my freshman and sophomore years for Algebra2/GeoB and Precalculus however this year I am taking AP Precalculus this semester which i have a 93 in and planning to take AP Clac AB next sem.

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I think the service academies can’t really be judged. So good luck there. You need a congressional nomination etc.

If you have 19 APs are they self studied? I don’t know any weighting system that would have the UW to weighted GPA spread so small.

If you really want aero, Kennesaw doesn’t have - but has Mechanical. UNG doesn’t have engineering (that’s accredited) so it should be removed. Georgia Southern has MechE so it could replace. Many of your schools don’t have aero but MECHE is a good sub.

It’s hard to grade you on the rest - but given the stats you show and rank, I’d say

No to your reaches and targets excepts Rutgers. FSU possible but I’d say not likely. Why? 99% are ranked in the top half of the class. Plus FSU engineering is a few miles off campus. You might try a UCF (has aero), USF, or FAU.

Your safeties are safe.

Why not add an Alabama. It’s safe and for you under $20k a year. Similarly UAH (strong aero, surrounded by jobs) or MS State. All sun $20k.

Good luck.

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I had 19AP and 2 dual classes total
In 9th I took 1 and got an A
In 10th I took 4 and I got 1 A’s and 3 B’s
In 11th I took 5 Ap & 2 Dual getting 5 A’s and 2 B’s
This year I’m taking 9 Ap expecting to get 7 A’s and 2 B’s

I think its weighed so low because of the two C’s I got 9th & 10th year in math really dragging it down beacause while those classes were honors my school weighs them the same as on-level

Of my AP’s I took 10 in person & 9 online

In regards to class rank since my school is so competitive I feel it makes me look worse than I am and my grades would likely put me in the top 30% of any school in any neighboring district.

Also do you think they would take into consideration the upward trajectory with regards to the outside situation or just look at the raw numbers since I feel that would make a big difference.

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FSU engineering is shared with FAMU. So the OP may have access to it through FAMU, which lists 3.33 recalculated GPA and ACT subsection scores significantly lower than 34: Freshman

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I think you need to revisit your weighted. On a 5 point scale, a standard is +.5 Honors and +1 AP.

You go to a public hs so if they report rank and you are truly bottom 50%, I’ll stand by assessment. It’s hard to believe you are bottom 50%. But I’m not expecting the upward trend to be of huge importance.

The APs - I didn’t ask if online. I asked if self studied. Is there a grade with them for the class, not the test.

I think you need to add a couple safeties as noted unless you are ok with Kennesaw. But that’s a commuter - and you should pursue a true residential campus, hence my suggestions. You have Rutgers too - can you afford it ?

Given the major, the where is of little importance short of a few schools. Accreditation is what matters.

Good luck.

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Don’t forget that the ROTC scholarships typically do not cover room and board unless this is something the university does as a match.

Have you considered Embry-Riddle, Tulane, LSU or Iowa State? They all have NROTC and Aeronautical engineering. (Tulane also offers room and board scholarships for Nat’l ROTC scholarship recipients)

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The grading scale in my district is standardized where on a 5.0 scale only AP,IB,and Dual count for any extra credit, all other are just a 4.0 max.

For Ap’s I self studied APUSH & APEuro but then took the class for them the year after.

I have someone who lives very close to rutgers who I can probably stay with if housing proves to be a problem (which it probably wont for all of my schools) and ROTC covers the tuition

Thanks for all the advice tho it really gave me a diffrent perspective on how I should approach chosing a college!

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You are not being compared to students at a HS you didn’t attend. You are evaluated within the context of your current school, and some of your peers ARE earning those top grades. Those are the students who are setting the bar you will be measured against. Colleges will look at your school profile to understand its rigor but will not confer any leniency by “adjusting” your grades/GPA in comparison with any HS in a neighboring district.

OTOH, read what I posted in the link I provided above regarding how academics are evaluated by service academies. You’re fine. You will not be rejected by any SA based on your grades/ACT. You are at or above the median for all of them. However, you need a nomination, and no one here can know how competitive the SA applicants in your district will be during your particular app cycle. You can be a top student but still be beaten out by a better candidate in your district for a nomination.

You mention you have a LOR from your Scout Master, you have earned the Scouting Order of the Arrow, and you will have earned Eagle soon. Make sure that happens as it will set you apart from other SA contenders more than anything else you listed in your OP.

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