<p>Well, I have my interview with UC soon and I wanted some advice from you guys.</p>
<p>I’m a female student athlete who really wants to go into Physics at UC, which is normally a male-dominated field. However, my highschool transcript shows that I took physics in freaking Austria (foreign exchange messed up my transcript!) and I didn’t take AP Physics this year (I begged and pleaded but there wasnt enough room so I’m afraid that it will look like I’m just saying I want to go into physics in order to try to play up the ‘girls-wants-to-be-scientist’ bit.</p>
<p>Should I mention that I want to major in physics? Would it even help or hurt me? </p>
<p>I think it is fine to say that you are really interested in physics. The whole point of the interview is to be yourself. At the same time it would probably not be a bad idea to mention to your interviewer exactly what you said in this post: that you are really interested in physics but because of scheduling conflicts and studying abroad you were unable to take AP physics. On a somewhat related note…what sport?</p>
<p>What are you going to say if you DON’T talk about it? Are you going to pretend to have some other overwhelming academic interest that you think fits your transcript better? Are you going to pretend not to have any academic interests? Try to deflect the conversation away from the obvious “what are you interested in studying” question to something about Dancing With The Stars?</p>
<p>The alternatives aren’t very attractive.</p>
<p>How about relaxing the gamesmanship and taking the university at its word a little? The whole point of the Uncommon Application and the interviews is to consider applicants as real people, not just transcripts and score reports. Chicago may get three applicants for every spot, but it doesn’t have 20; shiny perfection is not a prerequisite for acceptance. </p>
<p>Be who you are: a girl who looks forward to studying physics in college, even though she wasn’t able to do as much of it as she wanted in high school. A girl whose ambitions aren’t limited by what she was doing last year.</p>
<p>If your interest in physics extends to engineering, and if you’re not averse to considering a women’s college, you might also want to consider Smith, which has a new engineering program whose goal is to bring more women into the field. They might be more forgiving of any lapses in your record than Chicago might be, you will receive lots of attention and support there, and the academic environment at Smith is not unlike that of Chicago in the passion with which students go about learning.</p>
<p>(Apologies for plugging Smith on the Chicago forum – I have kids at both schools and have huge respect for both.)</p>
<p>Fencing! It’s kind of obscure and my school has nothing resmebling a team, but I’ve done it for 7 years; 3 competitively.</p>
<p>And thanks for the advice. I think I should explain it if they ask that question, heh.</p>
<p>[What are you going to say if you DON’T talk about it? Are you going to pretend to have some other overwhelming academic interest that you think fits your transcript better? Are you going to pretend not to have any academic interests? Try to deflect the conversation away from the obvious “what are you interested in studying” question to something about Dancing With The Stars?]</p>
<p>I wasn’t going to pretend, but my philosophy about learning ia bit different than everyone else’s: I don’t only concentrate on my strengths, I also love improving my weaknesses. I’m not bad at physics, but someone looking at my transcript could easily say that I was overwhlemingly interested in languages or English as well. </p>
<p>[Be who you are: a girl who looks forward to studying physics in college, even though she wasn’t able to do as much of it as she wanted in high school. A girl whose ambitions aren’t limited by what she was doing last year.]</p>
<p>Thanks JHS! That was pretty inspiring and made me realize that Chicago isn’t one of those ‘numbers’ universities. Applications are just stressful if you think that you might get rejected just because your class rank was a few below what Harvard wanted or something.</p>
<p>Thank you Aspiring and Pesto! Unfortunately, I’m more interested in physics than engineering, but I have a few friends who might be interested in Smith. Thank you!</p>
so I’m afraid that it will look like I’m just saying I want to go into physics in order to try to play up the ‘girls-wants-to-be-scientist’ bit.</p>