<p>BACKGROUND:
Male, Live in NY, Born in India, Moved to U.S. when three yrs old, English was my second language, household income is around 80,000 so about 55,000 net (middle classish?), I have two older siblings, both of whom went to college.</p>
<p>STATS:
GPA: 103 weighted, 95 unweighted
Class Rank: 6/300
SAT Reasoning Test: M:740 W:710 Cr:680 Total: 2130/2400 and 1420/1600
AP: Last year I took 3 APs, and got two 4s and one 3. This year I am taking five AP classes.
SAT II: Phys:780 MathIIC:800 Literature:700
Essay: My teachers on average scored them 8.5/10
Letters of Recommendation: One of them was really good, the other two were average good.</p>
<p>EXTRACURRICULARS/WORK EXPERIENCE:
–Mathletes county champion last year, but I have been in mathletes for three years.
–Science Olympiads: 2yrs
–Sweep: 2yrs
–Key Club: 2yrs
–Anchor Club: 2yrs
–I worked at a deli for about two and a half years, about 25 hours a week.
–Right now, I am working at that deli PLUS at another conveniant store, but 10 hrs/week at the deli and about 12 hrs/week at the conveniant store.</p>
<p>RESEARCH EXPERIENCE:
–I have completed original research on two projects, one involving chemistry, the other involving a bit of physics, environmental science, and biology-mixed. I will be sending my abstracts for both research projects. Neither projects were published, nor did I send them to any science competitions (haven’t had the time, I’ve been too tired and sometimes lazy)</p>
<p>Are you sure? Be tough on me, because now you’re making me hopeful, and there is nothing I hate more than getting my hopes up! Just say it, I have crappy extracurricular activities, every single person applies to Carnegie Mellon with great research experience so that won’t help me, and that the admissions officers will chuckle when they read I worked at a conveniant store because they will KNOW it was a 7-Eleven. JUST SAY IT DAMMIT!</p>
<p>I still think CMU is a good match, specifically for the majors you have chosen. I don’t think that CMU will reject you if other more qualified people have applied from your school. You would be rejected if the application pool as a whole is much more competitive, which I don’t think will be the case considering that you are competitive for CMU.</p>
<p>I can’t say your chances for sure, I am also a senior in high school…but from what I’ve seen on these forums I think you are competitive for CMU.</p>
<p>But of course I’m extremely biased by my low credentials.</p>
<p>I don’t know how the hell ANYONE below the college level gets “research experience”, let alone MOST of the applicants I’ve seen. It’s completely ridiculous! Do you people all have parents who are scientists and engineers or something? I feel so utterly unprepared. It just never occurred to me that I could apply to places to do research, and my parents (a mailman and an English teacher) were hardly helpful in encouraging me to do anything other than “play you some football”, (a request I repeatedly denied) let alone research, of all things.</p>
<p>I didn’t even know research opportunities were available for high school students at all, and I gave the admissions counselor a blank stare in my interview when she asked me about previous research experience.</p>
<p>Awww, don’t worry about it theotherguy. Not everyone has to have research. If you have other extracurriculars, then it should make up for your lack of research. I mean go to the harvard forum; harvard is even harder to get accepted into, and certainly most of the applicants to harvard do NOT have any research at all. In my own school, I am one of only three students who had real, original research. I have a friend whose mother works at a local lab, and that lab was nice enough to sponsor my work.</p>
<p>And indeed my dad is a chemical engineer, but he didn’t help me get the research spot, I had to look around for the opportunities myself.</p>
<p>Your ECs are your weakness, so you might have a slight bit of a hard time getting in. But I think you have a greater than 50/50 chance of getting in.</p>