<p>First of all, if you read all this, thank you so much.</p>
<p>GPA: 3.74 W
SAT: 2150 (690 CR 660 M 800 W 11 essay)
ACT: 32 (35 E 30 M 34 R 28 S)
Subject tests: 760 Lit, 660 Math II
APs: Psych (self-study) (5), English Lang (4), World History (3)
Courseload this year: AP Stat, AP English Lit, AP Comp Sci (self-study), Calculus (outside of school), Intensive Classical Greek 1-2, Mandarin 3, English 4 Honors, Prayer & Meditation
- might self-study another AP but I haven’t decided yet.</p>
<p>I want to major in psychology and minor in English. My talents definitely lie in creative writing (and psychology, of course). I’ve earned college credit for my writing and will submit those transcripts to colleges, too. I also run a self-help blog.</p>
<p>I have about 300 hours worth of community service, but I’m not sure that all of it will go on my application.</p>
<p>This is my hook, I guess: when I was a freshman, my mom had an affair on my dad with an abusive man that beat her to nearly an inch of her life. She was an alcoholic so we had her go to rehab and then my parents divorced. My father is extremely successful and is always traveling. In fact, as I write this he is in Mexico and my grandparents had to fly in from Texas to take care of us. For the past four years I have been the maternal head of the household and have talked my depressed mother and brother out of suicide numerous times. I had clinical depression and anorexia since 5th grade, but I had to overcome it in order to help out my family. My freshman year was rough with a 3.3 GPA, but I’ve gotten nothing lower than a 3.89 since (and I got a 4.0 as a junior), so there’s that upward trend. I’ve been really passionate about helping those with mental health issues ever since. I feel like everyone in my family is dying slowly and I want to stay nearby in order to help them, because my brother (he’s in 7th grade) is depressed and can hardly even function on his own (he has a horrible learning disorder and doesn’t do well in school, plus he literally eats nothing but McDonald’s…I kid you not, he’s never eaten a vegetable, and he ate a fruit once, a strawberry, because he was forced to when he was little and it took 3 hours for him to swallow it. I wish I was exaggerating). All he does is play Xbox. He says he will commit suicide when I go to college because I will be too far away to help him. My sister has shut her feelings down completely and bullies him and my mother a lot, which causes them to be more depressed.</p>
<p>Okay, so after all that, I just really want to go to Stanford, which is right next door so I can stay close to my family who still needs me (my mom is mentally unstable and can hardly function as a mother), and also it has one of the best psychology programs in the world. Plus, my dad went there along with the rest of my family on my mom’s side (my mom being the exception)…I have 7 immediate family members that went there. One of the buildings there has my last name on it (though I am not sure if I’m related to the guy it was named after because he lived over a century ago). My dad is really well known in Silicon Valley and has great connections with Stanford. My grandfather taught there and has an award named after him.</p>
<p>My mom purposely requested the easiest schedule possible for me when I was a freshman, and I’ve been trying to make up for it since then. I’ve taken 5 classes outside of school, 3 of them being APs. I have a learning disorder (the same one as my brother) so it is very hard to focus on things I’m not interested in, plus I’m extremely slow at everything so it takes me much longer than it should to do HW, but I have the motivation to do well, so I’ve been doing well.</p>
<p>Again, if you read all this, thank you for taking the time out of your day to do so.
I’d like to know if I have any shot at Stanford.
Offer any opinions you have. Lay them on me!</p>