Decision: Deferred
Objective:
SAT I (breakdown M/CR/W/Essay): 800/800/800/9 (2400)
SAT I superscore (breakdown M/CR/W/Essay): N/A
SAT II (subject, score): Physics (800), Math II (800), Biology (800), Chemistry (750), Chinese (800)
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4.0
Weighted GPA: 5.8545/6.0 (my school requires that many decimal places to rank I believe)
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 7
AP (place score in parentheses): Calc BC (5), Stats (5), Physics 1 (5), Physics 2 (5), Physics C Mech (5), Physics C E&M (5), Chemistry (5), Biology (5), Chinese (5), Eng Language and Comp (5), US History (5)
Senior Year Course Load: AP Eng Literature, AP Environmental Science, AP Computer Science 2, AP US Government, AP Macroeconomics, Organic Chemistry (honors, weighted as AP), PE (elegiggle)
Number of other EA applicants in your school: ~10? not sure
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel, etc.): USAMO Qualifier, USAPhO Honorable Mention twice, ISSYP attendee
Common Awards (AP Scholar, honor roll, NM things, etc.): National Merit Semifinalist, AP Scholar stuff
Subjective:
Extracurriculars (name, grade levels, leadership, description): Mu Alpha Theta for all four years, Junior Engineering and Technical Society (SciOly club) for all four years, various honor societies like art, chinese, science, and regular; no real leadership role though.
Job/Work Experience: I work as a TA for a local math camp and teach math and physics from MathCounts to AIME.
Volunteer/Community Service: Volunteering through various honor societies
Summer Experience: I took pre-calculus over the summer between 9th and 10th, did the AwesomeMath summer program in the summer between 10th and 11th, and attended ISSYP (a physics camp thing at Perimeter Institute) in the summer between 11th and 12th.
Writing (Subject, 1-10 rating, details): I’m not going to rate because the ratings won’t be accurate. However, there was a glaring logical/grammatical mistake in one of my essays: I accidentally deleted a “not”, completely reversing the meaning of a sentence. I’m sure the intended meaning is clear; however, I imagine that still hurts me.
Essays:
What You Do For Pleasure: (wrote about whistling)
Department at MIT: (math and physics)
World You Come From: (wrote about growing up with my grandparents)
Significant Challenge: (wrote about a rap video we did for school)
Additional Essay/QB Essays: N/A
Other (teacher’s subject, 1-10 rating, details):
Teacher Recommendation #1: AP Physics C teacher, I think he liked me, knew him well since freshman year, hella dedicated teacher (mad respect)
Teacher Recommendation #2: AP Eng Lang teacher, I think she liked me too
Counselor Rec: no clue
Additional Rec: my employer wrote me a letter too, I hope it was okay?
Interview: I think it was not that great; my interviewer was brutally efficient, had 30 minute time slots set up; we only talked for 25 minutes, and she read questions off of a notebook and took notes on my answers. I’m not sure how normal this is, but to say the least it was suboptimal.
Research Supplement: N/A
Other
Date Submitted App: 11/01 xd
U.S. State/Territory or Country: Texas
School Type: Public, generally considered to be pretty good
Ethnicity: Asian
Gender: Male
Hooks (URM, first generation, recruited athlete, development): asian male elegiggle
Reflection
Strengths: usamo??? but 300 people a year get that, so its not that great i guess…
Weaknesses: A grammatical mistake on an essay (argh…), 750 on Chem SAT, never took Computer Science until senior year
Why you think you were accepted/deferred/rejected: subpar interview, grammar mistake
What would you have done differently?: proof-read my essays more carefully…
Where else did you apply?: UT Austin (auto), Berkeley, plan to apply to 13 more schools… I have 2 weeks to haul myself through this mess
General Comments & Advice: it seems as if admissions are a lot harsher this year; I’ve heard tales of chemistry campers who were rejected from Stanford and CalTech… Don’t procrastinate on your regular apps like I did. Alas, as I was ambitious, so was I slain.