<p>Decision: Accepted</p>
<p>Objective:[ul]
[<em>] SAT I (breakdown): Didn’t submit it.
[</em>] ACT: 31
[<em>] SAT II: Didn’t submit any.
[</em>] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.85.
[<em>] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 4/118
[</em>] AP (place score in parenthesis): N/a
[<em>] IB (place score in parenthesis): N/a. Our tests are at the end of senior year.
[</em>] Senior Year Course Load: IB HL English, IB HL Spanish, IB HL History of the Americas, IB SL Biology, IB SL Chemistry, IB SL Math Studies, AVID (required by my high school)
[<em>] Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): An array of school achievement awards and a Junior Rotarian Award for the city I live in.<br>
[/ul]
Subjective:[ul]
[</em>] Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): Science Scholars Peer Tutoring Club (Tutorial Leader) 10+ hours a week; Ambassadors Club for student recognition and school fundraising club (Ambassador) 2+ hours a week; Academic League Member
[<em>] Job/Work Experience: Gymnastics coach of almost 2 years for girls’ gymnastics levels 1-3.
[</em>] Volunteer/Community service: Volunteer with local refugee resettlement organization twice a week (4 hours in total) helping with the Intermediate English program; help with occasional move-ins on weekends.
[<em>] Summer Activities: Last summer: Worked part of it/Volunteered the rest of the time teaching English in Liberia, Costa Rica for a month. This summer: Worked part of it/Participated in a month-long Spanish immersion in Barcelona, Spain.
[</em>] Essays: Both were strong and highly creative.
CommonApp General: Chose to make up my own prompt and wrote about all the different colored eyes I encounter on a weekly basis and how the many different colors shape the diverse world I live in. The varied eye colors I discussed essentially paralleled the white community I reside in, the largely Hispanic community I go to school with, and the refugee community I volunteer with.
Brown Supplement: Prompt: “What don’t you know?” My response: I talked about how I don’t know how to hip-hop. It was a metaphor detailing how I had given up hip-hop at a young age due to societal pressures, but how I planned to pursue my rather unconventional passions at Brown (despite what society might think) simultaneously, those being Biology and Spanish. Brown is all about interdisciplinary study with the open-curric, so I think I really sold myself there as an ideal applicant.
[<em>] Teacher Recommendation: They were both pretty awesome. One of my teachers even emailed the admissions officer/reader for my area a few times. (I was able to attain the reader’s contact information at a local Brown Information Session that he spoke at back in October and passed it on to her.)
[</em>] Counselor Rec: She seems to like me. Can’t know for sure exactly what she wrote, though.
[<em>] Additional Rec: I personally asked my school principal if he would write me a letter. He did!! I was so thrilled.
[</em>] Interview: It went okay. It was chilly and windy and we sat outside, so I was shivering and jittery the whole time. But I think I communicated myself well.
[/ul]
Other[ul]
[<em>] State (if domestic applicant): California
[</em>] Country (if international applicant):
[<em>] School Type: Public magnet
[</em>] Ethnicity: White (if you can believe it)
[<em>] Gender: M
[</em>] Income Bracket: …I won’t be receiving any FinAid.
[<em>] Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.):[/ul] First generation technically (though my mother has an associate’s degree); IB Diploma (I think it really helped to demonstrate the rigor of my course load); I applied ED (but was accepted RD), though I really do believe it demonstrated how much I wanted Brown over anywhere else.
Reflection[ul]
[</em>] Strengths: Creative essays, personal correspondence with the reader (both my teacher and I emailed him a few times, which naturally demonstrated my interest), passion I have for my extracurrics.
[<em>] Weaknesses: Standardized tests for sure; I’m white white white.
[</em>] Why you think you were accepted/waitlisted/rejected:
I am a passionate person who writes creatively. I also seek to pursue a rather eclectic undergraduate course of study. Like I said earlier, Brown is all about interdisciplinary study. So I think they sensed that I would make for an ideal undergraduate, with their open-curriculum, as my tastes are very mixed. I made sure to include that in the supplemental essay so that they would know I had already realized the personal value that the open-curric offers me.
[li] Where else were you accepted/waitlisted/rejected:[/ul][/li]Accepted: UC Berkeley, UPenn, USC, UC Davis, NYU (Gallatin)
Waitlisted: Vanderbilt
Rejected: UCLA, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins
General Comments:
I am posting super late. But the girl before me inspired me to write in! I, like many who may later read this, am a bright and ambitious individual. I, however, have a very busy social life. I don’t score perfectly on standardized tests, nor do I participate in myriad clubs. I vest myself wholeheartedly in the few activities I am involved with, I have very NEARLY straight-As, and I do fine on tests.
I honestly think I got in because my school course load is difficult and above all because I showed Brown that I really wanted it. One of their extremely important admissions factors, one fairly unique to Brown, is the applicant’s perceived “level of interest in the school”. I took that to heart and did everything I could to highlight my interest. I attended the local Info Sesh, I emailed the reader for my area, I visited campus last November (and was able to introduce myself to another reader), I applied Early Decision (which is binding [though I got deferred]), and I tailored my supplemental essay to the illustrate that my personal academic goals would fully make use of Brown’s very specialized open-curric.
Moral of the story: Put yourself out there. You’ll miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. The process won’t be easy and you may not get in, but you’ll never know unless you try. Let me tell you: Getting into Brown was honestly one of the best moments of my life. So glad I decided to apply. The odds were totally against me, but I prevailed. And I am not alone!!
I hope I have inspired a few bright but slightly discouraged high school hopefuls to apply.
Feel free to contact me if you’re a serious prospective Brunonian and are seeking advice during the admissions process. I’ll do my best to try and help!</p>