<p>Decision: Rejected</p>
<p>Objective:[ul]
[<em>] SAT I (breakdown): 730/790/780/9 (2300)
[</em>] ACT: Didn’t take
[<em>] SAT II: Biology M (750), Math IIC (800)
[</em>] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.94
[<em>] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 22/345
[</em>] AP (place score in parenthesis): World History (3), Biology (5), BC Calc (5)
[<em>] IB (place score in parenthesis): Didn’t take
[</em>] Senior Year Course Load: 4 APs and rest Honors (except for mandatory Economics)
[li] Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): Just Academic (AP Scholar, Award from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, National Merit, National Achievement)</p>[/li]
<p>[/ul]Subjective:[ul]
[<em>] Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): Color Guard, National Honor Society, Orchestra, Best Buddies, French Club
[</em>] Job/Work Experience: None
[<em>] Volunteer/Community service: A *lot</em> of volunteer work with my church (Teaching Sunday School, Bible Clubs, Vacation Bible School, etc.)
[<em>] Summer Activities: Color Guard, Independent orchestras, Bible Clubs
[</em>] Essays: Meh, I’m not a very good writer…
[<em>] Teacher Recommendation: Hopefully good, but I don’t know…
[</em>] Counselor Rec: Should be good, my counselor is very nice.
[<em>] Additional Rec: None
[</em>] Interview: Never got asked…</p>
<p>[/ul]Other[ul]
[<em>] State (if domestic applicant): PA
[</em>] Country (if international applicant): N/A
[<em>] School Type: Public
[</em>] Ethnicity: African-American
[<em>] Gender: Female
[</em>] Income Bracket: 90k-ish
[li] Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): URM, Child of immigrants</p>[/li]
<p>[/ul]Reflection[ul]
[<em>] Strengths: Definitely academics, SAT scores, and hooks
[</em>] Weaknesses: Weak ECs, No interview, General naivety about the admissions process and how to market myself…
[<em>] Why you think you were accepted/waitlisted/rejected: Nothing on my application stood out, I guess…
[</em>] Where else were you accepted/waitlisted/rejected: Rejected: MIT, Brown; Deferred to Rejected: Harvard, Accepted: Johns Hopkins, Boston University, Duke, University of Richmond, Northeastern University, George Washington University</p>
<p>[/ul]General Comments: </p>
<p>I wasn’t so much disappointed with not getting into Yale as I was being shut out of all the Ivies… I keep cycling between being angry that other, “less-qualified” people got in and being depressed and thinking that I got rejected because I wasn’t good enough. </p>
<p>But if I was being honest with myself, I know that as much as I wanted to be good enough to get into Yale, I would have been really overwhelmed and probably not very happy there. As much as I loved its Cognitive Science program… :’( Alas, it was not meant to be. </p>
<p>My advice to underclassmen reading these posts is EDUCATE YOURSELVES. I made the mistake of not thinking about college until the summer of my junior year and believing my parents (who are immigrants and know nothing about American colleges now that I think about it) when they said my grades could get me into college, no problem. Learn how to write an essay. Practice interviews… Don’t blow off PSATs or SATs. Start thinking about what you want to do for a career and make an effort to try those fields out in high school (Take language courses if you’re interested in language, intern at a hospital if you want to pursue medicine).</p>
<p>Congrats to everyone who got in. Rejection is compelling me to be awesome wherever I end up :P</p>