Stanford SCEA? Good stats, but not sure about ECs.

tanakeame
Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:18:58 +0000

Hi Everyone, I really appreciate anyone who helps me with this dilemma I have.

Stanford is my first choice, but MIT and Caltech are in my top choices too. I think that I have the stats and science EC’s to stand out for MIT/Caltech EA, but I’m not sure about Stanford.

Here are my general stats.

Race: Indian Male
SAT: 2340
GPA Unweighted: 4.0
Rank: Officially Top 10%, but the office screwed up and let me see that I was in Top 1%!
SATII: 800 Chemistry, 800 Math 2, 800 Biology

-Courses-
No APs in 9th/10th offered. 2 Honors
11th- 3 APs, 1 Honor
12th- 6 APs

-Extracurriculars-
*Science Research since 6th grade.
*Regional Cricket team, toured India representing the U.S. team.
*Gardening is a huge hobby for me (Basically, im a gardening freak), volunteer at the community garden where I have a plot, manage our home garden.
*President of 2 clubs
*Volunteer to help children with developmental disabilities, almost like an unpaid job
*Indian Vocal Music

-Awards-
*ISEF Finalist, won a special award
*Numerous State/Regional 1st place science fair awards
*Vice-Captained winning team of US National Youth Cricket Tournament
*Going to submit patent for one of my research projects. Need to do more research, so won’t be able to before EA.
*Might be able to get a science comptetion award like Intel or Siemens, but that’s after EA

-My Questions-

*So, is it better for me to try MIT/Caltech or am I competitive enough for SCEA?
*Another issue, should I wait till I get my grades for senior year 1st semester? It’s my strongest course load.
*Do you consider my ECs to be diverse? Does long term participation help b/c most ECs I have done for at least 4 years.

Thanks a lot!