You have a shot at acceptance to the schools in your title, but they are reach schools for everyone. They just receive far more applications from strong candidates than they can accept. I will page @hebegebe who may have additional insight with relation to your silver medial in the Olympiad for medicine.
Since you’re open to schools in the eastern half of the US, you may want to consider Case Western. It is very strong academically, but not as competitive for admissions as the schools you’ve mentioned, and if it thinks you’re genuinely interested in attending, it can also give very generous merit aid. But demonstrated interest at CWRU is very important.
Additionally, make sure that you apply to more UCs than just UCB. UCLA has all the majors of interest as does UC-Santa Cruz.
If you’d prefer to stay closer to California, you may want to look at Arizona State which has all of your majors and would give you merit aid and would be very likely to accept all of the college credits you’ve earned (which most privates schools will not do).
Your accomplishments, including the Silver medal in the Medicine Olympiad, put you in the category of qualified applicants to Stanford and Ivy League schools. But as others have said, there are many qualified applicants, and only a small fraction of them will be admitted. Your admission chances are certainly higher at say Cornell than Stanford, but every Ivy League college remains a reach.
You can certainly apply to these reach schools, but be sure to have a good set of match and safety schools.
IMPORTANT: I graduated a year early, so I’m skipping 11th grade.
I submitted my applications to these schools!
Chance me for UMich, Stanford, UWashington, and USC
Applying Bioengineering and Neuroscience Major
Tiny Private Religious School W/ 10 graduates this year
NOT First gen, NOT low income
Muslim Woman
Middle Eastern
School has no history of sending students to top schools
No budget (applying to scholarships)…ie I don’t need scholarships or financial aid right now
4.0 UW and 4.32 W
1510 SAT (770 M, 740 EBRW)
33 ACT
Class Rank: 1
Coursework: 60 dual enrollment units total, submitting 8 APs (submitting two 4s)
Took Calc 1 freshman year and I’m taking Calc 2 and differential equations.
Awards
Silver Medal in Olympiad for Medicine (top 10% on HARD exam)
PSAT Commendation
Research Paper at YSJ Publication (10% acceptance rate)
AP Scholar
Key Club VP
Mu Alpha Theta President
HS President
IEEE, NASA, US Marines Research Awards (three separate and distinguishable awards)
Funded by Bay Area Benefactor
SMUNC SOCHUM Research Award (1 awardee out of 200)
BMUN BVC Commendation (competitive)
Extracurriculars (not in order)
Author of Two Fantasy novels (300 sales of each)
Math club founder / president
Student Council President (ex VP and ex Class Rep)
Varsity Basketball Co-Captain and Varsity Cross Country Runner
Baking Blog with large readership founder (100,000 readers)
Intern for Non-Profit (started blog and helped homeless woman raise funds)
Hospital Surgery Center and Lab Volunteer
MUN delegate and HS Conference Chair (establishing member of HS’ MUN conference)
Cancer Research Intern (higher on list)
Neuroscience Research Intern (these are higher up the list)
5x Science Fair participant and winner
I really want to know if people think I’ll get in. Be brutal
You are competitive for all the schools
However, they are all reaches and unfortunately they receive many more qualified applicants than they can accept
Lets look at UCB for example for fall 2023 admits
125922 applications and 14772 admits for a 11.2% acceptance rate
middle 50% GPA 4.28-4.62
They are Holistic in reviewing your applications so make sure all your accomplishments, EC’s are presented in the best way possible and pay attention to the essays
Bottom line for top schools its a crap shoot, Apply but make sure you have some target Schools ie. schools with 40%-60% acceptance rates and a safety or two with even higher acceptance rates that you would be ok attending.
You need to make sure that you apply to at least one and preferably two safeties. If you are considering possibly being a premed student and possibly going on to medical school, then you need to budget for 8 years of university, where the last 4 are very likely to be expensive.
As an example, I do not know whether UC Riverside is a safety or a match or a reach (I will guess match), but I will note that it is very good for premed students and has a strong medical school. You might want to apply to Stanford and UCB, but I think that you should be thinking of UC Riverside or other schools at that level as more likely.
Also, some of your premed classes at a school ranked anywhere between 50 and 150 are going to be full of very strong students and are going to be very academically challenging. You might be surprised how challenging some of these classes are. To give you one example, one daughter was pre-vet at a school that was ranked between 100 and 120 overall in the US (ranked more like 50 for her major). As a pre-vet student, she took the same required classes as the premed students. She had one (now former) boyfriend who was premed, and who had never had a B in his life. This is the sort of premed student that you will be competing with. He is now an MD (and is doing his residency). This particular daughter is now in the fourth year of a DVM, and is doing very well in a very good program.
Exactly.
You are competitive for Stanford. So are 80% of the other applicants. The acceptance rate is more like 4%, and this includes legacy students and recruited athletes.
I will also note that the large majority of students who start off thinking “premed” end up doing something else. I see for example that you have done some cancer research. My other daughter briefly considered being premed, but started doing cancer research in university, found that she loved lab work and loved research, and is currently studying for her PhD. There are a lot of paths that are possible, and a lot of universities that can help you get there.
I think that you have good stats. 33 is a little low for these schools. I think you need to find some safeties. Also when you apply to some (safeties for you) schools there is often a lot of merit aid given. Example my kid goes to Penn got great merit offers from Kenyon, Hamilton, Bucknell Washington and Lee and UNC.
