Hello everyone!
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been here. Hope you all are doing well!
It is a little redundant, seeing as I already applied, but I was wondering if I could get some opinions on my chances of admission to Cornell CALS for biology, as well as Texas A&M and UT Austin.
General Demographics:
US Citizen, Texas Resident, applying for transfer admission to Cornell CALS Biology, UT Austin Biology, and Texas A&M Ecology & Conservation Biology. Applying to transfer from a Texas Community College
HS Stats
These are unremarkable statistics and ones I’m not proud of. I’m disclosing them for transparency and nothing more.
3.35 GPA (senior carelessness, tanked from a 3.8)
13 AP classes taken, 11 tests taken
5 on APUSH, APES
4 on HuG, WHAP, Lit and Lang
3 on Bio, Macro and Government
2 on Chem, Physics
1450 SAT
High school ECs
President of a few clubs
Family care
Bass player and novice composer
Pretty much it lol
College Stats
3.95/4.00 GPA at a Texas CC
Deans List scholar
PTK Vice President
Applying as a junior transfer with 70 credits completed at CC by the end of this semester
Summer 2023
College algebra
Music appreciation
Fall 2023
Pre-calculus
Physical geology
General chemistry I
Spring 2024
Calculus I
Physics I
Biology I
Chemistry II
Summer 2024
Physics II
English I & II
Fall 2024
Organic Chemistry I
Biology II
Calculus II
Spring 2025
Microbiology
Organic Chemistry II
Texas Government
Math for Business & Social Sciences
I come from a working household, and work 35-45 hours a week on top of being a full time student. The most I ever managed was 52 hours a week last Fall. I work part time in food service, and my second job is tutoring English I & II at my community college. Additionally, I was an intern at a local Zoo, and have been a member of various external conservation organizations for 2 years now. As an intern, I helped raise almost $30,000 independently, and participated in events that raised north of $1,500,000. I also assisted in the upkeep of hoofstock and elephant habitats.
I have strong letters of recommendation from my organic chemistry and geology professors, as well as a near perfect letter from my supervisor at the Dallas zoo. If I had to rate them, 8/10, 9/10 and 9/10 for each of them respectively, give or take 0.5 for each.
(I’ve provided some additional information about my essays, but it’s lengthy and extraneous. If you want to read, it’ll be at the end of the post.)
Could you rate my chances of admission to CALS as a transfer student? I also applied to Texas A&M and UT Austin as an in-state transfer. What are my chances there?
Essay info
I have a special interest in elephant conservation, and explicitly mentioned courses in plan to take at Cornell, as well as correspondences and plans to participate in Cornell’s Elephant Listening Project when enrolled in my essays. If there is any overarching theme in my essays, it’s that my experience as an intern at the zoo has significantly reshaped how I think of conservation and my role in it, and that only a handful of schools can really provide both classroom as well as working experience in the fields of conservation biology that most directly interest me. For these, I took a different approach to previous application essays. I dispensed with a lot of rhetorical flourishes and fancy prose, and opted instead to explain on my personal statement for each how applying to these schools and pursuing educations at them is part of my wider ambition to pursue a PhD and use behavioral research to improve global conservation efforts. This all neatly ties back to my time as an intern, where I used basic behavioral observations of certain animals to explain their roles as keystone species to potential donors.