doxxing myself to friends but w/e
Decision: Accepted OOS California
Objective:
SAT I (breakdown): 1520 (730 EBRW, 790 Math)
ACT (breakdown): N/A
SAT II (place score in parentheses): 800 M2, 730 USH
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.87 as of mid-year report, applied with a 3.85
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): school doesn’t rank
AP (place score in parentheses): World History (4), US History (4), Lang (5)
IB (place score in parentheses): N/A
Senior Year Course Load: AP Calc BC, AP Lit, AP Chinese, AP Gov, AP Macroecon, AP Physics C:M, Honors Philosophy and World Religions
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): literally none other than school award & merit scholarship. Elks State Finalist rn but they never knew
Subjective:
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parentheses): leadership program that sent me to China all-expenses-paid twice, Chinese Club (president), Created a tutoring club that went over to the elementary school across the street (co-founder, board member), CSF (VP), Student Gov’t (1/3 in charge of sr class), Video game (top .05% of 40 mil, played professionally for a little bit), Soccer (captain several years, varsity manager sophomore year, won state cup, stopped playing after sophomore year)
Job/Work Experience: Created a pseudo-business in the video game (~$600), Private tutor (~$300 thus far), Work-study from my high school ($0)
Volunteer/Community Service: Check above
Summer Activities: China x2, self-taught myself calculus 1 in a month to skip AB and go straight to BC last summer
Essays (rating 1-10, details): 7 – my common was okay, it was about an issue in China; supplementals were wack – one was about apples and cheese, another about not fitting in with my army family. the story about me becoming homeless was in my addtn’l info section.
Teacher Recommendations (rating 1-10, details): probably a 7 – wild card tbh
Counselor Rec (rating 1-10, details): 6 – he really likes me but he’s only known me for a little bit.
Additional Rec (rating 1-10, details): N/A
Interview: N/A
Other
Applied for Financial Aid?: yes
Intended Major: Asian Studies
State (if domestic applicant): CA
Country (if international applicant):
School Type: Catholic private
Ethnicity: White
Gender: Male
Income Bracket: ~$80-100k
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): was homeless for a short bit
Reflection
Strengths: Definitely being low-income/homeless while going to an upper-class religious school. Uncommon major, possibly. Mid-year was nutty but idk if they already made a decision before it was sent.
Weaknesses: Grades and course rigor – only have taken 3 APs thus far, and took regular (non-honors) geometry and chemistry. I really was a different person freshman and sophomore year and switched completely upon going into junior. Also, OOS – my school has a 6% acceptance rate to UNC.
Why you think you were accepted/deferred/rejected: strengths outweighed weaknesses. also, my counselor is a UNC alumn so he prob did some voodoo magic or telekinesis for them to hit the accept button
Where else were you accepted/deferred/rejected: Stanford REA- Rej, UMich EA- Def, 3 Ivy’s, Duke, Rice, UCLA, UCB, etc etc etc
General Comments: Compared to other OOS ppl who got rejected on this forum, I have no idea how I got in. Pretty surprised. For those who didn’t, please don’t worry. I got deferred from UMich and got in here, and getting into UNC OOS is considerably harder than the latter. My point is that the admissions cycle is quite random; keep your heads up.