*Updated* Please chance me for Biochem major at Vandy, Rice, others as a TX resident! [no rank, 97.42 GPA, 1530 SAT]

Chance Me / Match Me
1

*I made a post already, but I wasn’t really specific with my ECs and budget. Hopefully this update will help provide more insight. Please rank my schools by most likely to get in + merit

Demographics

  • US domestic
  • State/Location of residency: Texas
  • Type of high school (Small, Private, no class rank)

**See budget notes at the end

**Intended Major: Biochem/Biology

  • Unweighted HS GPA: (97.42)*
  • Weighted HS GPA: (102.42. School takes average of classes. AP is +8 to your grade. >102 is generally top 10)
  • Class Rank: School doesn’t rank
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 740/790/1530 SAT

List your HS coursework
Honors English 9+10, AP English 11+12
Honors Bio + Chem + Physics
Anatomy + Physiology
Robotics I
Research
Chinese (3 years)
AP History (4 years)
AP Bio + Chem
AP Calc AB (and prerequisite courses)
AP Stats
AP Psych

Awards
Merit scholarship to my high school

Extracurriculars
Tennis:
JV 1 year
Varsity 2 years
State Champion; 1st team All-State
Coach at local tennis center through interview

Piano:
Won piano competition at UT school of music, received highest rating + invited to honors recital
Play as an accompanist at children’s violin recitals

Coached children taekwondo as a black belt

Started Red Cross Chapter for upcoming year
Leader of school event planning committee
Mu Alpha Theta

Volunteer at 7 student hospital program through selective application; includes patient interaction (28 hours)
Volunteer at another hospital program with ~35% acceptance rate w/ some observation/ patient interaction (60+ hours)
Shadow at children’s therapy (undergrad-only level, 25+ hours)
Shadowed doctor internationally (10+ hours)

Other smaller clubs but no leadership roles not listed

Essays/LORs/Other
*(Good LORs, solid essay)
Worth noting that I moved states during summer going into junior year so extracurricular/leadership/awards seem not long term/less because of that.

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if unsure, leave them unclassified)

[SMU] : Safety
Rice: Mid reach
[WashU]: Low Reach
[Vanderbilt] : Mid Reach
[Johns Hopkins]: High Reach

First three I feel pretty good about. The last four for “reach” private schools, with costs generally exceeding $50,000, need merit to attend. Kinda in that situation where I’m in high income bracket but not willing to pay that much money when I can go to a good school in UT for much less. What would you say the chances are for merit vs general admission for my reaches?

2

UT Austin is target
A&M is safety.

Not sure why that’s cut off.

UT, A&M, and SMU are what I mean by “first three”

3

Merit will be hard - and if I wanted merit, I’d remove Hopkins - and maybe go with a Miami or Case Western. Hopkins will be hard aid wise…all will be hard but it’s possible.

In your case, you’ll likely be at SMU or UT - given the budget and need for merit.

Good luck.

4

So College Transitions has scraped some basic merit information out of the Common Data Set reports of various colleges. When getting serious about applying you need to go to their actual websites and such, but this is a good resource for a quick overview:

The basic issue is while all the Reach colleges you identified do have merit programs, only a small percentage of students actually get much merit (independent of need).

Of course if you are OK likely just attending one of your in-state options–that’s perfectly fine. But there are some other options.

Minnesota is a strong Biochem school which has a pretty low OOS COA to begin with, and then also offers OOS merit which they will include in their NPC output. It could be interesting just to have it as an alternative, even if you end up choosing a Texas public instead:

Case Western is then a private with very strong Biochem and actually a much higher percentage of students getting significant merit offers. They may want to see some serious demonstrated interest, but it could be worth doing that, again to get at least another interesting alternative to your in-state publics. Their program is interesting in part because it is actually hosted out of their highly-regarded medical school:

And then Rochester is another I would put in a broadly similar category to Case in terms of being a private that is strong in Biochem (again co-hosted out of their med school) with a robust merit program, although in some ways it actually might be the closest in overall curriculum structure and vibe to some of your current colleges like Rice and WashU. Technically Biochem there is a track within Bio but I think the content ends up similar anyway, and there is definitely a lot of relevant research (particularly for an institution its size):

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Previous thread provided as reference

6

Congratulations on your achievements so far.

How many B’s is this in core courses?

Does your HS that does not rank regularly send kids to UT?

It’s tough to call SMU a safety, because it may not be affordable. Direct COA for 2025-26 is $90K and for fall 2024 average merit for those who don’t qualify for need based aid was $29K per the 2024 CDS section H2A: https://www.smu.edu/-/media/site/ir/commondatasets/2024/cds-2024-25-part-h-financial-aid.pdf

Personally, I would call all your reaches high reaches because of the budget constraints and low probability of getting enough merit to get to $50K COA. Run each school’s NPC to make sure you wouldn’t get any need based aid. Here’s Rice’s: Net Price Calculator

Get your TAMU app in as soon as it opens.

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7

Excellent chances for admission to all of your listed schools.

Tennis state champion, accomplished pianist, violin, tutoring, black belt, outstanding academic numbers, complex language study. Hard to imagine any university or college that would not make an offer of admission.

Do you plan to continue with music & tennis during your college years ?

Emory University may be of interest. Atlanta area is a tennis hotbed, Emory offers significant merit scholarships, and great place for those interested in medicine.

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8

No Bs… All As

UW lowest grade in a class was 95%, highest being 100%. For reference, a 94.0 cumulative (weighted) corresponds to a 4.0 GPA.

The school has decent UT admit rates, maybe 10-15% end up going there. Again, no rank so harder to judge

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9

Just as an aside, that is not necessarily how others would translate a 100-point transcript into a 4.0 GPA scale. The standard method is not to go GPA to GPA, but rather to first translate each individual grade into a 4.0 grade, and then average those.

So like normally, a 90 and a 98 would be translated into something like a 3.7 and a 4.0, then be averaged as a 3.85. But a 94 and a 94 might both be translated into a 4.0, and the average would be a 4.0. But an 89 and a 99 might be translated into a 3.3 and a 4.0, in which case the average would be a 3.65. And yet all of these would be a 94 average. Add more than two grades to the example, and a lot more possibilities fill out.

And yes, that makes no sense, because the 4.0 system makes no sense. And yet somehow it became the standard baseline system.

Anyway, the practical import of all this is you have to be careful making assumptions about how a selective college might view your transcript as a whole, and your GPA often does not contain anything close to all the information such a college might consider when evaluating your transcript. Which is among the many sources of uncertainty in US college admissions.

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