What are my chances?

muffincat
Sun, 30 May 2010 19:20:19 +0000

Hi people! This will be my first post, but I’ve been lurking around CC for about a year now.

My junior year hasn’t ended yet, but I’m wondering how I’m shaping up for college admissions into the top 25 and LACs such as Pomona, Amherst and Williams. This is the list I’ve made for myself, but I want outside opinion:

Reach:
Yale (my dream school, my one and only love, but I know it’s bound to end in failure XD)
Columbia
UPenn
Brown
Dartmouth
UC Berkeley
Competitive:
UCLA, USC
JHU
Pomona
UChic
Williams
Safety (or safer):
UCI, UCSD
BU
BC
NYU

Do you have any suggestions for colleges? I’m looking into only NoCal and New England, and the Windy City because of UChic. (Example: I won’t look into Rice even though it’s a great school, because it’s in Texas. Texas is hot, hot, hot!)



Ethnicity: Korean (ouch)
Residence: CA (double ouch)

UW Total GPA: 3.81
W Total GPA: 4.44
-had a sharp upward trend after a small dip in sophomore year. Straight A’s junior year.

Rank: Not sure. Decile system. Probably in the top 15% out of a class of 600+, I’m hoping to make it to top 10%
HS: Ultra-competitive public magnet that sends ridiculous amounts of students to Berkeley, HYPS, MIT and CalTech. (I don’t know where I fit in in there.)

SAT: 2300 (770M, 780CR, 750W)
[b>SAT2: 800 Korean (hahaha); 740 Bio E (freshman year); will be taking USH and Literature

APs (so far):
European Hist - 5
CompSci A - 4
USH - predicting 5
Eng Lang - predicting 5
Art: Drawing - not sure.

Junior Year Schedule:
AP Eng Lang
APUSH
Spanish 3 IBSL
Physics
Precalc
IB Business
AP Art

Senior Year Schedule:
AP Eng Lit
AP Bio
AP Calc AB
AP Government
AP Macroeconomics
AP Spanish 4
School Newspaper
Internship - will be doing a summer internship at a local CalState in Dept. of Psychology. Studying cognitive aging.

Classes at local junior college (summer before 10th and 11th):
-Life Drawing
-Art History

Clubs:
-Art Club 9~12 - Secretary, Treasurer, President-elect
-Amnesty International 9~12 - Publicity, President-elect
-MUN 10~12 - Member
-Asian Club 11~12 - Member
-School Newspaper 12 - Cartoonist! We’re a rare breed, yes we are.
-I don’t know if I’ll be in NHS. There’s a chance. NHS is only open to seniors.

Extracurrics and community service:
-Formal art training (10~12) - this year I think I’ve averaged around 18~25 hours of art per week, not counting school.
-I played the haegum, which is a Korean instrument like the erhu, from 4th grade to 8th grade in Korea. But when I moved to California, I could no longer take lessons because there was no teacher in the area. I’ve tried self-teaching myself the haegum during my time here. Progress has been slow, but I’m getting there.
-Children’s Tutoring
-Library Assistant
-Peer Language Tutoring
-Mural Painting
-And probably a few other things that I can’t remember off the top of my head.
-I’m hoping to start a community-scale “club” this summer. I don’t want to give the exact details, but it has stuff to do with using FB, Twitter and other internet trends in a healthy, intellectual manner.

Awards and Honors:
-No national awards, sadly.
-either National Merit Semifinalist or Commended. I got my score right on the borderline and I don’t know if I’ll make it or not.
-Dept Award in Science
-Dept Award in Spanish
-several MUN Conference Awards (Best Delegate, Outstanding, etc.)
-School art show featured artist
-Silver Key Scholastic
-artwork featured in local museum/art hall
-CM5 Piano (Yes, yes, I know, I fail!)

Recs and Essays:
I’m not sure, obviously, because I haven’t started writing them or gotten any of them yet. Hopefully they’ll be nice!

Intended Major:
I’ll probably be applying as one of the following: Linguistics, Art History, East Asian History, Int’l Relations

Something to note:
I lived in Korea for nearly my entire life before I moved to California the summer before 9th grade.



I think that’s about it.

Thank you very much! :)

-muffincat