Demographics: Male, California, competitive day private school

Intended Major: Physics

Stats:

• GPA: 3.98 UW, school doesn't rank, but approximately top 10%

  • one a- sophomore year in physics

• SAT: 1570

• Max course rigor

  • my school doesn't have AP courses, but I've done the most advanced courses

  • this year, i'm doing differential equations + multi

  • my load this year is weird because I'm doing diff eq in the fall pass/fail because it's not an official course at my school

• I self studied some AP's

  • This is probably top 5% in school in number of AP's

  • APUSH 5, AP Comp Sci A 5, AP Chemistry 5, AP MicroEcon 5, AP Lang 4, AP Calc 4

  • I'm submitting all them except Calc to all my schools

  • I'm submitting Calc to Stanford, MIT, and CalTech because they require it

    • I have a kind of good reason for not getting a 5 on Calc, since my class wasn't technically an AP class so we didn't cover sequences and series, so I'll include that in additional info

Awards:

• National Merit Semifinalist

• USAPHO Bronze medal (top 150 out of 6,000) (11)

• 2-3 hackathon awards

Activities:

1. Founded coding club, built apps/platforms with small user base in school (50-100) (9-11)

2. Independent physics prep for competitions (11-12)

3. Organized school/community hackathon (about 50 people) (10-12)

4. Tutoring leadership position/job (10-12)

5. CS research experience with publication (not super impressive publication, but not nothing) (10)

6. Math team leader (10-12)

7. Somewhat selective summer academic program (not like RSI) (12)

8. School newspaper opinion editor (11-12)

9. Varsity sport (def not recruited level) (10-12)

10. Theater Tech involvement (10-12)

Two summer classes at colleges (one after 10th and one after 11th): one physics-related and one computer science related.

LOR:

One from physics teacher, very good

One from humanities teacher, okay

One from counselor, very good

List:

Applying to all ivies except columbia.

Stanford/MIT/Duke/Caltech

Harvey Mudd/CMU/Williams/Amherst

Additional

I've changed some details to protect my identity, but nothing that should change my competitiveness.

If I don't apply, it'll resolve N/A. If I don't receive the decision due to rescinding my application, also N/A. If I reject the waitlist, it'll resolve N/A.

It'll resolve Yes if I get in off the waitlist.

I'll answer any questions that would be helpful. I won't bet on any option in a large amount (I might bet on options intially to bring them down to a reasonable level, but not beyond that).

I'll resolve all decisions within a day.

Previous Decisions

Yale REA rejected :(. surprised i wasn't at least deferred. more really competitive people from my school applied than i realized, so that might be it, or maybe i was a little less competitive than i thought. I think I've improved my app slightly since then, in terms of essays and activity descriptions, but idk. there's also one yale-specific factor i can't mention that might have been the reason, but probably not. 12/17

Main Worries

• My humanities rec is only okay, and other applicants might have two great recs

• My switch from comp sci to physics was kinda late, it was genuine, but I worry admission officers will think that it is not

• I'm worried that having an AP score of 4 could hurt my math credentials at Stanford, MIT, Caltech, though those chances are low anyway

• I only have 4 academic graded classes in the fall, because I'm doing an art, and I'm doing two pass fail classes

  • One differential equations and one on special relativity

• I'm not insane in any way, and am kind of just an average profile of a smart, hardworking STEM applicant

Edits:

Added yale decision, main worries, info about AP scores, and more info in activities