what went wrong? STEM applicant gets waitlisted everywhere
Demographics: Male, east asian, large semi competitive public school, and no hooks
Intended Major(s): EE / ECE , CS for some
ACT/SAT/SAT II: 1520 (720r, 800m)
UW/W GPA and Rank: 4.0, 4.75; 14 / 500ish
Coursework: 9 APs through junior year, 15 total. 5s on all except AP Spanish (4). not gonna list all aps, but notable include 5 on Calc BC, Chem, APUSH, Lang. Dual enrollment: Cad class, intro to cs, macro, calc 3. Senior year courseload: physics C, bio, lit, comp gov, stats, csa,
Awards:
- Pitch competition (won some money)
- 11th grade PSAT semifinalist
- local hackathon
- Pitch competition (won some money)
- Stage 1 of innovation comp (not super comp, but won some money)
Extracurriculars:
- edtech startup; like 200k users; im a lead developer at the company (student led)
- robotics; programming captain, but did a bit of everything (spent lots of time on this)
- cofounder of some innovation and wrote a grant for it; working on IP process (sponsored by local university)
- club soccer - really strong team, but I quit coz didn't have enough time
- high school varsity soccer
- data science projects / visualization - posted on social media, and 5 digit view count; presented at local university club
- volunteering at church / library - nothing special
- part time job - nothing special
Essay:
Personal: Not too amazing, like good writing conventions and stuff, but I honestly wrote bout smth super insignificant - looking back, should've done smth more significant in my life, but oh well
supps: depending on school, I'd say some most were pretty strong / showed good fit but some where kinda like recycled and rushed. talked alot about my different eng / cs projects + entrepreneurship
LOR:
Math teacher: she liked me a lot and we were pretty close, and she's told me I was one of her fav students
Spanish teacher not super close, but had her for multiple years and I was a good student / collaborated well with classmates/ asked many questions / spent much time in "office hours"
Schools:
accepted: UNC, NCState
waitlisted: JHU, Duke, Cornell, Rice, CMU, GTech, UIUC, Northwestern, Vandy (haven't heard back from any)
rejected: stanford, Upenn
Additional Information:
Going into application cycle, I was expecting to get into one or two reaches / targets, but only ended up getting accepted by my two in state flagships. I'm grateful to have gotten the in state two choices, but I was also kind of bummed that I didn't get into any of the top colleges. I think looking back maybe my personal statement wasn't great? and that was a big contributing reason?
The hardest part about this process is seeing so many people around me going to top schools. Don't get me wrong, I'm super happy to see so many friends at my school going to great top 10 schools, and I know that my in state flagship is a great school. But It’s hard not to compare myself to people around me after putting so much into high school these past four years.