bay area asian gets clapped OOS but it works out in the end
Regarding the title, going into application season, I knew I wanted to stay in California for school, and didn’t have much interest in Ivys or most OOS schools. I have heavy ties to berkeley, so that was the dream school going in.
**Demographics**
* Gender: Male
* Race/Ethnicity: Asian, Viet
* Residence: Bay Area
* Income Bracket: ~100k
* Type of School: Public
* Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): None
**Intended Major(s)**: Computer Engineering, Nuclear Engineering
**Academics**
* GPA (UW/W): 4 UW, 4.2 W
* Rank (or percentile): no class rank, decile 1
* \# of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 6 APs taken, only 2 APs and 2 Honors junior year.
* Senior Year Course Load: Calc BC, Engineering, APEL, AP Econ, AP Chem, Gov
**Standardized Testing**
*List the highest scores earned and all scores that were reported.*
* SAT: 1500 (720RW, 780M)
* ACT: None
* AP/IB: AP Calculus AB (5), AP Comp Sci A (5), AP Lang (5)
**Extracurriculars/Activities**
*List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.*
- NASA SEES Intern, worked on geospatial data science project
- Nuclear Research Internship @ UC Berkeley, built a program to detect radioactive isotopes in air samples
- FIRST Robotics Team Captain, all throughout high school, worked on electrical systems, team has never won awards or went to worlds
- Internship @ Local Manufacturing Company, did digital printing for companies nationwide
- Elementary School Robotics Tutor, taught kids FLL at a summer camp
**Awards/Honors**
*List all awards and honors submitted on your application.*
- Science Olympiad, a bunch of medals for Robot Tour
- Science Fair Award, 2nd in category at local
- School Department Awards (French & US History)
**Letters of Recommendation**
(*Briefly describe relationships with your recommenders and estimated rating.)*
Engineering Teacher. Strongest connection by far for a letter of recommendation, I have been working with her on projects all 4 years, and she is our lead robotics mentor who is very familiar with my work ethic and approach to engineering. 9/10
Calc AB Teacher. Had her for 3 years in a row in math, and could speak very well on my math skills s well as being a student in a classroom setting. Both recommenders also were graduates from Cal. 8/10
Government Teacher. Had him for 1.5 years, and excelled in his class. I wasn’t THE model student, but he highlighted the fact that I stood out from my peers in my critical thinking skills. 7/10
**Interviews**
(*Briefly reflect on interview experiences, if applicable.)*
MIT: 3.5/10. Absolutely did not want to do any college interviews and was nearly bedridden when I conducted this interview. It lasted almost 2 hours, but I don’t believe we talked about anything extraordinary.
Stanford: 6.5/10. Had some odd questions asked, but overall a far more pleasant experience. Was much clearer in my headspace and able to convey the various projects I worked on well, as well as talking about various opportunities my interviewer could connect me to outside of the interview.
**Essays**
(*Briefly reflect on the quality of your writing, time spent, and topic of main personal statement.)*
UCs: By far spent the most time refining the essays, and I think they turned out well. I was able to highlight 4 different aspects of myself through the PIQs, while still being grounded in values that are important to me like my family, community, and academia.
CommonApp: Spent an embarrassing amount of time on revising this, and overall didnt like the end product. I had some interesting ideas but nothing groundbreaking in my essay and in hindsight quite generic.
Supps: All supps for commonapp were a blur. Most were thrown together at the last minute, the only ones I liked writing about were Stanford’s Prompts.
**Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)**
*Acceptances:*
SJSU
UC Merced
UC Riverside
UC Santa Cruz
UC Davis
UC Irvine
Cal Poly
UC Santa Barbara
UC San Diego
UC Berkeley (COMMITTED, NucEng)
*Waitlists:*
UCLA
*Rejections:*
UT Austin
University of Washington
MIT
Cornell
Stanford
**Additional Information:**
Not entirely sure what I expected, maybe to not get completely destroyed by the OOS schools. Oh well, I am incredibly excited to go to Cal in the fall, I have a great network of people I already know and will get to room with 2 of my best friends from my high school’s engineering class! I am incredibly grateful for my college results, and got into the schools I would’ve considered going to anyways.