sad uchicago ea deferred intl gal receives shocking results

Demographics
Gender: Female

Race/Ethnicity: Asian

Residence: International

Income Bracket: high-ish (300k), disqualifies me for aid, esp since a lot of schools are need-aware

Type of School: Private Girls’ School, very competitive, ranked no. 1 in my region

Hook: NA

Intended Major(s): undecided, but i showed through my apps i was interested in econ, public policy, philosophy

Academics
GPA (UW/W): NA, so the school system where i live we have 6 years of secondary school, and my school sent in my full 6 year transcript, first three years my average was like a B-/C+ but sophomore and junior year i got straight As except for chinese lol

Rank (or percentile): NA, school doesn’t rank

# of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc: NA, course was not built like the US system but our counsellor told us that we had ~10 full year honours courses (we didn’t get to pick our courses) from freshman and sophomore year, i am doing a level bio, chem, econ, math and did igcse chi (did not report)

Standardized Testing ACT: 34

IELTS: 8.5

A-Levels: predicted 3A* (idk we’re not officially told our PG but that’s what i was told by teachers), 4As at AS level

Extracurriculars/Activities
1. captain at my school’s swimming team (won region-wide interschool event for 40+ consecutive years, highly competitive team) 2. double bass (pre college student at ranked #7 music academy in the world, school orchestra (won and performed nationally and regionally), played in a professional orchestra (paid)) 3. advocacy, financial director at an advocacy group, ~10 school chapters, monthly podcasts, hosted workshops for corporations on inclusivity 4. another social issues group, high level position, hosted roundtables, podcasts, events almost weekly, wrote and edited articles 5. volunteer (~400 hours per year, 250 were from a service program i initiated, teaching english to underprivileged kids, 100 were from sit-ins at pro bono psychiatry sessions, the rest were from a summer english camp i tutored at) 6. vice-ceo of a company that sold 300+ items at school fair 7. interned at a tech (app developing, AI) startup for 5 weeks

(that’s everything i put on my app, i filled all 10, some listed above i separated them as individual ones)

Awards/Honors 1. double bass LTCL 2. national award for double bass 3. bronze award (top 10/250) from a youth impact award for an app we developed to tackle wishful recycling 4. another region wide music award 5. gold volunteer award (200+ hours per year)

Letters of Recommendation didn’t get to see them bc school policy forbids, counsellor rec was ok, he thought i was pretty smart (i was reading crime and punishment as a stem student) and i was pretty involved in school, i was also unlike a lot of my classmates, i had way more outside school activities and was involved in more advocacy which is quite uncommon (upper class selective christian school)

chem teacher: 7/10, knew me for 2 years, was active in class, got a+ in the class lmao

econ teacher: 7/10, knew me for 2 months LMAO, but we went out for lunch so she could know me better and i talked about marx and the frankfurt school a lot, i got full marks on the first essay test she gave us lol so shld be fine

Essays my commonapp one was about how i was really scared of uncertainty, different elements of uncertainty and how it drove me, execution is better than it sounds, pm me if u wanna read it uchicago essays: i thought they were pretty good, best things i’ve ever written

Planning to Apply/Applied:

fordham ea: accepted uchicago ea: deferred uchicago ed2: ACCEPTED HOLY CRAP

northeastern: deferred

so after i was deferred from ea, i handed in a LOCI and a video profile, i think it kinda helped?? dm me if u want to see essays or my video profile!!! i think a big part of my application was my improvement in grades? grade deflation at my school is bad and As basically mean top 10% since they kinda give grades by curves and percentiles,, i think i was able to show massive improvement + my ACT score and A Level predicted grades showed that i was competent

a few uchicago specific tips: CORE CORE CORE CORE CORE CORE I CANNOT STRESS HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS, ALSO MENTION SOCRATIC STYLE CLASSES, QUOTE PHILOSOPHERS!!! also try to present the most quirky and unique part of yourself because they truly are looking for a diverse class

also feel free to dm me or comment if you have any questions / want to see my essays or videos, i’m really willing to share but i’m shy to post them on reddit haha just shoot me a dm i promise i don’t bite

also as u probably can tell i do a lot i have way too many hobbies and i have three brain cells left lol so please ignore the typos and the weird formatting idk why mobile reddit is weird asf