但是最後還是選擇了UCSD。
mega shaft results that took bay girlie a yr to get over
**Demographics**
* Gender: Female
* Race/Ethnicity: Chinese
* Residence: bay area lol
* Income Bracket: it varied cuz one parent retired then went back to work in another field and the other one switched from abroad to us startup but still too high for fafsa
* Type of School: competitive public, definitely at least 99th percentile in asianness but isn't that most schools in the bay?
* Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): none ;-;
**Intended Major(s)**: Linguistics
**Academics**
* GPA (UW/W): 3.75/4.3ish? idk our school didn't have weighted, prolly the weakest part of my application bc of certain teachers who had it out for me covid yr (one of them literally told me in a zoom breakout room that she would give me a b no matter what so no point in even taking the final)
* Rank (or percentile): not so good bc we only went by uw but our school didn't tell us anyways
* Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 15 APs, all honors in classes that had honors
* Senior Year Course Load: AP Psych, AP Stats, AP Hug, AP Lit, Women's Studies (lol), Gov/Econ (no AP at our school)
**Standardized Testing**
* SAT I: 1590
* ACT: 36
* AP/IB: 5's in lan, lit, psych, hug, bc (and ab subscore ig), world, apush, chinese, music theory
4's in stats (gave up second sem senior yr), phys 1, env sci, macro/micro
* Other (ex. IELTS, TOEFL, etc.): uhhhh HSK 6 (highest level when I took it) for going abroad
**Extracurriculars/Activities**
don't remember how i ordered them so definitely in memory order
1. mandarin to english translator w/ over 100 mil views total
2. fiber arts small business w/ over 1k in revenue, managed etsy storefront and had collabs w/ other small businesses
3. genshin impact/honkai impact 3 guide writer - in junior yr apcsa i also wrote a resource farming calculator for my final project before hoyoverse released their version
4. taekwondo black belt & school hoco martial arts performance team
5. various music accomplishments: piano cm 10, flute/piccolo for school band in middle school and outside band in hs, vv competitive choir until covid
6. sliys (one of the only linguistics camps at the time, at osu)
7. took harvard summer school (ssp?)'s historical ling class for credit
8. director of a writing org, r&d at an ai-speech therapy org, director of ling club at my hs, director of a tutoring org, contributor of an aapi/performance org
**Awards/Honors**
1. NACLO (ling olympiad) top 30 in north america, top 20 smth in us
2. AIME score of 6
3. pvsa gold 2x or 3x, i forgot lol
4. national merit...
**Letters of Recommendation**
got 2 humanities and 1 stem:
apcs teacher (7/10): he was a nice almost-retired guy, my genshy final project kinda intrigued him and he offered to write the letter even after he retired, but didn't really have any heart to hearts or anything
freshman english teacher (10/10): mans wrote the BEST rec letters, I also TA'ed for him officially for both semesters of junior yr, i also got 100% on his charles dickens test when i took his class. might have been the only one ever. we were both grammar nerds and i absolutely loved his teaching style. i was a very helpful ta (if i do say so myself hehe)
junior yr english teacher (10/10): i participated in their class every single day. one might say i was a teacher's pet, but not cuz i wanted to suck up. i just really like reading and book analysis (miss it so much in college T\_T). they consistently gave me rly high scores on projects too! they were the director of the campus gsa, and even tho i wasn't publically out, we kinda bonded over the vibes of the situation
counselor (5/10): i wrote my own cover letter like our school required and she just had to input that info into a template or smth probably, so very impersonal
**Interviews**
MIT (9/10): Interviewer was a business major, her daughters were a bit younger than me, and we hit it right off by meeting at a boba spot. she was Chinese kinda first-gen and even asked me for advice how to get her daughters to have more interest in chinese culture and language lol. i wore one of my crochet pieces and talked abt it a little, and even though our fields of study were quite dif, we had rly good communication and i had a rly good time. sent the follow up email and everything! also told her mit was my dream school
Stanford (9/10): Also an asian parent, also business (i believe stanford mba) and did something w the asb while he was there, he was a bit older than my parents but his son was younger. we bonded over the competitiveness of admissions for asian kids in the bay LOL. he said i was a super mature person and was destined to do big things wherever i went or smth to that regard, and we'd only scheduled a 30 min talk but ended up going to almost 70 mins. it was on zoom tho, so -1.
Harvard (8/10): He was a caucasian lawyer and had a super interesting career. He told me a lot abt his life and also had daughters around my age. I was honestly so in shock bc he and his wife were both harvard law grads but we bonded over our love for nature and languages. it was a nice interview but we somehow agreed on meeting up in berkeley and one point there was a security guard chasing someone out of the store next to us. violently...
**Essays**
i poured my soul into these essays lmao. started writing after junior year aps, wrote about things rly important and genuine to me. since i wasn't applying stem at the time, i talked a lot about crochet & languages (this was my personal statement) and one of my favorite essays was about moving in to college and bonding w multicultural roommates over my love for cooking dumplings (and how this recipe was passed down through the women in my family). such a grammar fanatic in actual writing not text lol so edited for content or grammar sooooo many times. also talked abt my hopes and dreams as an archaeological linguist to restore the manchurian language (language of the rulers of the qing dynasty). maybe talked abt being chinese too much in this post-covid era lol... but i feel like i emphasized enough the american part of it but rly dk
my college counselors said they never saw such college essay-y college essays on the first try. my ap lit teacher also had a 1-on-1 essay review session w/ me (she was amazing too) and rly liked my personal statement, but might have been biased cuz she used to be in a similar field.
**Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)**
*Acceptances:*
* UCSD (committed)
* UCD
* UCSC
* UMass Amherst EA w/ scholarship
* UIUC EA
* Tsinghua (full scholarship but didn't end up going)
* Peking
* Northeastern EA(?)
* Duke Kunshan lol
* UCR
*Waitlists:*
* CMU waitlist -> accept (I then rejected it bc of time constraints/sunk-cost fallacy T\_T)
* Cal (but didn't write love letter or anything)
* Wellesley (didn't bother)
* prolly like ucsb or uci or both, I honestly don't remember/care but either got wl/accept
*Rejections:*
* MIT EA defer -> reject
* Harvard
* Stanford
* Princeton
* UCLA
* UPenn
* Brown
* Dartmouth
* Duke
* USC EA
* Pomona
**Additional Information:**
co 23 so affirmative action was still in place - don't tell me it wouldn't have affected me cuz my hs's co 24 had much much better acceptances even w/ fewer results in usapho/usamo/usaco etc.
yes it did take me over a year to get over these acceptances. mostly bc the grass is always greener on the other side and i went in-state instead of private T_T
hurr hurr UCSD isn't that bad... im already a senior now and will b done w/ my first degree in 2 yrs total and double major + minor w ill take 3 yrs. it's still vaguely computational, saves a lot of money, doesn't take any effort to maintain that gpa, and i can still go to my dream school cuz im applying to grad school (soon). ucsd's data science program is also great. if i went back in time and could choose again though, i would probably go to cmu and do their stats-ml program. part of that is cuz at least i would have the same breaks and be in the timezone as my bf of 7 mf years. also cuz prestige does matter. ucsd is not a bad school by all means, but it still doesn't sound as good to tech companies as cmu. money wasn't ever really an issue, but eldest asian daughter vibes had me choosing duty over prestige or watever. anyways its perfectly fine to feel upset for a long time abt stuff like this, but you will end up loving wherever you end up (and if you don't, transfers are always a thing!) good luck and best wishes to everyone hehe
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