sad asian girl wants to leave small town

Demographics:

  • Country: USA
  • School Type: Public
  • Intended Major: Computational Media, Dual Degree (with Art), or Visual Art
  • Stats:
  • GPA: Weighted GPA: 4.645, Unweighted GPA: 4.0
  • School Curriculum: Took 11 AP courses, 5's on 8 AP exams so far, school's STEM academy
    • Just finished Calc 3 last semester, taking Differential Equations next
  • APs: AP Calculus AB (5), AP World (5), AP Calculus BC (5), AP Chemistry (5), APUSH (5) , AP Art (5), AP Lang (5), AP Stats (5)
    • TBD: APES, AP Gov, AP Lit

Extracurriculars:

  • President, Asian cultural association: revived dead organization, connected with local businesses and nonprofits, grew membership by 500%, Instagram account: design and outreach increased interaction by 300+%, established multiple new events and traditions, raised over $500 etc.
  • Art: hobby/job, artist, attended two summer pre-colleges (semi competitive) for it, accepted into my state's gov school for it, design apparel and shoes, portrait and custom clothing commissions, etc.
  • Peer Tutor: 100+ hours of tutoring, 200+ sessions, tutoring classes 2-3x a week, presented at national tutoring conference, Chinese/Spanish translator, (on track to break the center's record for sessions!)
  • Social Justice, Equity Team: Founding member, selected by principal, grew team over three years, founding part of county-wide student senates and meetings, connections with county and school board, worked on initiatives to diversify history/english curriculums.
  • School board rep: Selected representative by the board, sits on biweekly meetings, manages communication between admin and student body, shares ongoing issues, implemented translation tools for ESOL department and working to expand that cross-county.
  • Varsity Volleyball, player: 2021 & 2022 district runner-ups, 2023 & 2024 district champs, 5th at 2024 States, 2024 Regional runner-ups, very competitive team and time-consuming (duh), organized team bonding sleepovers and scavenger hunts
    • Club Volleyball, player: Travel team, played for the highest level in my age group, 3 gold medals, 3 silver medals, 2 hr practices 3x a week, all day weekend tournaments: 10+ per season
  • Assistant Volleyball Coach, Volunteer: 160+ hours of assistant coaching (sometimes the only coach there), 2-hour practices 4x a week, 28 games each 45+ min, running tryouts, practices, writing lineups & crafting drills
  • SWE, VP: organized 6 STEM weekends for young girls w/ 30+ volunteers and ~50 young girls each time, organized SWE Q&A panel with local college, set up and helped organize high school science fair w/ 60+ projects
  • Science National Honor Society, Treasurer: Revived organisation: doubled membership, organize student research, teacher breakfasts, science-specific tutoring, campus cleanups, bio symposiums, (all new things)
  • Badminton Club, Co-Founder and Pres: Co-founded club, fundraised for equipment via bake sales ($200+ profit), grew to 90+ members & grew sport in local community, 1 hr practices 2x a week

Awards:

  • Scholastic: National silver, gold key (1), silver key (3), hr (3)
  • Honorable Mention — Teravarna 9th Flower International Juried Art Competition
  • Regional science fair category award, state-qualifying
  • State-wide data science competition 1st
  • State-wide art contest 1st
  • Seal of biliteracy
  • Published artworks in 5+ magazines/websites

LORs: (which ones I used varied based on which schools I was applying and how many letters they took)

  • Calc Teacher --8.5/10 scary scary teacher who is NOTORIOUS for absolutely banger letters, asked her like five months before the end of my junior year. she wrote very few letters this year, so hopefully mine is pretty focused and has good detail and attention to it, was a very successful student in her class (which not many can attest to) and agreed with her on a lot about our education system.
  • English Teacher -- 8/10 i am scared of this letter being a little general.... i love this teacher to pieces but she wrote SOOOO many letters this year, no idea if mine was a "good" one or not. but shes a teacher that I still greet on the daily even though I no longer have her class, and was always sweet to me during our time together. butttt will say that hers or the above will probably be the least specific ...
  • EC Teacher-- 7.5/10 I'm going to be so real I don't know if this woman loves or hates me, hopefully the former, but anyway..... I didn't really send her letter to a lot of places but she's seen me interact with people in a different setting and seen my personality in a non-academic place, this class was also where a lot fo my passions stemmed from. despite me not knowing her feelings towards me, she got the most detailed info out of me before writing the letter, so it does feel like it should be very specific.
  • Counselor -- 10/10 she looooves me so much, i love her too, we do equity team together and she's sort of "seen me in action" for like three years now, she has also told me:
    • "Oh my gosh, OP. I'm writing your letter right now and I keep having to clear my eyes and make sure I'm reading your resume right. OP, you are incredible. Like, so amazing. This is my 20th year in education - the number of students I've met over the years is more than I can count or remember, of course. You will always be one that I remember though. Your accomplishments are on another level. Not only do you achieve such great things for yourself but the way you SERVE and help others - through tutoring and coaching and founding clubs and representing student voice. OP, to keep a rec letter to a one-pager, my font is going to have to be microscopic. I think you should run for president soon."
  • Summer Program Prof -- 8/10 max, i don't feel like he knew me THAT well personally, but I had his letter in also as a testament of my artistic ability from a more professional POV, I only sent his letter to art schools/liberal art schools with dual degree programs

Essays:

IDK personally, but ChatGPT and CollegeVine AI rated them 9/10 and 8/10 for some supplemental essays I gave up on tweaking

Schools:

  • brown, cmu, Dartmouth, duke, Georgia tech (accepted), harvard, northeastern (deferred), Princeton, risd, tufts, umich (accepted), unc chapel hill, upenn, USC, UVA (accepted), Vanderbilt, and yale
  • also ucs: UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, and UCI

AM I COOKED?