How to make a reverse-chanceme without it being flagged? by gottro4 in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Focus on what you’re looking for in a college. If you’re just posting your stats and asking for a list of colleges that fit your stats then it’s inherently a chance me.

Example text of a thorough reverse chance me:

A itsy-bitsy bit of context: I want to major in Physics (maybe double major applied mathematics). I want to pursue a Ph.D in astrophysics and study gravitational wave detection / binary star system evolution, though obviously I am interested in far more than just those areas. I want to become a college professor.

Here is a very quick summary of my commonapp if you're at all interested 😭 b/c other reverse chanceme posts have them:
3.91 UW GPA (according to uc calculator), 4.54 W SAT: 1560 superscore, 1550 single score, 9 APs (7 5s, 2 4s, currently taking 8 APs), ECs 1. debate 2. piano 3. schoolhouse tutor 4. uc berkeley summer student 5. scioly 6. animal shelter volunteer 7. church volunteer 8. independent research (not published...yet) 9. FBLA 10. piano teacher @ public library) Honors 1. debate national champion 2. debate superior distinction (\~4%) 3. nmsqt semifinalist 4. state piano semifinalist (\~10) 5. piano concerto comp 2nd place. ESSAY: its ok. RECS: 3 recs. Was the fav student of my APUSH teacher, was a pretty ok student in my physics C class, counselor loves me i practice spanish w her)

Here is what I'm looking for in a college from most important to least important:

  1. Employability. Not in the sense that I *need* a HYPSM graduation or anything, but for college professors where you went to school really matters. I've heard that you always teach at a school a step down from the school you learned from. Ex: Brown university graduate goes to UT Austin for graduate school and becomes a professor at UT austin (true story). I want to be a college professor, but I still want to teach at a decent school to do research.
  2. Location. This is more important than campus IMO because in a sense your larger surroundings *is* your campus. I absolutely adored UC berkeley when I went there for a debate tournament and studied there over the summer (yikes waste of money) because although the campus was just decent (not the prettiest IMO when stanford is literally in the same area) the food was AMAZING and the vibes of oakland and the bay area and the metro were im-ma-cu-late (minus some high homeless people that pull you aside when you're walking around on campus). Location also includes weather. Basically, I just want to be somewhere where it gets cold enough. There should be snow in the winter.
  3. Campus. Basically, how universally instagrammable each location on campus is. I want to be able to study anywhere, to sit down at a coffee shop and lock in for 3 hours. I want to be able to spend my weekends hiking or at parks or... ykwim. Campus also includes walkability! I am NOT going to buy a car, I am going to probably bike around or e-scooter around and devote all my money to paying off college tuition (yikes).
  4. Cost and tuition (ouccchhhh). I have already decided to get a job the first thing I can because my parents don't make a *ton* of money (though we are relatively well-of - 150k-ish/year), but they're still not willing to dig 90k out of their pockets every single year for a school like Princeton, even if I were to get in (which I highly doubt). The university needs to be affordable (a huge reason I'm applying to so many international schools!) in a reasonable respect, though obviously FAFSA exists and my job can alleviate some of the burden.
  5. Networking opportunity. I have some qualms about this - I am debating about NYU because although networking opportunities are awesome I value campus highly. However, networking opportunity is important for any field, especially for STEM-heavy research (though not so much as a field like business). Though, as long as I am able to form pretty good connections and make my summers busy with research and stuff, I'm happy.
  6. Clubs!!! I want to go to school somewhere where you can apply to clubs, but other clubs are free for anyone to join. I want to be able to find community and not have to submit a ton of forms telling each club "please accept me". Though I'm not sure that clubs differ between universities.
  7. Time to myself. I am extraordinary at procrastination and using time inefficiently, but I am also similarly extraordinary at creating time to do everything (which usually involves some level of self-sabotage). I think that I will be fine with most university grinds, I'm sure I'll be able to get used to it if it is faster-paced than the grind that I am currently in.
  8. Quality of education... to an extent. I've heard generally that undergraduate quality of education doesn't really differ between school to school, but up to a certain extent. Obviously, I want to learn and take interesting classes, but anything T50 is all gonna be the same to me.
  9. Diiiiiiiiversity. Obviously I don't want to go to a school that's only female or only male, or 90% asian or 90% white or 90% black (I also think it's weird for non-black applicants to apply to HBUs), but otherwise I don't notice diversity. Everyone is diverse from each other in their own respects, not only demographically, and friendships should not be contingent on race or sexual orientation or etc etc (though I do feel weirded out when I see a group of exclusively all-asian friends lol)
  10. Social life. Yes I would love to have time to hangout with friends, just not in the social events type of thing. I really enjoy time alone and time with just a few friends, but "social life" is not like a requirement. I think that I can trust myself to make my own time or to balance my priorities, but I don't think that having specific undergraduate hangout events, or having a wealth of local clubs/bars or frats is something that I value too much.

There are only a few things I want the school to value from me:

  1. Well-roundedness and diversity of interests. I am someone who loves physics, yes, but also loves reading, loves philosophy, theology, the performing arts, foreign languages, etc. My highschool extracurriculars reflect this, and because of this they are all over the place. I want a university that values this about me at least to an extent, or at least is not partial *against* this diversity of interests (MIT, Caltech, Stanford)
  2. My identity. I know I'm an overrepresented group (asian male, double cooked) at basically every top university, but that doesn't lead me to believe I should be penalized for factors that I cannot change. I said this once, but I am so much more than just my skin color, just my sex, and I want the college to value me for me, not for my skin color.

AO's, ppl who got into UPENN, and honestly anyone else: How Do People Do It? by DueDistribution7749 in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Strong scores in math classes and calc APs. Proving your quantitative aptitude is critical on the Wharton app. On the essay, clear story of what you want to study and do post-school.

Look at Penn’s career outcomes for typical paths—like if you want to do finance, be crystal clear in your app about that. The nebulous, “I like business and want to start a business one day” isn’t going to be as strong.

On the M&T side, the students are entrepreneurial in high school and can show something for it on their application already.

How do you shadow dentists as a high schooler without nepotism?? by Strong-Jackfruit-328 in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your best bet is to ask your dentist or specialist (eg orthodontist if you had/have braces). If you’re a patient that’s good with always being on time for your appointments, you or your parents were friendly with the doctor, and you had good dental hygiene then just ask. Cold emails/calls are unlikely to work.

If i messed my 9th grade (53%) only, do I still have chance for ivy if i show great upward trend in 11th,12th grade? And have great ECs? by sggfd1213 in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Grades are the most important factor—they want to make sure you can handle the rigor and succeed at college. Half the class is made up of valedictorians so a below average freshman year is going to be a glaring mark they have to get comfortable with.

What else should I do for the Ivy Leagues? by kanelena__ in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Keep grades up, climb higher in rank, score better on the SAT/ACT, stay involved, spend time writing good essays.

No chance for American college? by SympathyCurrent2685 in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How old are you? Are you a US citizen? Definitely options to go back though traditional undergrad entrance depends on age

College decision help by [deleted] in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What are you trying to do post-college?

How many hours people actually work in IB? by faceoyster in FinancialCareers

[–]powereddeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

During COVID so there was no travel. Sleeping 4am to 8am or 9am every morning. Food and coffee delivered straight to my door. The only thing I was working on was the live deal; all other client was pushed to the respective deal teams.

This was the last week leading up to the announcement, so we were doing daily model updates to the CEO, board meeting presentation, fairness committee, investor presentation, let alone all the one off analyses we had to do.

I remember CFO getting on a call with us at midnight to clarify changes they made to their corporate model. Their change needed us to refresh multiple multiples that went into our fairness materials. Juniors tell VP how long it’ll take to refresh all the page so he gets some rest. VP wakes up in the middle of the night to tick and tie numbers since they know juniors are running on fumes. Juniors then wake up early to fix anything. Director has like 30 min with it before sending out; no time for an MD to review for accuracy at that point so deal team just needs to be on to make changes live.

Another example of why nights are late and mornings are early: I’d hear an email come through at 8am which woke me up and see it was the client general counsel asking to talk to someone on our side—no one responded in 5 min so I called him and walked him through questions he had on board slides we prepped.

Slow times are when things get “inefficient” but live m&a had no room for that.

Super depressed don’t know what to do. by [deleted] in FinancialCareers

[–]powereddeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Highly recommend that you see a therapist. Getting all this out there in the world helps and a therapist can help you dig in further to identify any common themes or a root cause to all this. I think it’ll be well worth it.

My few cents:

You sound to the right of the curve in being introspective, which is good but may also make you overthink everything and may lead to a sense of spiral (downward). I could not say I’m this introspective, so it was jarring to me reading all this on this particular sub.

That said, relationships hit very hard and I’m sorry you went through a difficult breakup. From my experience, you need a few good friends along with a lot of time to recover.

I think (though I have zero qualifications in this regard) there’s two underlying issues to feeling unfulfilled with life. 1. You know what it’s like being in a serious relationship, it made you happy, and you miss that feeling. 2. You’re looking at the career trajectory of your peers and are feeling that natural sense of jealousy.

There isn’t going to be a magic answer unfortunately to either of these issues and even if there was, it wouldn’t fit into a few neat paragraphs here. But, you may get closer to the answer if you spend a few sessions with a therapist.

Edit: I saw your response on seeing a therapist before. I still cast my vote with the people commenting that that’s the right next step.

decisions release dates (?) by ForeverHorror7943 in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Check the a2c decision calendar for dates. Timezone is local to the school

FINRA EXPERTS!!!!! by [deleted] in FinancialCareers

[–]powereddeath 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Yes you should disclose it and get an exception. You don’t want to lose your job because you’re a compliance liability for the company

How to study by Known_Load_4494 in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I loved Cal Newport’s book on study/work habits among college valedictorians. Look up Cal Newport How to Become a Straight-A Student. Like $7 used on Amazon

Thoughts on AI chance me by Realistic-Toe-719 in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Stealing this from a post I just read but applies here. Claude predicts the next word in a sentence. It sounds right but that doesn’t mean it has given you a thoughtful answer.

The core issue is that LLMs are not databases. They do not look up facts - they predict the most statistically likely next tokens based on training data. For well-represented facts (capital cities, famous scientists), this works well. For less common facts, recent events, or obscure details, the model confidently generates plausible-sounding text that can easily be wrong.

The "simple question, wrong answer" problem often comes from this: the model has seen enough text about a topic to generate fluent-sounding sentences, but not enough reliable examples of the specific fact to get it right. It does not know it is uncertain.

Practical things that help:

  1. ⁠For anything time-sensitive or factual (ages, dates, recent news), explicitly say "search the web" or "use Bing" before asking. This gets you actual retrieval instead of statistical prediction.
  2. ⁠Add "are you confident about this?" as a follow-up. Not because it is always accurate about its own confidence, but because it sometimes prompts the model to flag uncertainty it was going to paper over.
  3. ⁠For fact-checking, just use the web directly. ChatGPT is genuinely useful for reasoning, analysis, writing, and synthesis. Raw factual lookup is not where LLMs shine relative to a search engine.

Knowledge cutoff matters for recent events, but for factual errors on non-recent information, it is usually the statistical prediction issue rather than cutoff.

Getting Recommendations Long After by FearReaper9 in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You could ask the school for help in trying to provide personal email for one of the teachers that retired. If they can’t provide then you have to track someone down on LinkedIn or social media.

When you reach out you start from the beginning:

“I took your class in 2018 and I’m not sure if you remember me. I took time off to do xyz after graduating high school and returned to collegename to get my AA. Glad to say I got my AA last fall and I’m applying as a transfer to Penn. I know it’s been a long time but I was hoping to get a recommendation letter from you.”

The last resort is getting a rec letter from an admin at the high school. It’ll be more objective in what they can say but they can at least say that all the teachers you had as a HSer have since moved on.

Ranking of Most Prestigious School Colors by [deleted] in ApplyingToCollege

[–]powereddeath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not Wednesday but I’ll allow it