The STATS AND ECS That Got Me Into Stanford, Wharton, + More!

Main ideas, concepts, and lessons

• Student background + framing matters

  • Eva Wong shares her own admissions journey (not a guaranteed template).
  • She applied to many schools with an economics + business direction.
  • She advises that results depend on one’s context and background; what worked for her may not work for others.

• Academics: GPA + course rigor

  • Context: grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and attended a competitive public high school with:
    • Large class size (~500–600)
    • No IB diploma program offered
    • No class ranks
    • No weighted GPA
    • Unweighted GPA: 3.97
  • Course load:
    • 28 APs
    • AP distribution: 3 (9th), 5 (10th), 5 (11th), 7 (12th)
    • Pursued full IB diploma via 8 IB classes
    • Took 4 additional classes at the University of Utah
  • Key lesson: don’t over-fixate on chasing a perfect 4.0
    • She believes differences between 3.9 / 3.95 / 4.0 are often not decisive for many top colleges.

• Standardized testing: thresholds + efficient strategy

  • She took both ACT and SAT.

  • ACT

    • Took it twice.
    • Freshman year: composite not highlighted as strong; math/science high (36) but English/reading low (teens/20s).
    • Junior year: 35 composite
      • Math/science 36
      • English 36
      • Reading 32

  • SAT

    • Took it four times.
    • Scores: 1520 three times, then 1550
      • Math 800
      • English/Reading 750

  • Key lesson: treat testing like a threshold game

    • Suggested thresholds:
      • SAT around 1520–1550
      • ACT around 34–35
    • If above the threshold, it’s usually not worth chasing a perfect 1600/36.

• How to study for standardized tests

  • She felt naturally strongest in math/science, so she didn’t need much study there.
  • For reading/English, she emphasizes:
    • Tests are objective
    • If you’re choosing incorrectly between answer options, you likely misread the stimulus/question/choices
    • There is one definitive answer
  • For English, she recommends: memorizing grammar rules

• Extracurriculars (ECs): impact + alignment

  • She ranks her application priorities as:

    1. Essays (first)
    2. EC list (second)

  • Purpose of the EC list (her framing):

    • Admission officers see what you did throughout high school
    • It shows how you built toward your intended major

  • She shares her top 5 ECs and what each demonstrated:

### Top 5 ECs (with focus/strategy)

1. **Co-founded a global entrepreneurship student organization**
      - Goal: give **middle/high school youth** entrepreneurial opportunities
      - Activities:
          - Summer program where students built a startup over ~2–3 weeks and **pitched** at the end
          - **Pitch deck competition** judged by **real venture capitalists**; funding awarded (Shark Tank-style)
      - Reported scale: **~200,000 students influenced**, **$250,000 raised**
      - Why it mattered: broadened “career pathways” beyond STEM

2. **Competitive piano (international)**
      - Played ~14 years; began at age 3
      - Traveled globally for concerts/festivals/competitions
      - Key takeaway: arts can strengthen applications **if you are truly strong**
      - Warning: don’t submit an arts portfolio if your performance is **only mediocre**, because it can hurt

3. **Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA)**
      - Held state leadership roles (state officer; **state executive vice president**)
      - Grew chapter size from **30 to 140** (largest in her state)
      - Expanded nationals involvement and performance (record placements/members)
      - Started the **first state prep webinar**
      - Raised **$10,000+** locally to send students to nationals
      - Coached/mentored teams; some achieved **top three** placements at nationals

4. **Music teacher/mentor**
      - Taught since sophomore year: **piano, violin, music theory**
      - Taught a wide age range
      - Framed her applications around being a **mentor and opportunity creator**
      - Reported student success at state and national competitions

5. **Mundi Project ambassador/teacher**
      - Nonprofit focused on breaking **socioeconomic barriers through music** in Salt Lake
      - Activities:
          - Helped fundraise for **free pianos** for lower-income students
          - Taught piano/violin for free at **local libraries**
          - Supported development of **Harmony Hub** (free app; **6,000+ learners**)
      - Why it mattered: connected her piano passion to systemic issues and inequality (including references to **redlining**)
      - Reported impact: a Stanford admissions officer highlighted this extracurricular specifically

• EC list construction tips (methodology)

  • Tip about ranking school clubs
    • She says school clubs “don’t matter as much” as global organizations or community leadership that actively fixes problems.
    • Nuance example: she ranked FBLA highly because it had state-level leadership and deep participation.
  • Build the list by breadth, then cut
    • Step-by-step approach:
      • List everything done across all high school years (including freshman year)
      • Remove activities she doesn’t care about
      • Remove activities that don’t align with what she wanted to study
      • Narrow further until she reaches the application limit
      • If she can’t fit everything into the allowed EC slots:
        • Move some items to Additional Info
        • Use this only if content is genuinely important to share (she overfilled and ran out of space)
  • Rerank activities strategically on Common App
    • Common App allows reranking of activities based on the school/major.
    • Other applications (e.g., MIT, UC) don’t allow reranking.
    • Strategy: rank by
      • your personal importance
      • alignment to the major you’re applying for
      • not just chronology

• Awards: what to include + what to regret

  • Awards included:
    • First place at FAA National Leadership Conference (junior year)
    • Seventh place at FAA National Leadership Conference (sophomore year)
    • Third place in a global/international pitching competition
    • AP Scholar with distinction
    • National Honors Society
  • Regret/lesson:
    • She regrets placing AP Scholar awards and National Honor Society because:
      • Many colleges can infer AP outcomes from scores
      • “National Honor Society” can be common among top applicants
    • She wished she’d used those slots for DECA/HOSA achievements (including top-three state placements since freshman year and strong results at ICDC)

• Essays: what they should and shouldn’t be about

  • Personal statement
    • Lesson: it’s not supposed to be a recap of your activity list or a resume dump.
    • Her focus:
      • childhood experience working in a restaurant
      • how that shaped her into the person she is
      • EC references only lightly; the essay wasn’t primarily about them
    • She notes that while many people write about something in high school, framing childhood into a high-school journey context also works.
  • Supplemental short answers / quirky questions
    • These questions are meant to show personality, not achievements.
    • Advice:
      • don’t resume-dump
      • show a “quirky” side
      • in Stanford supplements, she distributed jokes throughout her essays and mentioned interests like:
        • Roblox (top 100 competitor in some games)
        • Geometry Dash
        • Pokémon
        • hiking, etc.
      • aim for balance between resume content and personal quirks

• Time management: balancing academics, ECs, apps, and life

  • Her schedule was rigorous: heavy course load, application work, and maintaining extracurriculars and school.
  • Her approach:
    • be an extrovert and leverage time with friends
    • delegate weekdays for focused work (“lock in”)
    • use planners/to-do lists (noting procrastination sometimes caused spillover into weekends)
  • She recommends maintaining balance among:
    • family + friends
    • activities you love
    • academics, extracurriculars, and college applications
  • “Reset” activities:
    • hikes
    • going outside
    • playing piano to loosen up

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Speakers / sources featured

• Speaker: Eva Wong (incoming freshman at Stanford University; narrator of the tips and her admissions journey)
• Mentioned organizations/programs (not speakers): Atlas Education (consulting mentioned)
• Institutions mentioned: Stanford University, Wharton, UPenn (UPEN), Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Rice, UCLA, UC Berkeley, CMU, MIT application, UC application, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, USC, University of Utah
• Clubs/competitions mentioned: FBLA, DECA, HOSA, FAA National Leadership Conference, Mundi Project / Harmony Hub, plus various entrepreneurship/pitching events (Shark Tank-style described)