Hello,
I’m a NJ permenant resident that has just graduated from a high school I Egypt. I’ve been in Egypt for many years now but I visit the US once every year to keep my Green Card valid. I’m admitted into a university in Egypt where I’m going to major in biochemistry. However, I’ve found out recently that what I really want to major in is physics. I have a very strong passion for it and I think that I must follow my passions. I can’t major in physics in Egypt because students aren’t allowed to major in physics unless they take calculus in high school and I didn’t take calculus in high school so there’s nothing I can do about it now.
I’ve never thought about applying for US colleges until recently. Since it’s too late to apply for college for the fall semester of 2016, I’m going to take the SAT, SAT physics and SAT Math 2 in October, 2016 and then apply for the fall semester of 2017. I’ll do my best to score around 1450 ~ 1600 in the new SAT and 800 in SAT subject.
This might sound weird but in Egypt there were no ECs to do in high school at all. There wasn’t even time to do any community or charity work. The school day ended at 3 PM and then we had to go to at least one 2 hour tutoring class everyday because we didn’t understand anything at school. That is the norm in Egypt. Charitable organizations were at least 1 hour away so obviously there was no time to do any charity work
During this year I plan to do hundreds of hours of community and charity work, translate and write science articles online and get trained to do scientific research with university professors.
I’ll also study very well for the SAT and SAT physics and SAT math I’ll study university level calculus, chemistry and biology. My English writing and reading skills are pretty weak to I’ll do a lot of reading and practicing.
I forgot to mention that I repeated my senior year because I’m, unfortunately, a perfectionist and I didn’t attend the finals because I wanted to to score around 100%. Eventually, I scored 96%. I’ve learnt that nothing can be really perfect. I was in the top 10% of my class in my senior year.
I’m going to apply for universities that fully meet financial needs. I going to apply for UNC, UVA, USC, BU, Rutgers, Emory and Reed.
Since 1 - I’m applying after a gap
2 - Repeated my senior year
3 - Didn’t start to do any ECs until after high school, how will universities view my application? Do I have any chance to get accepted in any of the colleges I mentioned above? Should I just apply for a community college then transfer to a university? Could you give me some advice?
