Hi, I’m a sophomore in high school and it’s late and I want to make myself cry from the toxicity of this forum. Please lmk anything I should be doing in order to get into some better colleges.
Academics
*SAT: 1540 (770 both reading and math)
*PSAT: 1480 (740 both reading and math)
*Haven’t taken SAT IIs or APs yet
*Unweighted GPA (so far): 4.0
*Weighted GPA (so far): 4.15
*Freshman Schedule: English 9 Honors, Alg 2, Bio Honors, Geography/Health (required), PE (requried), French 2
*Sophomore Schedule: English 10 Honors, Precalc, Chem Honors, AP Euro, PE, French 3, Leadership (required for class/ASB officers)
*Junior Schedule (plan): English 11 Honors (no AP Lang), AP Calc BC, AP Physics 1, AP Bio, APUSH, Leadership
*Senior Schedule (plan): AP Lit, AP Stats or multivariable calc (depends on how much my counselor likes me), AP Physics C, AP Gov/Econ, some art credit, Leadership
Extracurriculars (not a lot yet; ones I am trying to do are surrounded by square brackets)
*Class treasurer [really good shot at becoming ASB President senior year]
*Interact events coordinator [become an officer at the district level (covers most of the bay area)]
*Varsity swim [4 yrs]
*Piano (ATCL diploma if anyone even knows what that is)
*Boy Scout [Eagle Scout]
*[Im taking the AMC and F=ma this year and i’m going to try to qualify for the respective semifinals next year]
Other
*Race: Asian
*Gender: Male
*First gen student
Any criticisms or recommendations are welcome. Have at it
Your stats are decent (and there is a lot of flexibility from the top to the bottom of the top 50) but more info needed. What do you want to major in? What are the budget constraints? What kind of school do you prefer other than “top 50”? When you say “better”, better than what?
Presumably you are a CA student given reference to Bay Area. Are you applying to UCs and if so is the “some art credit” in senior year enough to meet the f requirement of a-g? I don’t see it anywhere else?
You sound like a really conscientious and hard working student. Here’s my main advice at this point -
Start talking to your parents about the money end. Are they full pay, and if so, are they on board for full price anywhere? Are they expecting you to get merit aid or stay in state? Or will your family qualify for financial aid? You’ll have a slightly different set of schools you are targeting depending on the answers to those questions.
Aside from UCB and UCLA, try not to get too hung up on the tippy top schools. The topmost schools have such low odds for excellent but unhooked students that it’s fine to apply to a couple as reaches but don’t spend your high school years stressing yourself out for that.
I would say that at this point, depending on what you want to major in and the money piece, plus if you have other things like school size, geographic location, etc, looking at a number of the schools in the 20-50 rank is probably worth your time, and then also identify a few target schools that are a little less selective as well.
I’m looking to major in a STEM field, particularly math or physics. Both my SAT and PSAT are actual scores. The art credit is both for the UC f requirement and my high school graduation requirement. I’d prefer to stay in CA for college, but i would be open to exploring other schools nationwide. Also for now I’m not thinking about money; I think we could probably qualify for financial aide, but my parents told me to start worrying about paying once I actually get in to a college.
Sophomore PSAT score looks impressive-make sure that you get a high score when you take the one that counts as a junior because the CA selection index for NMSF is going to be high and you would need to get close to the same score.
“my parents told me to start worrying about paying once I actually get in to a college.”
This…is terrible advice. (Tell them that diplomatically.) You and your parents need to understand what you can afford, and where you can get need based or merit based aid.
SNAP! I was about to post exactly what @SJ2727 said: that is terrible advice. Ask your parents straight out: can they pay $30K/year for a CA university? If they even hesitate, have them do the NPC. Find out what they can- and will pay. Make sure that they know how much college costs. Back when we were in school the UCs were about $1500 (and the CSUs ~$500). They may not realize how expensive college has become- and that they will have to co-sign for any loans over ~$5K/pa.
How frank do you want? First of all, there’s huge mileage between saying top 20-25 or even 30 versus top 50. Momofsenior1 is right that the colleges have a recommended course track and you’ll need more than two years of foreign lang for the top schools. You’d also benefit from an AP class in English.
Right now, little chance because you still need to understand how holistic works. It’s not just stats and a few ECs. It’s critical that you understand what the colleges value and want to see. You can’t inutuit this, you need to dig into what the colleges say (and show.) All this understandng then helps you make your best app, show what they need to see.
You have 1 AP so far, need to see the test score. You have a solid gpa now, but are planning a heavy load of AP next year and we don’t know how you’ll respond to the (very) increased rigor. Plus, test scores for those AP.
You say STEM, but have no math-sci ECs. AMC doesn’t replace that regular involvement. And while Interact is nice, many kids will do their own committed work in the community.
So, take the time, now, to learn more. If you end up focusing on 30-50, some of this matters less. But youhave to go into this with eyes wide open and some savvy strategy. Ok?
If you and your parents aren’t aware already, colleges have a tool on their websites called a Net Price Calculator (NPC) where your parents can input their financial details and it will spit out a pretty good estimate of what your family would be expected to contribute if you went to that school. It would be useful for you to have them sit down after they do their taxes this year and run the NPC for a few places. Try something like Stanford, UCLA, Cal Poly, and Harvey Mudd and see what sort of variation comes out. And whether they have opinions at that point on what sort of schools you should be applying to. (You don’t want to be that kid who gets into Stanford but whose parents didn’t realize that it was really really going to cost 2x as much as Berkeley or UCSD and decides in April of senior year that never mind, we aren’t paying for Stanford).
