<p>Ergh, not really sure how to start this…there’s a thin line between bragging and giving out useful information, and I’ll probably be tap dancing back and forth on that line(sorry in advance)</p>
<p>I grew up in the Bay Area, moved to Taiwan in 7th grade, and I’m currently attending an international school. My family isn’t very wealthy so I’m paying the tuition out of my college fund, with a partial scholarship too.</p>
<p>Freshmen schedule was: Honors English, Honors Physics, Mandarin 4, Honors Geo w/Proof, Public Speaking and Debate, PE, AP World History, and unweighted GPA is definitely 4.0 or above, I had 3 A+'s, and the rest, except math, were A’s and math I had an A-. Next year I’ll be taking Honors English 10, AP Chem, AP Mandarin, Honors Alg 2, Classical Studies in Latin and Ancient Greek, PE, AP Euro, Journalism 2. I have a scholarship that is paying for my summer school (Honors Chem), in order for me to take AP Chem</p>
<p>I would definitely say I’m a humanities oriented person, and I’ve always loved history and reading and writing(especially writing!).
I can honestly say I enjoyed all my classes this year, but out of them all, math was still my weakest subject. Studied the hardest for that exam and still got the lowest grade out of all my classes on that -.-</p>
<p>As for extracurriculars, I basically have three…er, sections of focus: swimming, school community, and humanities. I am on the school swim team, I teach younger kids swimming on Saturdays, lifeguard Wednesdays afterschool, member of NJHS, part of the school newspaper, Activities Coordinator for the school’s new student orientation program, Student Government member, head of the school’s Spirit Committee, and the single freshmen member of the school’s traveling Forensics and Debate team. I also take Bellydancing lessons, and we’ve performed a few times for charity, and it doesn’t fit into any of my “sections”, but I think it’s really fun so anyways…</p>
<p>I’m also a diehard Spirit Week fan, and I co-wrote the grade cheer, and designed the grade bulletin board, which we got first place for (It was a red dragon built out of coke cans, with the slogan, Year of the Freshmen). I also know the admin of my school pretty well, because near the beginning of the year, I gave a speech in my school’s version of TED Talks, and I talked about how my family couldn’t afford to send my little brother to this school, and how through that I learned a lot about appreciating what you have, and one of the vice principals who saw my speech invited me to give it to the Board of Directors and the superintendent. I’ve also written a few stories for the teacher’s literary magazine, so they also know me from that. This paragraph was a bit irrelevant, but I think it’s a good example of me being eager to do basically anything and everything that seems even remotely interesting.</p>
<p>As an Asian American, is it going to hurt me that my Mandarin skills aren’t that great? </p>
<p>I also know it’s too early to be worrying about colleges, but right now I would just like to know whether or not I’m on the right track to being a candidate for Stanford, and if not, what types of colleges should I be aiming for, because honestly, I have no idea. Everything I do, I do it because it’s what I love, and as disappointing as it might be to hear that it’s not enough for Stanford, it’ll hurt less than if I worked my ass off doing things I didn’t love just to try and get into a good college. So, chance me? And sorry for writing so much!</p>