Current Sophomore What do I need to do for top tier school admission

Chance Me / Match Me
1

I plan to be a cs major. My dream college is CMU. Also, I’m Asian so idk how I’ll be affected by my race.

These are my stats right now
Academic:
4.25 GPA W
1440 PSAT Score
31 PACT Score

Currently in AP Calc, APES, AP Lang, Honors Civics and have an A in everything besides Lang, in which I have a high B

Next Year I am taking
AP calc bc
AP physics 1
AP physics 2
AP fundamentals of CS
AP CS
Honors American History 1
APUSH
Honors English 4

I Plan to take calc 3 senior year, as well as 4 AP courses bringing my total Aps to 14 (took apwh last year)

ECS:
Launching a tech related e-commerce business this fall
Probably will be robotics club vice president next year (Have already been historian)
Made the website for a six figure revenue company
Joining Calculus team next year
Play guitar and piano, and formerly played tuba in band
Play UTR 7-10 tennis competitions
I can program html/css/bootstrap, jQuery/JS, php/SQL, Ruby/rails, C/C#

So my question is what ecs will push me from a normal well rounded student to a hypmsc accepted student by the time I apply to college?

2

Your ECs and course rigor look find to me. Work on studying to improve your standardized test scores and unweighted GPA. They are both low right now for CMU.

3

You seem like a HYPSM ready applicant already. Just continue to pursue your passions in CS and let it take you to even more awesome opportunities! You’ll also want to improve your unweighted GPA and standardized test scores, as they are fairly low for HYPSM.

4

How are you in AP Lang if you’re a current sophomore unless you attend Basis or a similar type of school that pushes kids in AP courses?

Honors English after APLAC makes no sense. You should be in AP Literature. And APUSH/Honors US History at the same time?

CMU CS has Ivy League/Stanford acceptance levels. PSAT 10 score is OK, but not the greatest.

5

AP Lang is too hard, so it’ll be easier to get an a in English 4.
Honors US is prereq to APUSH in my school

6

Sorry, but your post seems contradictory unless I’m reading it incorrrctly. You state that you are currently taking AP Lang. Then you contradict yourself by saying you will be taking Honors English junior year.

Also if USH Honors is a prerequisite to APUSH, you won’t be taking both classes at the same time.

7

AP Lang = English 3 (American Literature)
AP Lit = English 4 (British Literature)
Already took Lang, instead of lit I am taking honors English 4
Also it goes like AP American History 1 Topics (Honors credit first sem) AP American History 2 (AP Credit second sem)

8

these are still the best 2 admissions blogs (from the good folks at MIT) that I have read for students whose primary goal is the HYPSM label:

http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/there_is_no_formula

Read them over & over & follow the advice in applying sideways.

In the meantime, go find some schools with acceptance rates over 15% that you will not cry if that ends up being your best option.

ps, remember that you do not have to fill in the demographic info on your application: the colleges like it, for lots of reasons (not least, the market research info it gives them), but it is in fact optional.

9

My daughter opted not to do AP Lit senior year because she already had five APs/SLU dual credits lined up so her guidance counselor strongly suggested she take British Lit. I think six would have been too much and she needed to focus on her AP physics C, AP chem, and AP calc for her intended college major.