Hi! I (Asian, Girl, 15) am attending a top 2 private school in Oregon. The classes I’m currently taking are:
History 9 (can’t skip ahead)
English 9 (can’t skip ahead)
Physics
Precalc/Calc AB
Spanish III
Python I
I’m currently working on the Congressional Gold Medal Award, which requires 200 hours of community service, as well as other personal development goals. I’ve been volunteering at the local library and food bank for quite a while now. I’ve also started Policy Debate, something I plan to pursue for all four years of high school. (My partner and I have already won several tournaments and we are planning to quality for TOC, the tournament of champions.) I’m studying for the AMC 10 next year (I didn’t quality for AIME this year) and have submitted my writing works to the Scholastic Art and Writing competition with the help of my tutor.
However, I don’t really have any particular aspects I excel at, something necessary for the Ivies which I really hope to get in to. I see lots of people around me who are nationally or state ranked at particular subjects (science, math, sports, etc…), which I am none of. I also have no idea what I want to major in for college, or what kind of job I want to pursue. I am interested in Business, Mathematics, and Science. However, I have no idea which out of these three I want to really focus on during high school, and I don’t particularly excel in any of these.
I really just need some ideas/advice for things I could do to make my future application stand out (starting a non-profit, prestigious summer camps, extracurriculars I could take on, things like that) because currently, I don’t think I’m going to get very far with not having one particular thing I am good at.
First…you are 15 years old. I’ll ask…why the ivies? There are tons of colleges where you can achieve your goals. Your chances of being admitted to these Ivy League colleges is very small, just like everyone else, no matter what you do. There are simply too many applicants for too few spots.
None of these things will make you stand out from a group of applicants who most likely also hack the same things. I would completely SKIP starting a non-profit (do you understand what it actually takes to do so…) and find an existing place to volunteer your time. There are already plenty of worthy non-profits that could benefit from your help.
In the summers, get a job. That is a very worthy EC that is favorably viewed. It can show responsibility, commitment, ability to work with others, etc.
Prestigious summer camp? Like what? Any summer program that you pay to attend (excluding places like Tanglewood BUTI which takes an audition) are not going to help you.
So…what should you do?
Get the very best grades you can. You don’t need to accelerate courses in all disciplines, but you do need to get great grades and take a challenging courseload for YOU.
Do ECs that are of interest to YOU, not ECs that you think will impress some adcom down the road.
Get a budget from your parents for annual college costs. Make sure the colleges you are considering can come in at their price point.
Enjoy high school. Be part of the school, not just a person who is doing things only to get into some group of colleges.
Make a list of the characteristics you want in a college and start looking for a variety of colleges that can meet those.
Read the thread I’m about to link. Make sure you have at least one sure thing for admission on your application list when the time comes. Read the whole thread.
Good. You needn’t and that goes for math too. Your views of what is needed seem distorted academically and otherwise. One should have calc by 12th grade. Sounds like you’ll have in 9th.
Find activities where you’d enjoy and can build tenure and make impact. Kids that walk dogs at the shelter or work at the local grocery store or McDonald’s go to Ivy. Worry less about accruing hours and medals and more about one or two activities that you decide to stick with although it’s ok to experiment until you find some. Frankly the food back and debate team make a great set of ECs.
Ivy is an athletic league. It has no specific requirement like you describe. Nor are any of the schools necessarily right for you. Too early to know.
Be the best you that you can be and in 3 years you’ll apply and get into some great colleges. For now, stop thinking about it. You have two more years to be a kid.
I would advise you to do high school well and stretch yourself. Find your passions, and lean into them.
Don’t let “the Ivies” become your white whale. Also, don’t feel obligated to know what you want to be for the rest of your life.
Too many kids engineer their high school experience around getting into a selective college. They are susceptible to the directions and examples of others and make the mistake of thinking there is a checklist or template they can follow to unlock an acceptance from a big-name school.
This is folly.
Aside for high academic achievement, students who really stand out are forging their own paths. The find their passions and ways to share them inside and outside of the classroom.
Now, people will tell you things like, “you really need to start a non-profit.” Or “you really need to attend this pay-to-play academic summer program.”
But a non-profit that doesn’t do anything more or better than an established organization, has minimal impact, and ceases to exist once the founder is accepted into college is a ploy most admissions officers have grown wise to. And the people convincing families to pay for “internships” and academic summer camps are profiting off of anxieties over elite college admissions. (Not all summer programs are bad, but do them if you like them, not to pad a resume.)
Be you! Do high school well! The fact that you want an “Ivy” before you even know which of those schools would be right for you indicates an external focus. All the prestige in the world won’t matter if you are not happy and thriving, however. Once you know what resonates with you, there may be an Ivy or two that would be the right fit. There should also be more than a few other schools where you could succeed. But if you set your goals around your own passions and reflect them into the world, colleges will notice.
I am going to suggest something a little different.
I often see people outside of this site try to create some “checklist” for getting into an Ivy. They try to win a state or national competition AND create a nonprofit AND find some doctor that will let them assist with research, etc. It is exhausting and the student ends up creating an application that resembles a lot of others and does not look authentic. Many times the school you attended and its reputation with admissions staff at a particular college matters as much or more as your individual application. Or whether your parent is an alum — in other words, things out of your control.
The second piece of advice I often see here is to stop trying to complete a checklist and pursue your own passions and interests. Which is great in theory, but hard if you don’t know what your passions are yet and you are still figuring yourself out.
I am going to suggest instead that you work on building strong relationships and connecting with others. Do this with your peers, certainly, but also with adults outside your family — a teacher, an employer, coach, etc. When you find an adult you connect with, that person can be a great mentor and help you develop your interests.
Maybe you connect with a group of friends that introduces you to golfing. You love the sport, but aren’t good enough to play collegiately. But your friends help you land a job at a golf shop where you bond with the manager and get a reputation for being the most knowledgeable about putters or you have a knack for merchandise displays. Your enthusiastic manager who loves you will write a letter of recommendation for local scholarships. Meanwhile, you take your interest in putters back to school with an interest in developing a better golf putting simulator. Now you have a pet project and your enthusiasm helps you build connection with the teacher supervising the programming club. She will write a glowing letter of recommendation. (Or maybe it is the business club advisor, based on your knack for merchandising.) You also can write a fabulous essay about what you learned about yourself as you struggled to improve on the driving range with the help of the local golf pro/instructor who ended up becoming a great friend.
Or maybe you develop strong connections through your volunteering activities. You meet a wonderful doctor, who helps you realize you have a combination of compassion and project management skills well-suited for public health administration, even if the sight of blood makes you faint so medicine is not for you.
I believe starting with relationships first helps shed light on our individual interests and passions and talents. Others can help you find out what you enjoy most, what you are best at, etc. But those relationships themselves are what will set you apart. Those relationships are often at the heart of a more meaningful application essay, the source for great letters of recommendation, and the basis of a strong network for academic programs, internships, and jobs, etc. Not because you are checking items off a list, but because you are focused on creating fulfilling connections — the rest flows naturally from that.
Will it get you into an Ivy? Maybe. Maybe not. But it WILL make you successful. Every bright hard-worker who is skilled at building relationships is successful in their career. I honestly cannot think of an exception at the moment.
And ultimately that is the goal. The goal is not to impress people by name-dropping your college in as many conversations as possible. The joy you get from that is fleeting and it doesn’t equate to automatic career success.
But if you are good at building connections, you can easily launch an illustrious career from Oregon State. It doesn’t have to be Harvard or Yale. On the other hand, I think Harvard or Yale becomes more possible if you are good at building connections. ( But only slightly more possible, because those schools are crap shoots for ANY student.)
Don’t limit yourself to a small list of elite college admissions as your goal. Think bigger. Expand your own skill set so that you can achieve your career goals from ANYWHERE.
My main suggestion is that you stop worrying about what university you might or might not attend, and instead just remember that you are a high school student. Do what is right for you. Have some fun.
From this I am guessing that you are in grade 9.
Here is my biggest concern. You have jumped way ahead in math. In math, jumping ahead is not the main point. Instead, the main point is that what you learn now is based on what you learned last year, and what you are going to learn next year is going to be based on what you are learning now. This means that you should learn each step very solidly before you jump ahead to the next step.
I attended a high school that did not even offer calculus as an option. I did not take calculus until I was a freshman in university. That did not stop me from graduating with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MIT (and then a master’s degree from Stanford in a related field).
Hopefully you are doing well in your math classes. If this is true, then I am okay with your jumping ahead so far. However, you are way ahead of normal schedule and I hope that this is going well.
Also, I can tell you exactly what I did in high school specifically for the purpose of getting accepted to MIT: Nothing. Exactly nothing. Instead, I just did what was right for me, and did it well.
As others have said there are a LOT of very good universities in the US, and just as many or more outside the US. MIT graduates and Stanford graduates work alongside graduates from U.Mass Amherst and UNH and San Jose State and on the most part no one cares where anyone got their degrees. In most cases we do not even know. Graduate students at Stanford and Columbia and Harvard will similarly have come from a very, very wide range of undergraduate universities.
When the time come, keep an open mind and look for colleges or universities that are a good fit for you. Remember that in the US you can get a very good education at any one of several hundred different colleges and universities. Keep your budget in mind and make sure that you apply to safeties. This is all a few years into the future however.
I had exactly this discussion with my younger daughter when she was in high school. What I pointed out was that most students in high school know what they want to study, but then six months later have a different idea, then a year later have yet another different idea. Not knowing what you want to do is probably nothing more than being more realistic than the student next to you who is going to change their mind.
At the point that I graduated university (with a degree in mathematics) I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my career. I tried a bit of this and a bit of that. Eventually I figured it out. However, what I ended up doing was a field that did not even exist when I was in university. I couldn’t have known what I was going to end up doing because it didn’t exist. Similarly, in high school neither daughter knew what they wanted to do, or if they knew they changed their mind. They have similarly figured it out over time.
In terms of classes, take the classes that are right for you. Whatever you do, do it well.
In terms of ECs, participate in ECs that are right for you. Whatever you do, do it well. Also, if you get into a leadership position remember that “leadership” is not about getting your way. Instead, leadership is about listening and making the activity better for everyone, or at least nearly everyone.
Also, you might want to read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. Again it is suggesting that you do what is right for you, and do it well. This approach has worked well for my family. However, what I did, what my wife did, and what each daughter did, were four very different things. Also, while we all ended up at schools that were a good fit for us, only one of us went to MIT. The same approach worked for other very good universities also.
And remember that you are a high school student. Get some sleep. Have some fun. Have faith that all of this will work out.
Do what you love and enjoy, because you like doing it. Expect that you may wind up at your in state flagship, which is totally fine. Do not do ECs because you think they will look good for college, but because ypu enjoy them.
You’re focused on things other people can see, and while it’s never a bad idea to look ahead to make sure you’re heading in the right direction, it sounds like you are directionless. Attending an Ivy shouldn’t be a goal. Figuring out what makes you tick needs to be your priority!
Consider keeping a journal - even if just in notes. Give yourself the space to reflect on why you are doing things and then how you feel about them. You may see patterns that help you discern what truly interests you.
Maybe you do x to make your parents proud. Maybe love solving problems for the challenge and finality. Maybe you join a club to be with friends. Maybe you love to bake. Or be outdoors. Or read to experience a different world. Maybe you like finishing things but not doing them. Who are your friends and why? What do you have to force yourself to do?
All this is how you get to know yourself. This kind of reflection is essential but not part of most young lives. If you can work this out, you’ll be better positioned to find the right place for college. There’s a reason there are so many schools!
As a high school teacher, my suggestions to my students are:
have a set of personal goals (and practical plans to reach them), such as cooking and cleaning for self, advocating for self, getting a job, managing own budget, managing own schedule, having several true friends, driving, etc.;
get involved in classes and clubs with mixed grade levels - sports, band, orchestra, speech, etc.;
identify a few students in each grade ahead who are similar to you and observe how they navigate high school;
get involved in regular activities interacting with students from other high schools;
read books, listen to ted talks, subscribe to podcasts of various perspectives, think why they say what they say.
Do NOT make “attending ABC college” as a goal. It’s okay to have a dream school or two but it’s also okay to not have them. Grow to be a responsible person, develop interests, practice overcoming setbacks/obstacles, keep an open mind, college options will come naturally, so will grades.
Elaborate on what I mean by “grow to be a responsible person”.
Grownup people take various roles in society. Kids want to grow up to be someone who is highly regarded/respected. This is natural. Highly regarded/respected people earn their status by providing valuable services, which means they must be capable. It also means that they must be responsible - making decisions what to do or not to do, how to do it, owning up when they make mistakes, and finding ways out of their mistakes.
When the grownups choose our leaders, we want someone who is capable and responsible. When the selective universities choose their students, they are looking for future leaders - those who can demonstrate strong capabilities and responsibilities. A teenager doesn’t have to be in any particular position to demonstrate responsibilities. The varsity team captains can show they are highly responsible, so can the newbies on the JV teams. The founder of a non-profit organization can show they are highly responsible, so can the kid who is not in any club but spend 5 hours after school everyday taking care of younger siblings, and the kid who works 30 hours a week bussing tables to help pay the family bills.
Being responsible is not as easy as said. One of my students last year was offered a well sought-out internship. He didn’t have high GPA, wasn’t any captain, no award beyond school level; however, he had NO tardy at all. (although one year was remote learning but still.) He knew he wasn’t smart or strong, nor did he have great potential of exceling in anything, but he was determined to do the most responsible thing he could, which was to be there for every class. He was the only student in his graduating class to have true perfect attendance.
How can one kid stand out from their peers? By demonstrating they are capable and responsible. You already have a great track record demonstrating you are capable and full of potential. You don’t need another new activity to show how responsible you can be. Keep doing what you are already doing, get a feeling of which one(s) you enjoy the most, and push yourself to do a little better there. Along the way you will experience obstacles, and you will overcome them; you will also encounter failure, and you will learn from them. What makes you stand out is not how high you can reach, but rather how you get there.