Help me build a college list! Low-income junior with extenuating circumstances in Virginia with an identity crisis

College Search & Lists
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  • Asian American (Korean American), low-income, Northern Virginia
  • URM (LGBTQ+ specifically Nonbinary and Aromantic Asexual)
  • Competitive public magnet HS
  • Assigned female at birth if that’s relevant in any way
  • GPA: 4.216 cumulative up until end of soph year, 3.1875 junior year alone (so overall 3.911) - EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES, WILL EXPLAIN MORE BELOW
  • 1480 SAT Superscore
  • Original intended major was somewhere in bio but lately I have been having an identity crisis about it :melting_face:
  • Junior year course load: AP Physics 1 (D), Advanced Orchestra HN (A), Ancient Civilizations HN (A), APUSH (B), English 11 Honors (my school doesn’t offer AP Lang or Lit to juniors, B+), AP Calc BC (F), Neurobiology (weighted as AP course - F),
  • I think I can fix my grades in Physics 1 and Neuro if I lock in rly hard but I think I might have to retake BC next year :melting_face::melting_face::melting_face:
  • Expected senior year course load: Advanced Orchestra HN, Bioinformatics (weighted as AP), AP Lang, AP Gov, AP Stat + more post AP stats (both are semester courses - might have to retake BC or even do AB though bc my school has a special diploma which you can only get via completing a year of calc), AP Chem, Biotech Research Lab (also weighted as AP)
  • ECs:
    • Wikipedia editor since 2023 with 10000+ edits, 9 articles written/expanded that have been on the Main Page, community entrusted position I will not type here due to privacy issues (there are less than 10 people in this position)
    • Summer Programs - Northwestern Civic Leadership Institute + UVA BLAST, UCSB SRA (biology related track), YYGS IST during summer before freshman, soph, junior yr respectively. All through JKCF
    • Quizbowl from 9th-10th grade, quit this year due to extenuating circumstances which will as said before, be explained later
    • SciOly team from 10th grade
    • Investigative Science Outreach Club - joined in 10th grade, leadership position in 11th grade
    • Part time tutoring gigs
    • Volunteering at the local library
    • Idk if this counts but moderator of an active online forum with 450+ users
  • Awards/Honors:
    • 1 of 50 Jack Kent Cooke Young Scholars nationwide
    • Miscellaneous Scioly medals from invitationals and regionals
    • Went to HSNCT for Quizbowl in 10th grade
    • Senior District Orchestra in 9th grade
    • Scholastic Art and Writing Awards (Honorable Mention) for essays in 9th, 10th grade
    • National Merit semifinalist potentially? Junior PSAT score is 1510
  • Extenuating circumstances: Lower grades junior year due to lack of executive functioning skills due to undiagnosed ADHD which significantly affected mental health (those issues were always there in hindsight, but freshman and sophomore year my classes were easier so I was doing a bit better then grades wise), ability to focus in class and get homework and stuff done - saw a psychiatrist recently and is currently getting medicated for aforementioned ADHD
  • I would ideally like a school that offers good aid and isn’t too competitive but still has rigorous academics and stuff

sorry for the wall of text btw :sob:

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To state the obvious, your first and by far most important priority at this point is to make sure you are getting the treatment and support you need. Next is remediating your D and F grades.

In terms of colleges, one thing you might consider is possibly taking a gap year. If nothing else, this will mean you can apply with a full set of senior year grades. If everything goes well senior year, this will really help assure colleges that what happened junior year is very unlikely to happen again in college.

Even if you do decide to try going straight to college, I think it is premature to really be forming a college list until you know how junior year finishes, and perhaps how senior year has started. I will note just for your information that there are some excellent universities that have numerical admissions and possibly numerical merit, which might end up good colleges to include on your list. But it will be good to know exactly what your grades look like through the end of this year even when considering those colleges.

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I’m confused as to how your junior year GPA is above a 3.0, given two A’s, two B’s, a D and two F’s.

I’m glad you have gotten support and are doing better now! Hopefully you can retake your D and F classes, and replace those grades. However, the grades won’t replace until after next year’s admissions cycle, which is why the suggestion of a gap year could make sense.

The thing is that for low-income students, getting funding to cover room and board is often the most difficult part. How high of a priority is it for you to go away to college immediately, vs. taking a community college pathway (which would make your high school grades irrelevant by the time you transfer) or commuting to George Mason?

Richard Bland College might be a good option for you, if it would work cost-wise. It is administratively part of William & Mary, and functions like a community college in terms of being a two-year program with guaranteed transfer pathways, but it’s a fully residential campus. You and your parents can run the Net Price Calculator to see whether it would be affordable: RBC Net Price Calculator Richard Bland would definitely land in the “not too competitive but still rigorous” territory you seek, and would give you a smooth transfer path to VA public U’s that aren’t likely to accept you straight out of high school.

Your grades may prevent you from progressing from National Merit Semifinalist to Finalist. However, U of Tulsa offers an NMSF scholarship that doesn’t depend on becoming a finalist, so that could be one to look at.

Maybe you can say more about your academic/major interests and what other focus areas you are considering besides life sciences. Do you definitely want a lab-science type major or not necessarily? What might you want to do career-wise?

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Regarding the GPA, I miscalculated it, junior year alone would be 3.125 and cumulative 3.893 (I am taking 4 Honors classes and 4 AP/AP-equivalent classes weighted 0.5 and 1.0 respectively - I forgot to list DNA Science 1 where I got an A-, which is also weighted as an Honors class). I’m fine commuting to GMU or transferring tbh, I’ve already accepted I’m not going to be accepted anywhere atp lmao. I think I can raise up the Neurobiology and AP Physics 1 grades to at least a C- by the end of junior year, but for BC I might have to retake (however, I can’t do it over the summer because I have a program I am going to and it’s not going to work out schedule wise). Regarding my major and career, honestly after all that happened this year, I just feel lost. I originally wanted to work somewhere in the drug development pipeline/research but now I think maybe I wasn’t cut out for STEM after all and I should major in something related to history or something where I can use my writing skills bc I like editing Wikipedia? And with STEM majors, env sci or geosciences also sounds kinda interesting because I did events like Geologic Mapping, Entomology, Rocks and Minerals for Science Olympiad and really liked it. I just feel really lost at the moment honestly

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The good news is you do NOT need to know what you are going to do for a career when you are a junior in HS. In fact most of the people who seem very confident about what they want to do at that age actually end up doing something else anyway.

Fortunately, a lot of four-year undergrad programs are set up such that you can do an initial exploratory phase and only declare your major later, usually sometime toward the end of your second year. Some entire colleges work like this, and sometimes there is something like an Arts & Sciences division that works like this.

Even then, it is not like you are locked into your future by your major. Lots of people end up in careers where their major has no particular relevance.

So I would suggest taking the pressure off yourself to map out your whole future right now. Instead, you can just take this a step at a time, and in fact be open to learning more about your options, learning more about yourself, exploring interests and developing aptitudes that may take you in surprising directions . . . a lot of great lives start off like that.

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I think you might be miscalculating your unweighted gpa. For all core subjects, give yourself a 4 for every A, 3 for every B, 2 for every C, 1 for every D, and a 0 for failed classed, divide by the number of classes.

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Not all schools calculate the way you are..their own school likely has a UW GPA on the transcript that isn’t the way you say it is.

My HS did UW differently, and both my kids’ HS (different schools) ALSO did it differently, as did my spouses (this is 3 different states). CC has a very specific opinion on what UW is, with little regard for how many schools have different ways. :person_shrugging:

You shouldn’t tell the kid they are doing it wrong, you can ask for them to dot it “your way” though.

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?? The GPAs I listed are weighted, sorry for not being clear about this earlier

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So a few things - you have some auto admit options if you can keep your total GPA over 3.5.

See here - VCU appears to have a guaranteed admission for students with greater than a 3.5 GPA at time of submission Guaranteed University Admission - Admissions - Virginia Commonwealth University - so even a few poor grades this year may be ok because of your other weighted classes this year and past strong performance.

Plus George Mason has a direct admit program for students at certain VA highschools with a greater than 3.25 GPA. I don’t know what county you are in (and don’t tell us) but here’s the basic page on Mason’s program George Mason Direct Admissions | George Mason University. It’s not all high schools in every county, but here’s some info on Loudon County George Mason Direct Admissions | Student Services; a kind of older press release from Arlington County Four APS High Schools Partner with George Mason University to Offer Students Direct Admission to College - Arlington Public Schools; info from Prince William County https://www.pwcs.edu/support_services/college_career_readiness/gmu_direct_admissions; an older press release from Fairfax County that lists some of the high schools Fairfax County Public Schools Expands Partnership with George Mason University’s Direct Admissions Program | Fairfax County Public Schools.

I’m sure there are other schools that will be a good fit for you, but for right now I want you to know that it looks like you will have choices, so you do not need to panic. I saw that someone above mentioned Richard Bland too - I have a friend whose son applied to W&M, and didn’t get in - but they offered him a spot at Richard Bland with a transfer pathway after a semester. He did that and it worked really well for him. If you end up doing something like that you will be ok and find a good cohort of other students who are interested in making the most of where they are, then moving along.

So all that to say - it’s going to be ok! Take care of yourself, see what you can do to get the meds working and get your schooling back on track. If you are struggling with time management or others of the executive function issues associated with ADHD talk with your counselor at school and ask them for help.

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I know uncertainty can feel uncomfortable, but keeping your options wide open is very normal for a ~16y/o. I would encourage you to reframe this and not characterize it as being “lost.” You have multiple strengths and interests, and you haven’t figured out how you may want to combine them to build a rewarding academic and career path. That is okay!! So many people end up spending their lives doing something they had never even heard of in high school.

Here’s one example of an under-radar major that places many grads in the pharmaceutical industry: packaging science. This field is highly interdisciplinary - you have to have a foundation in life sciences and materials science, but also sustainability, communications/advertising, and business/economics. Here is VT’s program: Packaging Systems and Design Major | Sustainable Biomaterials | Virginia Tech

Another VT major that spans several of your interests is Geography, within which multiple focus areas are available including GIS, environmental science, climate science and more. Bachelor of Science in Geography | Geography | Virginia Tech

Another terrific bio-adjacent interdisciplinary field is Food Science: Undergraduate | Food Science & Technology | Virginia Tech

Basically, you could save money and buy time to figure out what direction you want to go in, by completing your gen-eds at a local community college (or at Richard Bland), and then you could transfer into any of these VT programs. (And of course VA has an embarrassment of riches in terms of 4-year universities - VT isn’t the only option, but it does have some fantastic programs that seem like they could fit your interests.)

It’s far more important to lay a strong foundation, both academically and in terms of your mental health, than it is to scramble to nail down a long term plan. Definitely retake Calc BC next year, both to replace the grade and to establish a solid understanding of the math you will need for college. (If this displaces AP Stats, that’s fine - you don’t need both.) Set yourself up for a strong senior year, and take the time to explore your options re: majors and careers. It can feel like a race when you’re surrounded by ambitious, high-achieving magnet-school kids, but it doesn’t need to be; take the time you need, even if that means taking a year to work and regroup. Invest in yourself now, and you’ll have plenty of options as things unfold.

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Yes, but most colleges recalculate, my A/B student had a 3.4, which would apparently lower than this student’s gpa.

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There is plenty of time to figure this out. It is very, very common for students to change their mind regarding their major way later than junior year of high school.

I was a math major in university. I found both high school algebra and calculus to be useful in a lot of ways, both in upper year classes and on the job. However, my course selection and later job selection was specifically chosen to use math and emphasize math.

One thing that I have noticed about calculus: It depends a LOT on its prerequisites. Specifically it depends a LOT on high school algebra, and trigonometry, and pre-calculus. It also depends to some extent on geometry. It pays to be solid in all of these prerequisites before starting calculus. This leads to the obvious question: How did you do in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and pre-calculus?

Taking calculus as a senior in high school still puts you ahead of most students. Calculus is however something that is useful in a lot of other more advanced classes, and is worth learning well.

Physics also depends a lot on math, which sort of leads to the same question.

I did not know that this was even offered in high school. I am pretty sure that at least one daughter and possibly both took it or something similar in university.

Getting this straightened out is the most important thing right now. Everything else can come later. There are way too many students in the US who are suffering from mental health issues, and I personally think that a lot of this is that we put way too much stress on our high school students.

This can take some time to straighten out, but is very important. There are plenty of very, very successful people who have first needed to straighten out some mental health issues before they started being successful.

I do not think that this makes you URM, at least for purpose of university admissions. However, university admissions is something that is not the number 1 nor number 2 priority right now.

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not all the same way.

MI does it one way, UMass another, UCs another UMD another, some don’t at all… there really really really is NO one way.

Some just take transcript. Some use only 5 core courses, some use arts, some don’t

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You need to figure your unweighted GPA. Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship is exceptional but your overall path confuses me.

That you are low income - you’ll need to either attend a community college near home or one that covers you in VA.

Schools like Richmond (full ride), Virginia State, George Mason and more have opportunities for low income. For those that just give tuition, you may need to live near it.

Are you ready for college? Your profile was all over - please get help first - and maybe take a break, etc - whatever you and the professional you work with decide.

Berea College may also be worth a look - and even Questbridge colleges - although I’m not really understanding a Jack Kent and Ds’F’s and that might eliminate you.

Maybe a school counselor can help or you can apply for the essay guy Matchlighters Program may be worth a look.

Good luck.

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