HELP!!!! Need Guidance

Graduate School
1

<p>Heyy,</p>

<p>I am attending St. Lawrence university in the fall, but I was wondering how should I prepare the next 4 years so that I can get a better chance to get into a top tier graduate program.</p>

<p>I am no genious but I been through alot</p>

<p>Here is a basic idea of my capabilities
4.0 GPA school does not weight
school is real easy and offer AP varying year to year
1680 SATS (700, 510, 470)
Sats II math II physics literature 630,580, 550
low performance inner city school
school does not rank students</p>

<p>4 years football, track captain for each
many hours peer tutoring, volunteering, training
alot of time investing in entreupoural activities
did alot more extra curic
messed up home life, HORRIBLE</p>

<p>accepted depauw, st law, temple, fairfield, clarkson, wpi, whittier
rejected amherst, MIT</p>

<p>(DID not apply to #1(Bowdoin), was enlisted in the marines that limited college app time)</p>

<p>unsure of what to do in future but def want to become an analysit, still deciding what to analyze though</p>

<p>took courses at Yale(during school year), southern ct state u and at a prestigous boarding school</p>

<p>I just want some advice on how i should handle college so that i could get a better chance to improve GRAD school status</p>

2

<p>Relax and get the best grades you can for the next three and a half years. </p>

<p>The one thing most kids neglect is getting to know their professors. You’ll need LORs from 3 of 'em when you apply for grad school the fall of your senior year. So attend all the colloquia, seminars, and such you can in your department. This will also have the effect of exposing you to the kind of research people are doing in your field and to professors and grad students from other schools - network like crazy!</p>

<p>Junior year start thinking about the GRE - IMHO, the best time to take it is early summer after junior year - that leaves enought to time study re-take if you choke or (more likely) ETS screws up somehow.</p>

<p>If you don’t already have command of a suitable research language for your field know that you’ll almost certainly need one or two for grad school. German is sort of the all purpose grad school language but you’ll want to look into what to take fairly early while you still have some scheduling flexibility.</p>

<p>Now for some good news - you’re IN. You can forget about your high school stuff - no one will ever care about it again (academically at least). I had a pretty wierd home life too and 34 years later I can still remember the feeling of relief when I woke up in my dorm a couple days after school started and realized all that garbage was permanently behind me.</p>

<p>So have some fun this summer!</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

3

<p>thanks man, i stopped caring for my high school stuff too, well i just want to finish with a 4 though, but everything else im jsut tryint to get by… unfortunately, this website will consider u an outkast if u dont do like 12092 extra curric and have like perfect score sats, this website is different but again thanks for the info</p>

4

<p>One major difference between applying to undergraduate and graduate programs is extracurricular activities. No one on graduate acceptance committees will give two ****s about ECs that don’t have anything to do with your field of study. Focus on doing undergraduate research or getting internships. </p>

<p>Since so many high schools fluff their classes these days (not that I’m saying yours was easy, just that most of us have pretty cynical views of high school education), it’s really quite hard to tell from your statistics any of your ‘abilities’ in regards to getting into a top graduate school. We can help a lot more once you have an established college GPA and GRE scores, along with an idea of the sort of program you want to go into. Like the poster above says, your high school ‘stats’ are now meaningless. Think about it: you have a completely clean slate from which to start anew. You don’t get many opportunities in life like this, so take advantage of it.</p>

<p>Also, you really need a SOLID FIRM idea of EXACTLY what you want to do before considering applying to graduate schools; use your time in undergraduate to figure this out. Your post makes it sound like you just want to go to graduate school without concern for the actual program: what are your goals career-wise or intellectually? What do you want to research/learn more about? Until you can answer these questions, don’t apply to graduate school.</p>

<p>Edit: Ah, the filters. I forget what forum I’m posting on sometimes. I think the context is still there, even if what I said was replaced by ****.</p>

5

<p>My advice is to relax and just do the best you possibly can as an undergraduate. Enjoy yourself at the school you’re at. Study hard but get out and have fun when you can. Keep graduate school on the back of your mind but don’t worry about it for a little while.</p>

6

<p>Don’t worry about grad school right now. One step at a time.</p>

7

<p>Enjoy life. get laid. Do fun stuff. your hs stuff is completely irrelevant. a lot of people I met in college were valedictorians at their school so get ready to be average again :)</p>