<p>I took the us history subject test last June and got a 710, was pretty disappointed but then again I didn’t answer 12 questions</p>
<p>I’m taking the January sat , hopefully I get a good score</p>
<p>My schools grading is 90-100 A 80-89B etc</p>
<p>U guys got any tips on how to improve my critical reading score? Plz share if u do, it would be greatly appreciated</p>
<p>no, I’ve only taken a half credit so I could double up on maths and sciences…maybe it was a bad choice</p>
<p>I’m from NY, I’m planning ON:</p>
<p>SUNY Bing
SUNY Stony Brook (comp sci)
Cornell (CAS/CALS)
Columbia
NYU (Just to see how much fin aid i get, if i get enough maybe i might go there)
Macaulay Honors College
Carnegie Mellon University
and a couple more</p>
<p>@quidditchcat
My school requires 4 full years of PE. Which stinks. But junior and senior year you can waive it if you are in a sport. So I got out this year for golf, and because the office needed an aid that hour. Phew.</p>
<p>I’ve been debating on NYU, Northwestern, or Cornell for ED. After some serious thought I believe I will go with Cornell. NYU isn’t pretty when it comes to price and scholarship opportunities. Northwestern doesn’t have the best CompSci program. Hopefully I can get a Posse scholarship with Cornell, if not I can just go for Questbridge with Northwestern.</p>
<p>But other than those I’m also applying to:
UIUC (in state)
UMich
UCLA
Berkeley
Penn State
Ohio State
UW - Seattle
Carnegie Mellon
Purdue
UIC (safety)</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m also questbridging it. Cornell is actually my dream school, and the one I really want to get into. But ofcourse it’s unrealistic to think I will get in there with a 50%+ chance (I’m prob competitive, but it will depend on my SAT score soon).</p>
<p>I love NYU and Columbia. Northwestern is also up there. But one of my favorites is Carnegie Mellon. Those are pretty unrealistic for me and I’m not really sure yet. I may take a gap year though with Nativ. A conservative Jewish program in Israel through USY.</p>
<p>@Brandewyn, sorry to hear that… I guess it works out at my school that people not in PE anymore still do after-school sports.</p>
<p>Colleges:
Since I’m in California, probably all the UCs, but here they are in order of favorite to least favorite:
UCSD
UCLA
UC Davis
UC Santa Cruz
UC Berkeley
UC Santa Barbara
UC Irvine
UC Merced
UC Riverside
The reasons: mainly the majors they offer. Not going by prestige, like some people think I should. </p>
<p>Then I’ll probably toss in some CSUs. </p>
<p>Here are the other colleges:
Brown
Tufts
Wash U St. Louis
Yale
Vanderbilt (omg, they’re kind of annoying. They’ve been sending me mail since the end of freshman year. idk why and how they got my address. But it seems like a cool place)
Rice
Carnegie Mellon (okay, so I heard the first two years are crazy hard, so you’ve got to hang in there, but that’s what I’ve heard from CS majors. Not sure about the other majors.)
U Rochester
Wellesley
Macalester
Pomona/Scripps
Puget Sound
Willamette </p>
<p>Most of these may be impossible unless they truly have a holistic admission process, which I really doubt. I mean, okay, so my GPA isn’t incredibly bad, but right now I kind of screwed up my upward trend. I’m studying for next semester right now, and hopefully I can reinstate my upward trend. :(</p>
<p>I wish I could waive gym…I play sports year round I don’t know why I need gym</p>
<p>My school requires one semester of PE freshman year and that’s it. I have not taken a gym class since. </p>
<p>Is anyone applying to any prestigious summer programs this year? I have one in mind and the others are somewhat easy to be accepted to because they cost a lot of money.</p>
<p>I am applying to TASP and Clark Scholars, but if I am not accepted then I will just be working at my usual job.</p>
<p>I applied and am a finalist for the nc governor’s school. It’s incredibly prestigious-in NC at least.
If not, I’ll probably take AP Calc AB over the summer (I know I should have taken it this year but it didn’t fit so I took AP Statistics instead); if I do this, I’ll probably just spend all summer working and playing tennis.
Another option I could pursue is an internship at a “green” company. I am, without a doubt, guaranteed the position for a few reasons.
There they are, in order of preference.</p>
<p>@dukehopeful: What subject area did you apply for? I was nominated to attend governors school in the natural sciences but declined it to pursue a program at Davidson College (the number one college on my list).
Also, how exactly are you taking Calc over the summer? I contemplated doing dual enrollment while keeping a steady job to occupy myself over the summer, if the Davidson thing doesn’t work out. By the way, are you familiar with the Summer Ventures program in our state?</p>
<p>I’ve recently gained interest in Penn State and intend to major in Toxicology. It’s something different and really cool.</p>
<p>I applied for a research internship NCI for cancer research and I’m in the process of applying to another research internship dealing with infectious diseases. The NCI is really competitive, but the infectious diseases isn’t as competitive but still hard to get into so we’ll see lol.</p>
<p>I haven’t applied to anything yet but I might if I get around to writing essays.</p>
<p>I’m applying to lots of programs, but thankfully there are only three essays that I have to write - all of them have the same questions. I just have to tweak them a bit for each separate program. I’m kind of worried that the teachers I asked for recs forgot over winter break - RSI is due Jan 11. Well, oh well, if it’s too late, then I probably wouldn’t have gotten in anyways.</p>
<p>I am really interested in UCSD’s cognitive science with specialization in neuroscience major. What I really want to major in is computational neuroscience, but unfortunately such a major doesn’t exist. However, the colleges that I found that do offer such opportunities as research are UCSD, Brown, Vanderbilt, Wellesley, and CMU.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any tips for writing summer program essays?
I’m sort of a weak applicant because I have good grades and test scores but not too many relevant ECs or previous experience/knowledge. I’m not sure what I can say other than I’m interested in the subject.</p>
<p>I’m probably getting an internship at Johns Hopkins Bayview with the National Institutes of Health. Gonna get some more publications under my belt :)</p>
<p>well, probably having good grades and test scores is more of a foot in the door than crappy grades. Sure, extracurriculars are good but I guess you just have to show your passion.</p>
<p>You could probably write about a particular instance you knew you wanted to do whatever type of summer program you are applying to.</p>
<p>Me, on the other hand, I have to write extremely good essays, and make my ECs look good/better than they are now. I guess I have good science extracurriculars but I wouldn’t count on them. Since I have crappy grades. Plus I am Asian, which means they will be harder on me since I don’t have a 4.0 UW GPA and 2400 SAT.</p>
<p>^ I agree. A lot of people say that you want your application to have a certain “theme” to it.</p>
<p>If you’re just some plain upper-middle class suburban white/Asian kid just like the 80% of the other kids who apply who hasn’t really done anything unique or experienced any interesting hardships, you’re probably not getting in unless you have some amazing academics. Harvard (and other top schools) could pick enough of these kids (many of which have stellar academics, mind you) to fill their freshman class 10x over. They want a student body where each student has their own unique experiences to share.</p>
<p>That’s my experience, anyways, with the few kids I’ve known who have gone to top schools. All had solid but not necessarily outstanding academics (by Harvard standards, talking about 2200 SAT and 3.9 GPA), but they all had their own stories to tell. One was a military brat who lived in several different countries in Europe, one had a really cool and unique hobby, and one grew up really poor and had to work to support his family, but still managed to spend time being an outstanding athlete and scholar.</p>