High School Class of 2018

@BucketsUCSC Thanks for the offer! <:-P

@neonerudite That schedule would make even Kanye cry. Don’t take Stats(I’m in it right now and it’s intro material), see if you can take gov/macro over the Summer, and decide on another class you want to take the least. I’m not familiar with AP Research, so I don’t know the workload involved.

With your current schedule, you won’t have any time except the weekends to work on your college apps and study for the SAT. If you don’t crash first semester, senioritis will catch up and finish the job. I draw the line at 5 heavy AP classes max (some would even say 4).

@hamlon I have 4 heavy ones rn and I’m doing pretty good, my schools AP classes are pretty chill for the most part with work. Now, I might replace AP Stats with anatomy and physiology, but tbh it might be harder to keep up my grade in A&P rip. Unfortunately can’t take any classes over the summer :’( thanks for the advice!!!

When are u guys planning to do ur standardized tests? I’m hoping to get them all done by September of senior year hopefully lol.

I’m aiming to have my tests done by September as well, but hopefully I can have them done before then. My goal is to get perfect on the SAT, which would be doable if I improve 30 points on R/W this time (I usually get perfect on R/W, but last test went a little awry because I lost track of time) and improve 20 points on math. I need killer test scores to at least partially compensate for my less-than-stellar GPA.

hi guys! quick question: how important do you think sat 2 tests are? I’ve taken 2 but didn’t do too great, and honestly don’t really want to study for them. if my other test scores are good, do you think that I should still focus on raising them or can i just work on ec’s and gpa etc

@lilia3 my advisor always says in terms of test scores and whatnot that “more is more” so if possible do one that correlates with your normal classes like literature or biology or something so that you can kill 2 birds with one stone and review for the sat 2 while also reviewing material for class

My goal is to finish my standardized tests by the end of Junior year. I feel like taking standardized tests too many times just makes you look desperate for high scores, especially when they’re already high. Also, I don’t want to spend my summer worrying about prepping for tests but rather just working on college apps, maybe working a job, taking classes at my local university, and just having fun typical summer experiences with hanging out with people and stuff. The way I look at summer is that it’s an opportunity to develop as a person without the stress of school, and being a person is way more important to colleges than having perfect test scores.

Ugh just finished my APUSH homework with 28 minutes to spare haha now time to go to bed and wake up to another week of monotony haha

I just took a practice test and I finally got my goal math score! My goal for January is 1480, so a 1470(710/760) isn’t bad. I just need to raise R/W 20-30 more points to be safe.

@hamlon congrats! Good luck; you’ll do great.

Hey Guys,

So I was looking at summer programs that might be cool to check out:

Carnegie Mellon University – Summer Programs for Diversity
http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/summer-programs-for-diversity

Carnegie Mellon University – Summer Academy for Math + Science (SAMS)
http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/diversity-sams

Cornell Summer College
https://www.sce.cornell.edu/sc/about/index.php

Duke University’s TIP Academy for Summer Studies
https://tip.duke.edu/programs/field-studies

These are just the programs I’ve looked at! I’ll post more later!

@ak2018 Check out the African-American High School Class of 2018 thread. I dumped a lot of programs for minorities.

Shoutout to all my teachers who said that they will write the best recommendation letters they can! ^:)^

Honestly, writing all of these essays is going to be a pain!

1/8 summer program applications submitted!

After re-looking over some stuff, I’ve determined that my parent’s income qualifies for Questbridge. I am now considering the program even more now.

Question: Does the program cover application fees?

@ak2018 Yes. Also, there’s a college prep version for Juniors. It might allow you to visit some schools for the summer.

UGH I hate summer apps. Those suck, but what sucks more is Teacher Recs. I’m a good student, but I HATE asking teachers for recs. Im sure my teachers dont hate me but I’m just never close to any of my teachers. Any tips for warming up to teachers?

omg I hate asking for teacher recs too!!! I feel like its just so awkward after and I have no idea what the letter is going to say. I asked two teachers over the break for them and I’m going back to school tomorrow. It’s just going to be so awkward.

Does anyone have the pdf for AMSCO 2016?

I don’t know if anyone here likes football but I’m so pumped for the Natioanl Championship tonight. The game is amazing so far!

@Tobster18 Against CC policy to ask. You might get suspended.

The professor for my econ class wrote the class textbook and requires that we all buy the software, so the cheapest place I can buy it is digitally from the publisher. I hate this. The used paperback is $6, but now I have to pay over $60 for something I can’t even sell back. He also convinced most of his department to use the same book and software, so I’m stuck buying his book and shelling out extra for the book ‘supplement.’

I’d understand if I was taking a really eccentric course like ‘From Al Capone to El Chapo: the history of modern gangsters and crooks’ or ‘Tax Evasion 101’, but there are so many econ books out there already… :-L