High School Sophomore that needs help!

College Search & Lists
1

Hey guys,

I am a high school sophomore that has just started at a private college preparatory school in California. Discussions about college have been coming up at school and at home. Last year I felt I did pretty well academically and athletically. Academically, I had a 3.95 UW GPA- 4.10 W GPA, and I became a member of our schools Model UN Club as well as our Finance Club (I participated in both). Athletically, I played JV Water polo and freshman baseball, this year I am playing JV water polo again and I will play JV Baseball in the spring. In the summer of 2017, I started a free baseball camp for kids in a neighborhood that isn’t very nice (the hood of my county), and I continued the camp this year as well. I really want to go into finance, I am very interested in trading stocks and started trading last year with my own money. This summer I am hoping that a family friend that I am personally very close with will let me shadow/intern with his for a week at the investment firm he is working at. Besides that, I don’t really know what extracurricular to do to make me stand out. Also, I am also worried that colleges will look down on my career dreams because most dislike Wall Street. So, the worry I have is that I am not doing anything that will have me stand out to colleges and I have no idea what to do to. Please help.

Colleges I am Shooting for:
USC
UCLA
UPenn
Duke
Dartmouth
UVA
UMich
UT at Austin

2

chill
just keep working hard and doing what you enjoy
you will end up at a good school

3

You’re doing great, don’t worry too much. Think about an award or two you could win, so you can fill out that section on the common app. Take challenging classes to up your weighted GPA. Become especially good at two or three things. I don’t think colleges look down on finance like you said.

4

Colleges that are strong in finance don’t look down on finance! You might think about Lehigh, which recently opened a Bay Area recruiting office to attract more California students - finance is their most popular major. If you visit UPenn, Lehigh is only about an hour outside the city. Claremont McKenna in SoCal could also be worth a look.

You’re also going to need safety schools. There are good options in the CA public system, but perhaps also look at the undergrad finance majors at U of Denver and U of Puget Sound. Both have selective leadership-oriented honors programs that might be a good fit for you.
https://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/departments-and-programs/undergraduate/school-of-business-leadership/business-leadership-program/
https://www.du.edu/leadership/

5

“I don’t really know what extracurricular to do to make me stand out.”

This is completely the wrong approach for you (or anyone to take) regarding your ECs. You shouldn’t view ECs from a mercenary perspective of getting into a college or university; rather, your ECs should reflect things that you enjoy doing and for which you have a passion. Your ECs will stand out if they show commitment, passion, and leadership ability. That is what admissions officers look for, not simply having an amazing EC that is on your resume.

I also agree with the above poster(s) who think that you should take a step back from the process; your comments suggest to me that you are stressing way too much at this point in time. High school is not simply a 4-year college prep course; and life is about more than where you are admitted to college or university. Suggest to your parents that they need to back off and stop talking with you about college admissions at this point, because there is time enough for that later; and stay away from classmates who talk about it at school.

6

Isn’t the point of going to a private college prep school to have access to counselors to answer questions like this?