How to make a competitive application?

[softplum]

Hi! I’m in the class of '23 and I just wanted to to make sure I was on a good track for Columbia (my dream school)
Currently I’m on an AP track (meaning if I do good this year sophomore year onward I’ll be taking AP classes).
I’m in a special public school for the humanities and I’m an African american female if that means anything.
My extracurriculars are theatre, field hockey, ballet, and leaders club and I plan to do French club and NHS in hs.
When I graduate I should have around 800 volunteer hours.
What can I do to make a more competitive college application? Thank you. ??

[MWolf]

Rather than rewrite it, I’ll copy and paste it:

At the risk of sounding like a broken record:

The college which you will attend should be determined by your high school years. Your high school years should NOT be determined by whatever college you now imagine is your “dream school”.

Figure out which high school plan will challenge you, interest you, and allow you to develop your strengths, shore up your weaknesses, explore directions which interest you, and end high school better prepared for your life than you are now, at the age of 13 or 14.

Choose ECs which interest you, ECs which allow you to continue older interests and explore new ones. Look at ECs which allow you to change things or which prepare you for this. Engage in ECs which provide education and activities which are not provided in your high schools Course Catalog.

You do not have “Dream Colleges”, because you have absolutely no idea what college life is like. It is not comparable to K-8, and you have no way of figuring out which college will provide you the best environment in which to succeed. You do not know what things will be important for you in one year, much less in three. The emotional and physical changes which you will experience in the next three years will be profound enough that your priorities and interests are likely to change to the point that you would not recognize them as your own if you saw them now.

Not only do you not really know what you will study in college, you also have little idea as to what you CAN study in college.

You are trying to figure out where you want to go in your life. High School will, hopefully, help you with that. College is merely the next step in that process, so don’t treat it as though it were the goal of the process.

PS. also make sure that your HS plan will fulfill the widest set of required core courses for colleges. While you shouldn’t be focused on college, you also shouldn’t be limiting your options, either.