<p>I really want to go to a top college like cornell, and I’m trying to get good grades, but so far im half way through soph. year and have 3 semester B’s >.< I think I should have good leadership and community service, and I’m starting a nonprofit community organization. I just want ideas about what should I do over this 2 and a half week break from school. I just plan to study SAT major and do many hours of community service. Any other ideas or is that just good?</p>
<p>Your ECs are not going to compensate for your stats. You will need better than B average to get into a school like Cornell. You should spend time to get ahead with your schoolwork. Do you have midterms in Jan, research papers due? If not, why not try to get ahead with your next semester’s work. If you are a slow reader,maybe start with your history reading (organize your notes), do your English reading. If you have trouble with math, then go over your problem spots to be ready for next semester. If you feel pretty prepared, then start with SAT II preparations (Math I, Chemistry). If you could get 1 or 2 SAT IIs out of the way, you’ll be ahead of the game, hence less pressure when you are a Junior.</p>
<p>My older daughter is a Junior at Cornell. I know she is doing tutoring for a lot of high school students this break to get them ready for next semester. My younger daughter is a sophomore in high school (luckily we don’t need to pay her older sister to tutor her), and she is spending good part of her winter break on SAT IIs. If you haven’t done so already, try to map out when you need to take your tests (they should be mapped to courses you are taking in school). Good planning is to finish all of your testing by Junior year, which would leave you with more time for your college applications senior year.</p>
<p>You may want to start planning your college visits. If you are looking at schools like Cornell, then you probably are taking a very heavy course load and a lot of ECs. Junior year is usually a killer year for most people. Try to see if you could do some visits this spring.</p>
<p>I’m also a Cornell parent.</p>
<p>Cornell tends to emphasize GPA over other factors in its admissions process – and their admissions officers will tell you this outright. So putting an emphasis on getting good grades is crucial.</p>
<p>Use your winter break to prep for SATs, SAT IIs, and upcoming academic work for school. You’ll have more time over the summer for community service, etc.</p>
<p>prepping for SAT’s help you with school and AP’s in general, so that might not be a bad idea. </p>
<p>3 B’s won’t hurt you in Sophomore… as long as you don’t continuing getting B’s lol I have 3 B’s on my transcript (Canadian B’s, which means 70’s), a couple A-'s (I can count off 4 right off the bat) and apparently, they weren’t that big of a deal. </p>
<p>Just try to get ahead in school and you should be fine. That’s the best advice I can give you.</p>