HS Rising Junior: Need some guidance - please help.

PatCS
Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:42:22 +0000

I am going to by a junior in high school next year. My goal is to become an aerospace engineer. I am very enthusiastic about doing this and have been for quite a while. On the side of school work and athletics, I love to read and learn about engineering, astrophysics, etc. etc. Also, like so many others, it would be a dream for me to be able to pursue this passion at a school like MIT. I know what I want to do and achieve - the only problem is I don’t know how exactly to go about doing it.

The school I go to does pretty well academically for our state. Unfortunately, however, the state I live in is South Carolina - ranked number 50, I believe, in the US for its schools and academics (that’s kind of a joke - but its mostly, if not 100%, true). Anyhow, here are my credentials…

PSAT:
Critical Reading: 59
Mathematics: 64
Writing Skills: 56

Previous Classes:

Biology Honors

Chemistry Honors

required Maths, also Honors

no AP classes

Junior Year Classes (07-08):

English IV Honors (1st Semester)

PreCal Honors (2nd Semester)

US History AP (1st and 2nd Semester)

Chemistry AP (1st and 2nd Semester)

Latin III Honors (1st Semester)

Latin IV Honors (2nd Semester)

Senior Year Classes (08-09): (school switches from “8 Period Semester” Schedule to “Year Round 7 Period” Schedule)

English AP (Year-round 2 class periods)

Calculus BC (Year-round 2 class periods)

Physics AP (Year-round 2 class periods)

Government and Economics (Year-round 1 class period, required class)

GPA:
I’m not too sure about this. I asked my guidance counselor and they said it was a 4.7 on an Honors Scale of 5.375.

Class Ranking: 14 out of 373

Extracurricular Activities:

Wrestling (lettered both Freshman and Sophomore years; will be Captain my Junior year)

Cross Country

Okay. Now here’s my problem, other that the fact that my GPA and PSAT scores are much lower than they should be (I’m working very hard on improving both): To be honest, I really don’t know what I need to be doing to even get considered for getting accepted to a school of MIT’s caliber. There is really no one here (here meaning South Carolina) to ask about this sort of thing. All the guidance counselors here seem to talk or know anything about is “what you need to do to get into Clemson to be a farmer or mechanic,” which is (no offense to anybody) certainly not where I’d like to go or what exactly I’d like to do. On that note, I am (realistically) planning on going to the Citadel like my father and older brother. Like my brother, I think I should be able to get in on a full academic scholarship, depending on how much I improve. I want to major in physics and/or mechanical engineering and then try to get into MIT for grad school. MIT, though, is more or less my “dream school” for undergrad.

(Just a note: my interest in the Citadel is not based on academics, which it lacks in considerably. Rather, it is the fact that the Citadel focuses a great deal on character building - something that I feel will be very important as I grow older. That, however, is a bit off topic from my goal of getting into MIT and the point of this post.)

Anyhow, I will quit going on and get to the point. I am utterly lost as to what I need to be doing to prepare myself for applying and no one I talk to seems to be of any help. While I realize that I need to raise my standardized test scores and GPA, what I’d really like to know is what extra things should I be doing to even put me on the level of competing with all of the other people applying to MIT? For example, what kind of summer programs are available options? While I have spent the majority of my previous summers attending wrestling camps and tournaments and training, academics are (obviously) my first priority, and I would love the opportunity to get to participate in some sort of science (particularly physics, astronomy, or aerospace) program. Also, are there any research opportunities or science competitions that it would be possible to take part in? Again, I am really not too aware of what is available or what would be the best choice, so any recommendations would be extremely helpful.

In addition to this, I am a bit unsure about some of the classes I should be taking - this is mostly in regards to my Latin IV and US History AP classes. Would it be better to replace them with classes such as Digital Electronics Honors or Biology AP (respectively)? While I’m not too enthusiastic about US History AP, our school does not offer too many AP classes and I am required to take some form of US History to graduate, so I’m a bit stuck.

Thank you for reading this and thank you in advance for any help, comments, opinions, or recommendations. It is all greatly appreciated.