Also if all my Bs are in sophomore year and i get all As in junior year could that help my situation potentially?
I dont think thatâs going to help you much. The T20 schools get so many applications, they probably wont have time to parse out these nuances - maybe if they were all in your freshman year, maybe.
Thatâs just my opinion.
Thanks for the reality check, i think iâll also email my counselor to ask about this. I just donât know if college admissions automatically filters out candidates from our school who arenât top 3%, or if itâs just correlation.
What is your area of interest? Ivies for example, not necessarily the best for CS or engineering - or certainly not stand out vs others.
You are stressing yourself for no reason. Next year youâll apply to a range of schools, and from there youâll know.
Honestly, you are wasting energy on this vs having fun.
College admissions are about far more than grades - there the SAT, essays, Letters of Rec extra curriculars. Want to help yourself - get a summer job.
This conversation is not helpful to you for many reasons, starting with forcing stress upon yourself.
@supernova61 a primary care doctor can prescribe antidepressants. They are very effective. One good one is Lexapro. You can start at a low dose and move up. It takes a couple of weeks to take effect but there is some improvement sooner than that. You absolutely do not have to suffer like this and college will be very difficult with frequent recurrences. You might end up with medical leaves.
You are clearly in a toxic environment. Not just from the bullying but from the expectation of Ivy admission and the idea that only the top 20 colleges are worthwhile. Please look at the website ctcl.org and read about those schools. There are students who give up Ivies to go to those schools, and schools like Bard or Bennington. Does your counselor talk about other schools?
You are under a lot of pressure worrying about GPAâs to the decimal point and fearing that you will somehow be a failure if you donât get into Harvard et al. A therapist could help with this but it is also a product of depression and meds may help with the focus on Ivies as well.
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Honestly my counselor hasnât even begun to discuss colleges with me yet, i think she will do so next semester. I think I will look into other colleges though, but my counselor assured me that I would be guaranteed admission into UT austin so i guess thatâs a safety?
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Also thank you for the suggestion about antidepressants but my parents are VERY against me being medicated. They think that it is a waste of money and that I will be worse for having taken the medication
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UT Austin may guarantee you admissions based on your class rank but they wont guarantee your major.
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We crossposted! UT Austin is a great school!
You are not the only person who has come on here saying parents are against medication. That is often cultural. Would they agree to let you go to a primary care doctor where you could ask the doctor to talk to your parents? Or if they insist, they could be in the room where you describe your depression. I want to be respectful of your parents but your depression sounds severe and it can alter the trajectory of your life and even be dangerous.
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I did talk about my depression to my primary care doctor, and instead of suggesting ways for it to be treated, she suggested that some of the symptoms (low energy/motivation to do anything, feeling sad) were the result of me being lazy and having no work ethic which my parents agreed with 
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Yeah iâve been so stressed about this part especially, I feel like every other part of my application is going to be at least decent but my class rank is failing me
That is truly shocking coming from a doctor. In my state, primary care doctors screen for depression at every appointment. There is a book entitled âThe Myth of Laziness.â I am so sorry you had the experience of doctor and parents agreeing in an appointment when you should have been helped. Once you are 18 things will be easier.
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Also, how would I go about asking my guidance counselor to see whether a top 4-5% ranked applicant from my school is competitive for a top 20 school? Do i just email her and ask?
Im not sure how your school works but I assume you can email or make an appointment.
If you want to apply to a T20 school you should probably get to know your guidance counselor because you may need them to write a recommendation letter.
With all due respect, saying that medication for depression is a waste of time and money is like telling an insulin dependent diabetic to just âfigure it outâ.
There are hundreds of millions of people around the world who have been safely and effectively treated for depression with medication. Yes, you can treat it with intensive therapy and other interventionsâ but there is no reason to suffer from being unable to get out of bed- even if it âonlyâ happens a few times a year.
Perhaps a different doctor- the narrative you could use with your parents is that you are outgrowing your pediatrician now that college will be coming up, so youâd like to establish a relationship with an family medicine doc (internist, even a PA working for a primary care physician practice) who works with adolescents AND adults.
I cannot fathom a physician dismissing a patients concerns around mental health but you were in the room and I wasnât. But you donât need a psychiatrist to prescribe an anti-depressant.
Your grades are terrific. Stop obsessing about colleges which accept a tiny percentage of their applicants. If your counselor says you WILL get into UT Austin, and itâs affordable- hooray for you. One of the best flagships in the country! Youâve done the hard part, the rest is just filling out the application list (if you decide to apply to more schools).
And agree you need nicer friends. Iâm sure your town is filled with people who support each other, who applaud every win, and will make you feel like the best version of yourself. If that doesnât describe your HS friends, you still have time to meet new people so your social experience isnât so exhausting.
Hang in there. HS doesnât last foreverâŠ.
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This is exactly what I was thinking also.
A few things in particular come to mind.
One is that depression is quite common. A lot of famous and very accomplished people have at some point dealt with depression. A professor I know once told me that he thought that all of the smartest students who he has known at some point in their lives have dealt with depression. I suspect that âallâ is a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit. I do think that this is very common. Dealing with your depression is the most important thing. Our medical science has gotten a LOT better in recent years with dealing with depression. Whether you get over this with the help of therapy, or medication, or a combination, or in some other way, the important thing is to get yourself on track. It sounds like you are not quite there yet but this really is the most important thing.
The second thing that occurs to me is that there are a LOT of very good universities in the USA, and more elsewhere. You really do not need to attend Harvard or MIT or Stanford, or any top 50 school, or any top 100 school, to do very well in life. Graduates from these highly ranked schools routinely work alongside coworkers who have graduated from a very wide range of schools and in most cases no one cares where anyone got their degrees. MIT graduates and Stanford graduates routinely work alongside UNH graduates and U.Mass Lowell graduates and San Jose State graduates. Graduate students at the most famous schools and in the highest ranked graduate programs also come from a huge range of undergraduate schools. I know multiple people who have gotten graduate degrees from highly ranked programs and all of them have said that the other students in their graduate programs got their bachelorâs degrees from a huge range of colleges and universities.
One daughter is currently working towards a PhD at a very good university. Other students in her program come from a huge range of other schools (ranging from Harvard to U.Mass Lowell to a few universities that I have never heard of). Where they got their bachelorâs degree really does not matter. Whether the research that they are doing now actually works out is likely to make a big difference regarding whether and when they get their PhDâs. The cells they are each growing in petri dishes really do not care where any of them got their bachelorâs degree.
Also, I have had the good fortune to have met a number of very successful people in my life. As far as I recall, none of them took what anyone might have described as the most direct path to get to success. People try something and fail. Then they try something else. Some people graduate with a bachelorâs degree and have no idea what they want to do with their lives, so they try a few things. It is also very common for students to mess up in high school way worse than anything that you have done and end up doing very well in life. I for example know someone who is a Professor Emeritus at a university that he would never have been admitted to straight out of high school. He messed up big time in high school, and has been very successful and done very well since then.
This is a more important issue compared to a few Bâs in high school. I think that you should see a psychiatrist and get this worked out. There really is a lot of help that is possible. This can however take some time to get right. I do not think that you should start university until this has been dealt with. However, I do know people who have gone through similarly debilitating depression (maybe worse) and ended up doing very, very well in university and in their careers.
This does indeed sound toxic. Remember however that your friends are high school students. They do not have the years and years and years of experience that some of us parents have had. Some of us have actually seen how some of this works out in some cases. We have seen students mess up in high school (way, way worse than anything you are talking about), and end up doing very well. Often this starts with getting themselves on a healthy track, then (and only then) doing very well at a university that is not an Ivy League or similarly highly ranked school, and then taking any one of many possible paths to success that lead from here (such as going into a good career and doing well, or going to a highly ranked graduate school and doing well, or both).
On a different earlier thread I have also talked about a tough problem that completely stumped two MIT graduates, and then was solved very well by a U.Mass Amherst graduate. This is perfectly normal. There is nothing really all that special about MIT, Stanford, or any of the eight Ivy League schools. Yes these are great schools (and I have degrees from two of them, my wife from a third), but there are hundreds (if not thousands) of other great universities. Nearly all of them accept lots of students who do not have straight Aâs in high school.
Whether that will help you get admitted to Harvard or Stanford or MIT none of us can say. Admissions to these schools is very difficult. However, doing well from now on will help you a lot one way or another.
By the way, one daughter had mostly Aâs and a few Bâs in high school. Then she had mostly Aâs and a few Bâs in university. Then she had something like half Aâs and half Bâs in graduate school. What did they call her at work this past week? They call her âdoctorâ. She is where she wants to be. Those Bâs did not stop her, and really did not matter.
UT Austin is a superb university with many, many very strong programs.
You do not need to attend a top 20 university.
You need to step back. Forget about how kids do from your hs.
Like all, you will build a list, first based on affordability and then you first will need to find a safety. Thatâs not UT necessarily because a major wonât be guaranteed. But yes your school will tell you. Then find one more affordable safety. Then you can apply anywhere else. No one here can tell you why you get in or donât. So thereâs no point in wondering. No one here knows you. But 36/1600 4.0 will get turned down and 32/1450/3.7 will get in. Thereâs so much more than stats - thereâs first gen, things like musical instrument played or state from. Btw all your friends - theyâre statistically not going big time either. Then thereâs the most important thing - budget.
You have one life. Why make it miserable ? Study, learn and youâll end up where you do. And you will be fine. A school assures nothing. But your hard work, thatâs whatâs going to take you far in life.
You are honestly psyching yourself out for no reason. Your story hasnât yet been written. And you can write it well regardless of where you go.
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There are students at every one of the top 20 schools who had a few Bs in high school. There are students who got a 4.0 and 1600 on the SAT and arenât at Harvard. You canât control who else is applying to schools and how the AOs are going to evaluate the applications. You have to worry about your application and the things you can control. You can get mental health help now and that may help you create a very good application that shows how you are making your life the best it can be.
Concentrate on what you can do now, what you can control. Talk to your GC (thatâs what they are there for) and ask what you can do to improve your application. You canât change those Bs but maybe you can have a great essay, a fantastic volunteer position to add to your ECs, an award in debate or model UN. Donât miss classes. Make friends with a teacher who can help you find a good school FOR YOU. Maybe that school is in Texas or Boston, but maybe it is in Kansas.
You have to have an open mind and evaluate schools on how you fit in, not because there is a list of the top 10 or the most beautiful campus or the best football team.
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Thank you so much for this advice. Itâs been so hard to make friends honestly. I am completely drained from trying to keep myself in the closet because my school is generally homophobic (texas haha) and either as a result of this or coincidentally i also struggle to make new friends - maybe this might be one of the causes of my mental health issues? Also as soon as i turn 18 i am planning on getting myself a prescription lol
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Okay so after talking with a few of my friends I have learned that people who arenât even in the top 5% of the co 26 from my school got into colleges like Northwestern & uchicago (albeit ED) and rice. These people had perfect uw gpas and werenât even in top 5%. Do you know what this should say about me if my class rank is just barely inside top 5% but my unweighted gpa is significantly lower (3.93 ish at the end of junior year)?