Military Kid Question

MissWanderlust
Wed, 02 Oct 2013 18:12:52 +0000

I’m a military kid who’s a junior (Navy brat specifically) and I move around pretty frequently. My current high school is my 8 or 9th school and my second high school (but my time there was cut short a little). The first high school that I went to was a private IB school, very challenging and certainly a wake up from my public middle school.

My GPA there was a 3.5 freshmen and 3.4 sophomore, which is a miracle considering that the would be valedictorian in the senior class (they didn’t rank) only had a 3.6 and our profs are pretty tough. My current school I have a 4.0 and I’m taking 2 AP (1 dual enrolled) and the rest are all honors. But that’s not my main concern.

My main concern is that because I move around so much I’m not able to show the deep commitment to ECs and volunteer work. Every time I start something and start to settle in I move. My mom was also recovering from cancer and my dad was working a lot so I was busy with school and taking care of her. This worries me because along with my SAT/ACT(I’m terrified that I won’t score a 650 or above on Math) I’m concerned that schools like Brown, NYU, and Boston U will hold my lack of commitment to ECs and volunteer work against me.

That being said I do have some things that could possibly help me out:
ECs
-piano for about 10 years
-soccer for 11 years
-Knowledge Bowl 2 years (I really loved this one and if I stayed at my old school I would’ve been President currently I’m looking for a team that I can play on locally)

Volunteer work
-Breast cancer walks with my mom, helping out with fundraising and other runs etc.
-holiday volunteering(Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.) gift-wrapping and soup kitchens and the like

beginning tutoring kids in writing,reading, and history
-beginning volunteering in the Army hospitals mainly with veterans.

Also on what I do with my summers: Freshman year I didn’t get to do anything because I was moving and we traveled by car cross country

Sophomore Year- I did some even planning for the kids on the Naval Base and babysat for the other parents that lived on base with me for the whole 1 1/2 years I was there. Added note, because my parents sent me to the private school that I was at we didn’t really have the money to send or fly me anywhere for college intensives. And the summer of my junior year I again didn’t get to do anything because I moved again.

Junior Year- I’m applying for a Government internship (preferably State Dept. or Veterans Affairs) a State Department French language intensive, and a Rotary summer exchange to either England or France. I’m not excluding other college programs though.

I hope I don’t sound like I’m whining, but I’m super concerned that colleges like Brown’s caliber are going to be turned off from me because of my ECs if I don’t have an amazing SAT Math score. I guess I want some advice from the good posters of CC and if there’s anything that I can do to improve my situation since it’ll do me no good to sit and my butt. Help please? (I also wasn’t sure whether to post this under college admissions or the Brown forum so don’t shoot me haha :)

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