Hey OP! You’e gotten lots of good advice already and I wanted to shed a bit of light on the music aspect of things. Note that UGA does not offer music scholarships to music minors (although, you still have to audition; if you still intend to go through with a music minor at uga, start prepping your audition rep by at least beginning of next summer if not towards the start of second semester of junior yr. UGA requires a movement from a standard violin concerto, an etude, two three octaves scales + arpeggios, and a movement from solo bach. paganini caprices also seem to be accepted, but make sure to email and check). You could consider an AB in music if you would still like the chance to get a scholarship; I’d say you have a very good chance at receiving one. Kennesaw also has a great music program and great violin professors. I’m unsure if they offer scholarships to music minors, but you’d be a great contender.
Georgia tech doesn’t seem to have a music minor program and they don’t offer music lessons through music faculty. However, the close proximity to atl should help you get in contact with many violin teachers (a good amount of aso members likely teach lessons in the atl area). GT has an audition-only symphony orchestra. Scholarships also seem to only go to music technology students, although I could be wrong about that.
I’ll warn you that getting a music scholarship from Rice, Vanderbilt, and UMich could be difficult for a music minor (being a violinist doesn’t exactly help either). Rice also doesn’t seem to have a music minor program, although you can take courses in music with approval.
It’s important to find colleges with great programs for your major but also start thinking about things such as location, culture of the general student body, extracurricular opportunities, diversity, and campus size. I’ll throw in a few suggestions:
Bowdoin, Davidson, Middlebury (liberal arts colleges; could be reaches)
Indiana university bloomington, SUNY ESF (can be good safeties)
University of Rochester, Lehigh (could be targets)
Wake Forest, Boston University (could be reaches)
Shifting the topic away from music and colleges, if you want even more of a boost to your EC’s (which are already really great!), try for Governors Honors Program! They should offer a field in sciences that interest you and that you can apply for. The application process starts early iirc and I think you need a teacher to recommend you for it by late August/early September. Talk to your school counselor or a teacher (your APES teacher should be good to talk to and doing so could help you establish a rapport with them that would be useful for letters of rec. i’m going off on a tangent here, but the APES teacher could also appreciate you helping out after school or in lunch breaks. Science teachers often need some help with labs and APES teachers especially, if they also have animals kept in the classroom to take care of).
On the topic of letters of rec, your orchestra teacher would be an AMAZING recommender. They would have seen how you’ve grown over four years and if you stick with the orchestra student mentorship club, they’ll be able to attest to your initiative, leadership, compassion, and lots of other great qualities. The only caution I have is that they might be counted as an “other” for recommender instead of a teacher, which would make you need to find another core teacher for recommendations. Your engineering teacher should fulfill that requirement though!
You have a very good set of EC’s, are already a very strong applicant, and have a good list going! College applications can be stressful and as a recent hs graduate (also from ga!), the advice I have for you is that you don’t need to have it all figured out right now. Think about college applications, but don’t let it consume you (at least not until midway/towards the end of your junior year, haha)
