I will be a junior in September 2016 in a New York City Public High School. My dream school is to attend Cornell University’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences as an Environmental and Sustainability Sciences Major. I’m just very concerned about my sophomore year records, even though my freshman year was good.
For my freshman year GPA was between a 97 and 99 for both semesters. I took Pre-AP Spanish (Spanish 3), Junior ROTC Year 1, Mythological Literature (Humanities Elective 1), Double Honors Chemistry, Honors Global History 9th Grade, Geometry, and Honors Latin 1 (Humanities Elective 2)
For my sophomore year, my GPA for the fall was between a 96 and 97, however my spring semester average dropped to between a 93 and 94. The classes I took were: Honors Physics, AP World History 10th Grade, Honors Concert Band, AP Spanish, English 10 Honors, Algebra 2/Trigonometry Honors, and Science Research 2nd Year.
My junior year classes consist of the following: English 11 Honors (Fall), Queensborough Community College’s College Now English Composition (Spring), Honors Pre-Calculus, AP Biology, Science Research 3rd Year, APUSH, and Honors Concert Band.
My sophomore year transcript has a range from 75-99 GPAs. This year was my first 70s and first 80s range ever. In my school, they only allow sophomores to take a maximum of 1 AP course, however I was underestimating the fact that AP classes, in a mediocre high school, weren’t going to be hard like the ones in a top notch high school. Also, my sophomore year was my first year doing science research, so I put my focus 100% on science research (trying to win awards in science fairs such as JSHS, NYCSEF, etc.). That is evident through my 95 in the fall and 99 in the spring for my science research class. For those reasons, my other averages weren’t the best.
Furthermore, my NYS Regents Score is higher than my class average, as you can see below:
-Physics GPA: 85 for fall and 75 for spring
-Physics Regents: 88
-AP World GPA: 85 for fall and 80 for spring
-Global Regents: 86
-Trig GPA: 93 for fall and 85 for spring
-Trig Regents: 94
Is that okay when applying to NYS Colleges, public or private? I understand that I want to be a science major and I didn’t do well in physics, but if I get a good GPA for AP Biology, would that make colleges think that my physics GPA was a “mistake”? Because during the spring semester, I was legitimately busy with a tremendous amount of science fairs. Considering how my sophomore year was my first year doing science research, I wasn’t aware of how much work I was going to deal with (prior to starting my sophomore year), thus my time management skills were not spot on then. Now realizing my mistake, I feel that I can manage it from junior year and beyond. So, would a high 90 in AP Biology kind of “redeem” my 85 and 75 in Physics?
Needless to say, I don’t exactly know how to do during junior year in order to “make up” for my bad sophomore year records. Considering that I did win two science fairs within the top 3 of my category, what GPA and SAT/ACT/SAT 2 scores would be ideal to make my dream colleges (1. Cornell CALS, 2. Columbia University, 3. Brown University, and 4. NYU Steinhardt) reconsider me as a good candidate for their college? I heard that a good extracurricular activities is needed to go to the Ivy Leagues and an elite private university.
As far as Cornell CALS is funded by SUNY, their standards a tiny bit lower than Cornell College of Engineering, for instance; what should my junior year look like, alongside my SAT/ACT/SAT 2 scores, in order to be a strong candidate for Cornell’s CALS? Thank you.