Good for you that you have a strong academic record so far and you are planning ahead. Mycology is a pretty specific subject - you are only in junior high, so don’t be surprised if your interests change in high school, or even in college.
Here is some general advice, regardless of what you want to study in college:
Research the career paths for people in majors that interest you. For example, in mycology would you be doing medical research, agricultural research or raising mushrooms for food? Broaden your horizons to similar or related fields. Don’t just read information online; try to talk to people in those fields. Be shameless and ask people about their careers, and you will find that most are happy to help.
Don’t get hung up on status when you apply to colleges. Instead, focus on fit. To this end, when the time comes visit schools you are considering. Many students change their minds about schools after a campus visit.
When you are evaluating colleges, think about the possibility of changing majors. Focus on schools which are strong in multiple fields in which you are interested.
Admissions officers favor candidates who had a few ECs, but they showed advancement, leadership and accomplishment. A student who earned Eagle Scout, and/or lettered in a sport is more impressive than one who joined eight clubs to pad their application.
Keep up the good work academically. Take the hard classes, especially in STEM. Prepare for your standardized tests with tutoring and practice exams.
Enjoy high school. It is not all about grades, and you can make lifelong friends there. Take some risks, and get in a little trouble (that does not result in suspension, expulsion, or a police report). Explore.
As luck would have it, my younger son is entering his senior year and he also is interested in mycology (though that might change). Because of this, we have started looking for schools with programs in that field. Some schools bin mycology in their biology departments, and others in agriculture. A few treat mycology as a multi disciplinary lab. Here are some schools with undergraduate mycology programs: Purdue, UW Madison, Ohio State, Oregon State, NC State, and Washington State. Note that we were only looking at schools with agricultural science programs that also had mycology, so there are mycology programs that did not make our list.
I became interested in mycology (I agree it’s very esoteric) simply through taking walks in my neighborhood and noting the unique morphology of the fungi I saw. Knowing fairly little about what they were I grew curious as to how they were categorized and that fascination has snowballed into something far larger.
This happens a lot in our feederish HS too. All of the kids being admitted to the most selective colleges are what I would call good students, but they are not necessarily among the best students in their class. Sometimes, but sometimes not. And sometimes they are recruited athletes, but definitely not always, or even most of the time. And I do think arts can be another way of standing out, and plenty of other stuff too.
But I am a little torn on all that sort of thing, because I have also seen it not work. Like, a kid is a great athlete in middle school, both they and their parents put a lot into that during high school, but then for whatever reason the kid isn’t recruited anywhere, or not anywhere they want to go. I think performing arts again can work kinda the same way, and other similar “year round” intense activities.
And of course I have no way of knowing for sure what that meant for their grades, college admissions, merit offers, and so on. But I have talked to quite a few kids or parents who think they did end up sacrificing some academics for their activity, and in their case they felt it didn’t pay off in terms of colleges or scholarships or so on.
So personally, I would not discourage someone from doing something like that, if they love it. But I would not necessarily encourage someone who did not love it. It might work out to benefit them for college purposes, but I think in many cases it does not.
Kids still need to meet benchmarks in terms of stats, think, at least for the arts.
I would never ever suggest doing an EC intensely (along with doing less rigor) just to get into a college! Unfortunately, I have met families who do sports and all kinds of things (buying a condo in Cambridge so the kid can go to Cambridge public hs with high admission rate). I just want to emphasize the colleges do want a variety of talents and interests and the idea of pursuing authentic “passions” can mitigate a few changes to the most rigorous course choices.
Yes, and if it was at all unclear, I was in not way intending to imply that you were suggesting that.
I was just reflecting on my own experiences, and how I find this topic so hard to discuss without getting wrapped up in all sorts of qualifications. Like, I love the kids with a real passion, I love to see them do their thing, and like you I want them to understand that is NOT a negative for college admissions.
But then it feels like every time people (not me, but important people like AOs) say something like that, it gets misinterpreted as a statement that if it is not a negative, it must be a positive. And if it is a positive, then it is basically obligatory for anyone who really wants to go to a top college. Which is obviously not what AOs intend kids to take away from this sort of discussion either.
Oh well. Fortunately, the OP seems very sharp and mature to me for their age (or actually any age), so I suspect this will not be a hard distinction for them to make, if it even comes up in their experience.
Just a bit of career information to add. I’m a retired forester who worked with US Forest Service forest pathologists (and entomologists) to address forest health problems on the forests I managed. At least one of the pathologists I worked with had a grad degree in mycology.
I never knew that working in forestry with one of these specialties was even a possibility when I was getting my degree. Had I known, I might have taken a different path.
Mycology seems very cool; keep working on that. Ask the professor if there are any important lab skills you could be learning for mycology research. What does the advanced math program consist of, exactly? Is it just taking a higher level maths class like geometry or algebra 2 in 9th grade, or something more serious like prep for the AMC 10 exam?
When I was in 9th grade, I didn’t know what the Ivy League was. I eventually got into one.
Trying to prepare for one of those schools won’t get you there.
Formulas don’t work. Resume-building doesn’t work. Those who get in do something or some things that are unusual, have a specialty niche, and most importantly, that they can’t be stopped from doing.
Have some fun in high school. If you naturally do the right things, you might get into a top school. If you don’t, it won’t be the end of you, anyway.