As of now, I’m semi-unsure of where I stand, but the schools I’m really looking to get into are ones like UC-Berkeley, Northwestern, and Carnegie Mellon (I’m likely attending for engineering). Of course, I have two public schools in my state that have decent engineering programs, but there is an obvious drop-off between the two groups of schools I just mentioned. I’d just like to get more of a sense of where I stand in relation to these groups so I can better gauge my chances come the end of this year. Though I’ve extended some of my extracurriculars to count my senior year as well, the results are all as of my junior year. So here we go:
White male, junior
Classes: Most challenging my school has to offer, 4.0 unweighted GPA (my school doesn’t give a weighted GPA on a 4.0 scale though unfortunately), will have taken 9 AP classes by the end of my senior year
Tests: ACT: 35 composite, first time; taking SAT subject tests soon in Math L2 and Chem, aiming for at least a 750 in both
Extracurriculars: Varsity soccer (3 years), Science Olympiad (4 years, medaling multiple times at regional competition and once at state competition), TSA (3 years, medaling multiple times at state competition), STEM Governor’s Challenge (2 years, captain for both, medaling once so far in region), World Affairs competition (3 years, captain for 2, medaling twice so far in region), Quiz-bowl team appearing on a local television show (2 years), multi-cultural club (2 years, already been told I’ll be advising it next year), National Honor Society (2 years, possibly an officer position next year), NHS-tutoring (3 kids this year), and this summer I will be interning at the World Affairs council of my local city, which runs the world affairs competition in which I have competed.
Essays: I think pretty good at least, I’m an above average writer and I’ll likely begin writing them early enough that I’ll be able to go through multiple drafts.
So what kinds of schools should I be looking at? And if I’m not a good candidate for the three top choices I mentioned above, what kinds of things could I do over the summer and in my senior year? Any response is greatly appreciated.