What should I be doing for college? (Sophomore)

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Hello, I’m a sophomore in a public school in Philadelphia and I’m wondering how I should be preparing for college.

Throughout the school year, I earned a number of B’s but managed to keep a cumulative with all A’s during freshman year. I took African American History MADV, Algebra 2 ADV, English 1 MADV, Chinese 2 Adv, PE, and AP Biology. (M stands for magnet, which is supposedly consisting of good students but pretty much everyone is in it.) My school doesn’t offer all the AP courses and only juniors and seniors could take them, occasionally 1 for sophomores. I took AP Bio as a freshman and got the only 5 on the test.

Meanwhile, currently, I’m taking Chinese 3 Adv, AP Chemistry, Pre-Calculus Honors, English 2 Adv, AP Psychology, and AP World History. As of now, I am VERY worried about my GPA since AP Chemistry is particularly hard. Not the content, but rather my teacher. I cannot seem to achieve a cumulative of an A by the end of the year, as he counts tests and homeworks 50% but rarely grades the tests. I got 84(which still acquired envy of some classmates), then 90, but now I have an 81 due to 62 on the only test in this marking period. The quarter is ending soon and I hope he will put in more grades but I’m not counting on that. Will an A or a B in AP Chemistry matter in the long run? Also, I’m self studying for AP Computer Science but I’m only taking the AP test and not getting credit for the course.

On the extracurricular’s side, I am very weak. In freshman year, I joined Asian Student’s Association and Math Club. Now, I was in Science Olympiad but the competition got cancelled due to reasons out of the school’s control. I also play tennis and will likely be Varsity player next year. I am still in Math Club currently and I joined an engineering program as UPenn. I hope to sign up for some summer programs this year and I have gotten accepted into NHS for next year. I believe I need to work on my leadership skills since I do not hold any leadership positions.

2

One B in a class by itself won’t make a difference, but a downward trend going from all As to Bs will. Try to work on maximizing Junior grades as those are the most important, but don’t give up on challenging AP courses completely either. Your ECs actually seem fine: Tennis and Math/Science Olympiad are fairly diverse. I wouldn’t blindly join something to improve your resume. Since Science. Olympiad got cancelled maybe try to find some other Science/Math club would enjoy and join that. NHS would be good too like you said if you like it. Leadership’s hard to come by but I don’t think it’s a particular weakness for you. Usually by senior year I would say most students try to hold a leadership position in whatever clubs they’ve been I for four year (for you would that maybe be tennis?) unless at their school they’re team is huge with a large senior population. I would say in general dedication and quality of ECs is more important than quantity. If you find quality than leadership positions will generally come at some point.

3

I see. Thank you for the feedback. What do you think would be colleges I should work for? I’d like to go to MIT but pretty sure nobody in my school has ever been accepted, as long as I’ve been here. I’m not sure if I’m the type of person who’d been able to compete against other amazing students or focus on getting into a slightly less competitive college. I’ve heard from a friend that you’d need to be extremely well-rounded or win some type of competition. She did well on SATs and is very talent in math yet got rejected from her top three colleges, which she seems to blame her GPA as she moved in between the year. This makes me worried because she is clearly a very smart student, involved in clubs, self studied and got high SAT score, yet didn’t get accepted.