Hi!!! I’m a freshman in HS, and a rising sophomore. I have never believed I could do Harvard, since my whole life I was scared. My parents want me to go, so i never wanted to, but today i found it, that its not the point at all. They just want me to try and apply, and if I get in, that would be great yk? Anyways, i really bombed my ap macro, and micro ap tests this year. I though i did great, i took so many practice tests and got a projected score of 4 - 5, but looking at the frq answers i got them pretty much wrong, and MCQs I low-key guessed. I studied for long time, and its not that im bad at school either. I take these classes online. In school i take ap hug, and AP Pre-Calculus. I am confident much more in those tests. But is all chance gone? Will i get rejected based on these scores? I have big plans, i want to make apps, i want to help people etc. I want to be a doctor. Ik ecs are everything, but will these ap tests bring me down? Since everyone who applies to Harvard, Stanford, or john Hopkins are genius’s.
Why are you taking AP Econ is 9th grade. Problem one. The reason there are tests is so the competency can truly be measured. Some schools hand out As so a GPA in and of itself may not mean much.
Will you get into a top college you ask? I’m not sure what makes a top college but I’ll play along.
The answer is - I don’t know. After 11th grade and when you have an SAT, we can chance you. But you need to be more than just grades - ECs, essays, letters of recommendation, etc. And then you may need a lot of $$, more than some wealthy parents are willing to spend - $100k plus a year by then.
I do know that you are 14/15 and it’s waaaaay too early for anyone to put this type of stress on you. Please be a kid and your future will go as it should.
Everyone who applies to these schools are not geniuses.
Most universities allow you to include any/all/no AP scores. The exceptions being MIT, Stanford, and Caltech which require all scores.
Regardless, as a freshman, it’s too soon to think about Harvard.
I’ll refrain from talking about freshmen taking econ or anyone self studying.
I will say that in the future, know your audience. If you want experienced users to take you seriously, don’t post like you’re texting your friends.
I don’t know why I took AP Econ. I already knew economics since I was a low-key nerd, but idk what happened during the test. Its questions were nothing like I’ve ever seen. Honestly, like I get what you’re saying, its not that i want to go to Harvard, yk? I want to do well, and I’ve read too many horror stories about how not putting your score down immediately makes you rejected from any college you apply to.
Nonetheless you are years early from asking.
You’ll apply where you want (likely different places than you think today) and when you don’t get in (or when you get in to a selective school), you’ll never know why.
But you overreached. It’s too bad your school didn’t pull you in. Lesson learned. Be the best you that you can be and all will go as it should.
This…over and over.
It’s actually too soon to even guess what colleges might be good for you in three years.
At this point, do your personal best in high school. But at the same time, remember, you need to have high school fun too. You will never get these years back.
And free advice…when you start actually building your college list, please start with a sure thing for admission, that you like, that you would be happy to attend for four years…and is affordable. Start there…and then build your list up.
No they aren’t. But most applicants do well in high school.
Why are you taking two AP courses online at all? In addition to two at your school?
You are what…15 years old? Please put medical school on the back burner. This is a decision you can make way later. Right now, you should be doing the following…IMHO:
- Do your personal best in your classes. No need to accelerate or take online classes or summer in addition to what you take at your school.
- Find some ECs you enjoy, and do them.
- Prep for the PSAT you will take fall of your JUNIOR year of high school. And then prep for the SAT.
- Enjoy high school. You will never get these years back.
- When the time comes (mid grade 11) and you are crafting your application list, make sure it is a varied list…not just elite schools.
- IF you continue to be interested in medicine, keep in mind that you can take the required courses for medical school applicants at just about every four year college in this country.
Remember, you are the one who will be going to college. If you decide that you want to apply to Harvard, go ahead and do so…but remember that 95% of applicants who mostly are well qualified…get rejected every year.
And ask your parents what they are able to contribute annually to your college costs.
You’ve gotten great advice here. Namely, low key chill and for now stop thinking about college and focus on HS for now. Remember AP tests are college level material. Four AP tests your freshman year, including two that you self studied is a lot of pressure. If they aren’t scores you want, you just won’t report them when the time comes to apply. But again, set that all aside.
Lock in on the best grades you can get in the courses that will be challenging but allow you to succeed. Find the extracurriculars you love and dive in. Make friends. Even I as an unfortunately combo tiger mom/helicopter parent know you’re jumping the gun and will burn yourself out. KWIM?
You are wrong here. ECS are NOT “everything”. A well rounded and strong application is needed. GPA, SAT scores, essays, LOR, ECs.
First: deep breathes. calm down.
I will slightly modify something that I wrote a couple of years ago, because it is relevant for you as well:
OK now. You are just starting high school. Your focus should be on doing your best in high school, not on “what should I do to maximize my chances to be accepted to a ‘Top College’?? OMG, will that quiz affect my chances?! I’m only the president of three clubs, and there is somebody who is the president of four, I only have 18 APs, and other kids in my class have 25, how will these affect my chances??!!”.
You have no idea what you’ll want to do in another year, much less in another three. The point of college is not “I need to be accepted to a Top College, otherwise My Life Is Over”. The point of high school is definitely not college.
Make a list of what you want to achieve from high school. That’s the list you should focus on, not a list items that you, or we, or your parents, or your GCs think are “what colleges want”. The list should NOT include “be accepted to a Top College”. The list should be independent of college admissions outcomes.
In short - forget about colleges for now, and focus on high school.
Remember:
- Focus on doing YOUR personal best. It’s not a competition with your classmates.
- It’s YOUR life. Don’t compare yourself to your classmates.
- You can only do your best, and your best changes. Sometimes your best is an A+, other times it’s a B-. If you’ve done your best, be proud of the result. If you haven’t, that means that will do better next time.
- You are at high school to get an education. That should be your goal.
- Your extracurricular activities are for you. Do what interests you, or explore new things. While hopping between too many things will not allow you to fully engage, don’t let inertia determine your activities. Don’t let “this is what I think colleges like” determine your ECs either
- College is not a goal or a target. It is the next step after high school for some students.
- There are literally hundreds of excellent colleges in the USA. You will find the right college for YOU based on your interests, focus or foci, and what you have done in high school.
Agree that you need to stop and smell the roses first. But am curious- Are you a domestic or international student?
Although I agree it is way too early to be worrying about specific colleges, in my view it isn’t too early to learn an important lesson.
There is a LOT of misinformation about college admissions that gets confidently passed around in social media, student peer groups, parental peer groups, and so on.
So you need to get used to ignoring a lot of that, absent some actual authoritative information source (like a college admissions page or admissions officer statement).
im domestic
First, relax. It is way too early to even think about which universities might or might not be an appropriate good fit for you.
Next, there are thousands of very good colleges and universities in the US. You can do very well at a huge number of different schools. If you did graduate from Harvard, or if you like me got a bachelor’s degree at MIT, you would then get a job and discover that pretty nearly no one cares where you got your degree. You would be working alongside students who graduated from a huge range of different colleges and universities. If you work in high tech, people will care whether the stuff that you design or the stuff that you implement works. They will care whether you get your work done on time, and whether you are reasonable to work with. They will not care whether you went to Harvard, and will not want to hear about it if you did. If you get into a highly ranked graduate program, whether medical school or anything else, again you will find yourself surrounded by other students who graduated from a huge range of undergraduate schools.
Next, I think that you should read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. As I understand it, this recommends that you do what is right for you, you take classes that are appropriate for you, you treat people well, and whatever you do you should do it well. That is pretty much exactly what I did, and it did get me into MIT. However, what I did specifically to get into MIT was nothing at all. I just did what was right for me. My ECs had nothing at all to do with what I thought might get me into MIT. I just did what was right for me.
Finally, be very, very cautious about jumping ahead. There really are classes that you are not ready to take yet. Note the “yet” part. You will be a stronger student in three years than you are now. You will be better prepared for some advanced classes when you are a sophomore or junior in university or when you are a graduate student than you are now. You still have a lot to learn, but more importantly you have a lot of time to learn it.
If I were the head of a high school, I would not let freshmen take AP classes. I probably would not let sophomore’s take more than one single AP class, if I would even allow that much.
I think that university admissions will interpret whatever you get on your recent AP test as “this student tried too hard and took an AP class too early”. Then they will ignore it and focus on what you did in your next two or three years of high school.
There are at least hundreds of universities that are very good for a premed student. If you look at students at the top medical schools you will find that they come from a huge range of undergraduate universities. One doctor I know described this as “all over the place”. You absolutely do not need to attend Harvard or any highly ranked undergraduate program to get accepted to a very good medical school.
For now I think that you should just step back, and take things a bit slower. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. There is plenty of time.
Don’t worry about other students. They are not in your way. They are just, like you, young people who are trying to find the right path in life for them.
You should be particularly careful about jumping ahead in mathematics. Math is an area where what you are learning now depends upon what you learned last year and the year before. What you are going to learn next year depends on what you are learning now. You need to learn each step very well before you go on to the next step. In my experience (I was a math major in university) students who are very strong at ALL of high school algebra, and geometry, and trigonometry, and pre-calculus, usually do very well in calculus and find it straightforward. However, I have consistently heard that students who struggle in ANY of the prerequisites, or even worse who skip ANY of the prerequisites, find calculus to be very tough. Also calculus is something that will be used a LOT in future classes. Personally I have used calculus multiple times on the job (as a math major it was to be expected that I started off in math-heavy jobs).
And you should be very careful about taking classes on-line. Again, it is better to take classes at a measured pace, and do very well in each class to help you to get prepared for the next class. Life is not a race, and most of us are not in a hurry to get to the end of it.
You have big plans. Do not expect to get there this year. You have plenty of time. Take your time and you will eventually find the right path for you.
And if you attend Harvard, there is still NO guarantee you will get accepted to medical school (if that is what your family is thinking).
You are only a freshman. The fact that you and your parents are focusing on the one college that has the most name recognition, would seem to suggest you all need to learn more about the many wonderful college opportunities in the US. You can google “little Ivies,” Colleges that Change Lives, and “public Ivies.” To avoid stressing, maybe do that now. Usually I would say a rising sophomore should not be thinking too much about college admissions at all.
I found your post really hard to read by the way. Any chance of a translation from text shorthand to something easier to decipher? Yes I am over 60!
ikr 
Looked that up @skieurope. Time on my hands this morning.
I teach programming in high school. Every year during open house when we receive potential students (current 8th graders) and parents visiting our classrooms, I hear kids telling me “oh I already know Python”. I just smile and nod. It’s great that you have some knowledge about python, or economics, but you are far from knowing it.
If the questions were nothing like you’ve ever seen, from a teacher’s viewpoint, it means either you did not pay attention in class or the class you took was not planned well. I teach APCSA, and my students knew what the exam would be like when they signed up for the class in January or February (when class doesn’t start until August).
If you want to be a doctor, public university is generally better option for undergrad, to save money and conserve energy for later years.
OP…what does it mean that you already “knew” econ? Econ is not only a content discipline, it is an analytic discipline. There are PhD’s in econ who would not claim to “know” econ…they are learning and developing new theories every day. And taking courses before you are ready is an exercise in frustration.
Slow down!!!
No matter where you go, you can go to medical school. So I think your family is over stressing/pressuring - for really, no reason.
I wrote this January 8th.