<p>Hello, I am a Hispanic/Persian high school sophomore and was wondering what more I should do to one day be accepted to a school like Harvard. I go to a large public high school in Illinois and currently have an unweighted GPA of 3.94 and 4.37 weighted.
I am taking my first AP course in computer science next semester and will be taking all APs next year and the year after that. I just got my PLAN test results back and I got a 29 with a predicted 31-34 on the actual ACT. I scored a 32 on the math and the science, 30 on the english with one incorrect answer, and a 22 on the reading due to several sloppy errors. I am confident that with the proper focus and preparation that I can get a score of around 34-36. My extracurriculars are soccer(club and high school), math team, scholastic bowl, and debate team. Our debate team is competitive and is a huge commitment, and we are in fact going to a tournament at Harvard in February. Soccer is also a large commitment, my club team is usually ranked around 3rd-10th in the state. I do intend on racking up the community service hours soon as well. So if anybody has any advice as to what improvements I can make, it would be very much appreciated.
I also play the piano and the guitar, but not in any organizations, just for fun, so will a college look to this at all?</p>
<p>Best piece of advice: start writing college essays right now</p>
<p>^What, you’re joking, right? He’s a sophomore! If he doesn’t change and grow enough between now and applying to college to make any essays he starts doing now totally invalid, (a) that is very sad about his life and (b) he is unlikely to get into Harvard.</p>
<p>@OP Just keep doing what you’re doing and excelling at it. That’s pretty much the best advice I can give… Actually, no. Two other more helpful things: (1) keep your grades tippy-top. They’re good right now, but don’t let them slide. (2) Make sure some of your teachers know you and can speak well of you as a person. There is a world of difference between “exul was a good student. She got an A- in my physics class, which is not all that easy to do. She likes humanities, I think.” and “exul was a pretty good student. She got an A- in my physics class, so she wasn’t the best physics student, but she mostly liked humanities. Even though she couldn’t solve all the problems with the best of the future engineers, she really seemed to like and care about physics. She’d come up to me after class every now and then and ask me to help explain some new development in physics or applied physics from the news to her. She also paid enough attention in class to realize that the definition of temperature (vibration of molecules) and one of the characteristics we defined space as having (that it is cold) conflicted, and asked me how, then, space could have temperature. It delighted me that she was so engaged.” I never saw my recommendations, but I am pretty sure that was a keystone of the rec from my physics teacher. Even if it wasn’t, that sort of thing tells a much more compelling story than if you remain “that kid who was really really smart and accomplished, but honestly, I couldn’t illustrate that to you because he didn’t talk more than he had to.”</p>