All honors and AP, but bad grades

<p>Okay, I take all the AP's offered, and all the honors given in my school. Not only that, but I forced my way into honors French and Math. However, I'm a B -- A- student, and I know I can do better, I just get really lazy, and since I have ADHD, it gets hard to concentrate. And, out of a 5.0 GPA, my composite freshman and sophomore GPAs are 3.9. I have no idea what SAT score I got yet. I'm really worried that I'm not going to go anywhere, though I write kickass essays and I know I'll do well on interviews. Any words of wisdom? (good ones?!?!?!)</p>

<p>Sounds much like me</p>

<p>Randomnessish would you consider yourself smart.
Do you think you can score above 2200+ on the sats?</p>

<p>Well, I'm not quite sure what a 2200 would MEAN, what with the new writing section, but I've always done well on standardized tests (I got in the 97th percentile in the PSATs). The problem is that even though I think I've done well on a test...I havent (go figure). I'm just going to have to wait until the 24th.</p>

<p>What I'm looking for, ideally, is a "big name" or "top tier" school, not necessarily Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, but something like Columbia (which would probably be a reach), Johns Hopkins, Georgetown (another reach, but since I go to a Catholic school, there's the whole "Catholic connection" thing going, and all I've got to lose is about $60 for an application fee, right? Oh, and my ego), Davidson, Cornell, Dartmouth (but only because I'm a legacy) etc. I'm really interested in physics, engineering, chemistry, and space, as well as political science (though not so much).</p>

<p>I don't know whether or not I'm just being paranoid...</p>

<p>Sorry if I look like an idiot asking all these questions, but it's hard to keep up without knowing what they mean:
1) What's a legacy?
2) Whats EA, ED, an what's the difference between them.</p>

<p>You're deemed a legacy at say, X college if one of your parents/relatives went there/bought a building/gave a lot of money to the school. My dad went to Dartmouth, which makes me a legacy there. Of course, my sister got rejected even though he routinely gives them money (normally, for legacies, colleges give them a "courtesy waitlist", which is kind of on par with saying "maybe", when everyone means you mean "no way").</p>

<p>And when did anyone mention EA or ED? Because I have no clue what they mean, either.</p>

<p>Someone PMed me the awnsers so..
No one mention EA and ED, I was just wondering because I've seen it a bunch of times on other threads.
EA=Early Arrival?
ED=Early Decision</p>

<p>Early Action - non-binding
Early Decision - binding</p>

<p>EA- Early Action. Kind of like Early Decision, but not bound to one college. You can apply to many colleges you want for EA and then choose one... (wait am i right on this.. or are you just not bound to it? Well, i didn't do it so)</p>

<p>mmm, everyone has ADHD these days.</p>

<p>Assuming you're not a minority and don't have a great hook, your only hope is both a great SAT (2250+) and great essays for Columbia.</p>

<p>
[quote]
mmm, everyone has ADHD these days.

[/quote]

Yeah, but I had it first. They're all just posers.</p>

<p>And I had pretty much written off Columbia as above my league. I was going to apply there anyway, just for kicks, as well as Barnard, but I didn't expect to have a chance. Huh.</p>

<p>Also, what would be my chances as a girl planning to major in the sciences in, say, a college who's big specialty is something else? From how I see it, there's less compitition, though I wouldn't get as much of a...specialization, I guess...than I would at something like JHU.</p>