Am I doing enough? Good ECs but terrible at testing

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

I am a junior right now at a pretty medium high school. We usually get one or two ivy students a year.

I have a 4.0 unweighted GPA, but I’m not sure what my weighted GPA is. (including what I’m working on now,) I have taken 3 honors classes (H English 9, H English 10, H Algebra 2) and 5 AP classes (APWH, APUSH, AP Physics, AP Lang, AP Drawing). I wanted to take honors bio, but my counselor couldn’t get me in due to not enough space, and they did not offer advanced math during covid. I got a 4 on my APWH test (I really don’t like standardized testing) and I do not have high hopes for my SAT or any future standardized tests.

Extra curriculars - I was the secretary of my speech debate team last year, I’m the Junior president now, but our team is very small and has almost zero resources. I pretty much tripled the size of our team sophomore year by forcing all my friends to join (putting us up to a hardy 12 members!) I usually make it to finals or place in all my events. Also I’ve been varsity and state qualifier since freshman year. Sadly, I have not been able to be as involved his year since I’ve had to work at my family’s restaurant because of covid. I have a second degree black belt in Taekwondo, and I usually do pretty well in board-breaking competition. But again, because of covid I haven’t done Taekwondo for like a year. I’m currently the main organizer a TEDx event for my high school, (there was an event my freshman year that I was a speaker for, but it was organized so poorly I’m almost embarrassed of the video, since the quality is so low) I started a club at my school called Paper Cranes for Peace, and we make one paper crane for every mass shooting that happens in a year. On paper crane day, we put all of the cranes in various places around the school for students to unfold and read a message on the inside. This year, because of covid, we are making a mobile that will become a permanent installation for the school library. I also think I am good at art, but my teacher hasn’t really given me any opportunities to share it anywhere. To be fair, the arts at our school are severely underfunded.

Now for my biggest anxieties - I have not taken a language class, and I’m planning on doing a community college course for high school credit over the summer. My school only offers Spanish, German, and French, and doing both art and orchestra had much more appeal to me than learning some European languages. I think I’ve done well enough in art to justify that, but I know I haven’t achieved anything in orchestra since middle school. I am also really not good at taking standardized tests. AP and SAT cause me a lot of anxiety, especially since our school’s environment is so test centric. The PSAT is tomorrow morning for me, and I hate how nervous I am for it since it doesn’t technically mean anything. I just have a lot of friends who are NM scholars and maybe I just want to measure up.

Honestly, I’d love to go to a higher tier college but I feel pretty anxious about my life in general. Am I doing enough? What else should I be doing? Thank you so much for reading all this.

2

Your grades are great. More schools are moving to test optional so that is not something to worry about right now.

Does your high school let you graduate with no language classes? I will admit that I have never seen this. Spanish is relatively common right near in the US. French is quite common a few miles north of where I am, up in this nearby North American place called Canada.

One daughter took an intensive French class over the summer in Canada. They do have classes for high school students and the classes are relatively reasonably priced. I do not know if you would want to think about that as an option. I do not know about intensive Spanish classes but it might be something to look for. If you start learning a language at this point, you are going to want to find an opportunity to use it outside of class. One advantage with Spanish is that you can watch TV shows in Spanish.

Other than thinking about language courses, the other thing that I wonder about is what sort of university you would like to attend. Do you have a sense what you might want to major in? Given a 4.0 unweighted it sounds like you are good at a lot of things. Are there some subjects that you are best at or like the best?

4

I agree with @DadTwoGirls - other than the language issue, you’re doing great. Focus on getting those languages under your belt, and you’re doing great.

As for National Merit - at my kid’s high school, there wasn’t a valedictorian, but the students with the top grades (a 4.0 UW, and 4.96 W - the highest possible weighted) are designated “Graduating Scholars”. Of the 40 Scholars, only 4 were National Merit Scholars. The other 5 NMFs were not part of this group, and were not selected as National Merit Scholars.

The two kids who got merit scholarships to U Chicago were not NMFs, the kids who were accepted to Stanford and Duke and UCLA were not NMFs, and most of the kids who got great merit scholarships were not NMFs.

The vast majority of students who attended very competitive colleges were not National Merit Finalists or Scholars.

So don’t worry - you’re really doing very well, except for the foreign language requirement, and people have giver you some really good advice on how to fix that.

Good luck!