<p>Hi, I'm a rising junior and princeton is my dream school. I've done my best in high school so far and want to know what else i should do to increase my chances of getting in, because it seems so hard..
my gpa is above 4.0 after two years..i go to an extremely competitive catholic school in nj (yea, i know its in nj but its a REALLY good school) with about 350 people per grade..it sends to a lot of ivy league schools regularly, but only one or two per school. i'm number 1 in the class and my course load for sophomore year included 3 ap classes and the rest were honors classes. i'm really active in my church..i teach ccd and i'm a lector and altar server. i also play chess competitively and am around 1800 uscf rating...hope to break 2,000/2,200 by the time i graduate. the school chess team takes up a lot of my time and in my college essays i plan to talk about how chess requires so much dedication that it's ridiculous ( i know i'm not that good, but i just started in 8th grade. also tell me if this is a terrible idea for an essay - i could talk about lessons it's taught me because i was never really into sports and it really IS a sport..it's just not athletic) because it takes up so much time i'm only in a few other clubs at my school including several honors societies which im sure doesn't look too great. i plan to major in math and i took ap calculus 1 this year and will take 2 next year and multivariable senior year. i have an 800 on my math sat 2 as well as a 780 in chemistry. i'll be taking 3 aps next year (most allowed) and 5-6 senior year. ive completed around 200 hours of community service (which includes my church involvement) since freshman year. i'm also white..</p>
<p>can you tell me what i can do to get my chances up? it would be greatly appreciated, thank you so much! also let me know what else you'd like to know to better assess the situation.</p>
<p>I think you are on the right track. Don’t fall in love with any one school. Do well on the SAT, and do interesting things with your summers. I highly recommend a math camp over the summer. My son did Ross and he was challenged like never before. The matriculation results of Ross alumni is very impressive.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply! I know what you mean, I definitely wouldn’t be upset if I didn’t get in but I figure I should do my best to try to, and then all that work will definitely pay off when applying to other schools as well. I’d love to do a math camp over the summer but I work for a month and play chess a LOT and i volunteer a LOT and i’m from a somewhat rural area with working parents so it’s not really possible for me to pull off the research/internships that i see so many people doing…
i’m going to try to do one during the school year and contact a professor from princeton and see if he can give me some insight…it would probably have to do with math/economics (would they give up like an hour or two of their time to share knowledge with me? i always felt like they wouldn’t but just recently i’ve realized how accessible some of these people are) Where did your son end up going? And would you recommend Ross over one of those like generic CTY things that I get in the mail? JW. Thank you very much!</p>
<p>My son attended Ross because it was closest to home. He also considered PROMYS and HCSSIM. I think the biggest value for my son was to be around kids with similar interests and academic potential, it was an eye opening experience and he met some truly brilliant kids. There are many more options than time as you stated, you have to decide what the best option is. My son did camps for two years and then worked his last summer before college apps. Frequently the kids that are viable candidates for the top colleges are not well served in high school; summer is an opportunity to expand your horizons.</p>
<p>I know it sounds trite, but do what gets you excited. Don’t worry what will look good to colleges. If you love volunteer work, do it with gusto. In fact, other than study for SAT/SAT Subject/AP tests my son did nothing solely to appeal to a college admissions committee. In researching the admissions process this is the message I heard repeated over and over from adcoms, “Do what you love.” Based on my son’s results, I believe them. He didn’t get in everywhere, but had some nice options. He selected Princeton after visiting campus for the first time during preview weekend. Before the visit it wasn’t even in his top five.</p>