<p>GPA: 4.0/4.0 unweighted, 5.05/6.0 weighted</p>
<p>Course rigor: taking hard courses (ap physics, ap Calc and ap psych.. No electives besides student council and ceramics which are both strong interests of mine)</p>
<p>Clubs: math honors society, national arts honors society, compassion in action (service club).. And I'll most likely get into national honors society and beta club for next year (only juniors can get it), also will probably be prez of the service club I'm in and have leadership positions in the other clubs.</p>
<p>ECs: internship with the DNC 2012 (34 hours and I was given an A for the internship), student council, (I work 11 hours each week babysitting), also looking to get an award of sorts from scholastics for ceramics.</p>
<p>Rank: 3/700 top 1% (likely to go up to 2 and hopefully I may manage 1)</p>
<p>SAT: 7th 1330, 9th 1820, I plan to take the test again junior year and am expecting a 2100+, since both previous scores involved absolutely no studying/prep...</p>
<p>Background: I'm a female with a 100,000-125,000 income bracket, black, first generation, living with my single mother. I'm really interested in computers and programming and either want to go into software engineering, programming or something of that sort. Also I'm just a sophomore.. I just want to do all I can to better my chances .. So any advice ? Also my school had 2-5 students last year that went to prestigious schools (MIT, Stanford, Harvard.. etc.) with somewhat similar ECs</p>
<p>Teaspoons, you would certainly be “on track” for being a viable applicant to a place like Princeton. I would encourage you, however, to really consider the “why” of the schools you described - why you want to go to them and not somewhere else. If it is primarily for the prestige, it really reduces the credibility of your application since I think the flavor tends to come out in your communication. </p>
<p>I would encourage you to really research the schools. Visit them, if you can! My son (BSE) really only considered Princeton and Cornell because those two schools offered very strong undergraduate civil engineering programs and were not located in big cities (such as MIT and Columbia). Princeton won out because of visiting the engineering department and seeing the work being done through some of the social justice initiatives they are involved in, which really resonated with his interests. </p>
<p>If you can find a good match between your skills and interests, and the school you are interested in, it creates a much stronger application.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice! I at first wanted to go to Dartmouth… I just really likes the location and feel and look of the school (along with the prestigiousness of it). Then I realized I needed to get a little more practical considering I wanted to major in technology and Dartmouth wasn’t offering all the things I wanted. My main schools because Caltech (though I really hate the idea of going outside New England or the east coast), UNC Chapel hill (the price of instate and just it being a generally great school), Carnegie Mellon (most just because its a great technology school), and Princeton because I really do like the campus, location, and feel to the school, it’s also third in the country (or something like that) with programs for software engineering I believe and all that along with the prestige of it on top makes it sort of my dream school right now … If I could make it that would be so amazing. If I don’t… I realize the school doesn’t make me money or success; it all depends on what I do with whatever degree I get no matter where I might’ve gotten it.</p>