Hi there, I’m a high school student going into my junior year. I’m looking to apply to Johns Hopkins on early decision for pre-med and majoring in neuroscience. Here is my schedule for next year:
CLASSES:
AP Chemistry
AP Language
AP US History
Dual Enrollment Latin
Physics Honors
Precalculus Honors
Genetics and biotechnology
EXTRACURRICULAR:
• JV Debate
• FIRST Tech Challenge private team programmer
• STEM Research and Discovery Club (President/founder)
• NASA Citizen Scientists Club (Lead scientist/co-founder)
• Future Medical Leaders of America
• National Honor Society (running for VP)
• National Science Honor Society (running for president)
• Science Olympiad (first year doing it)
• Taekwondo 2nd Degree Black belt/instructor
In addition to all this I also attended the Virginia Governor’s School for Agriculture, where I wrote a research paper, presented at a poster symposium, and was selected as a graduation speaker. I’m planning on doing ASSIP or working as an intern at a research position next summer.
Any thoughts or tips for junior year/college admissions?
Thank you in advance!
Congratulations on your hard work and success! I love that you are a black belt–I know that takes a lot of diligence an hard work.
Hey, you are doing great. Good luck with JHU. Great school academically, is it a great fit for you? If so, also explore for other similar schools, including ones, like perhaps Carnegie Mellon, that are similarly competitive, and also ones that might be less competitive in admissions. All students want matches and safeties that meet these important criteria–a place that you’d be happy to attend, that is affordable, and that seems to be fairly certain in terms of admission. That’s important.
Tufts, Rochester, Case Western are similar in many ways. UVA and W&M are terrific in your state. There are many other outstanding schools that are also not extremely competitive. Wisconsin is a top school for biological sciences, and Madison is a cool college town. University of Pittsburgh is also terrific.
Anyway, my thoughts? Continue to work hard, that’s important, and rewarding. Also, have some fun, enjoy the gift of youth. Working hard and having fun are not mutually exclusive. They are actually very complementary. In terms of growth and development, perhaps the most important thing you can do the next two years is to be self-reflective: what motivates YOU as individual? what inspires YOU? what makes you happy? what do you value? who makes you a better person? When people are younger, what other people think is very important to them. Getting to a place where what we think is most important is essential. It will make the college admission process go well, and everything else as well.