I am currently a sophomore in HS and I was wondering what I could do to improve my chances of getting into my dream colleges. The colleges that I want to apply to are all the Ivies, Villanova, Duke, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UChicago, Northwestern, UCLA, UMichigan, USC, Notre Dame, UCSB, University of Washington, NYU. (I know it’s a long list of colleges.)
GPA: 3.74(unweighted, but I’m taking the IB diploma next year)
SAT or ACT scores (taking it next year)
Extracurriculars: JV swim team, piano for 5 years, Drama Crew Club, National Honors Society.
Accomplishments: Won an award for the piano festival, High School Poetry Finals
I think that the most important thing is to figure out what you actually want in a university, other than “prestige” and a lot of really hard work. Your list of schools are pretty much all over the place in terms of what they offer and what they are best at.
for a sophomore, you are doing okay. I agree with the comment above. Once you figure out what you want to do, i suggest strengthening your extracurriculars to focus on that field. you seem diverse, but a focus is important. get good scores on testing next year and you should be fine!
Honestly, find your “thing” and run with it.
If you love piano, perform at elder homes, weddings, etc. Teach kids lessons, design and 3D print a keyboard, do a performance piece on what the world would be like without pianos, etc etc.
If you love poetry, perform at every open mic you can find, publish in 50 different places, and write poetry about how much you love poetry.
The best way to stand out at those places is to truly love what you do. Go ham hog wild! Make it a personal competition with yourself to be the most passionate, unique person in that pile of 40,000 applicants.
Try to get your GPA up and regarding finding what you’re looking for in a university, once you find it try to tailor your extra-curriculars to it. Like if you want to become a poli sci major, interning for a state senator or congressman would be helpful. But there are many things you could do and many different fields to choose from. Make sure that when you apply that you emphasize what your experiences did for you, rather than just collecting as many of them as possible. Those are all very good schools and, especially for Stanford and some of the Ivies, you will have to demonstrate a keen interest in something and a passion (to use a horribly overused word) for it.
As @Dadtwogirls mentioned above, that list is all over the place. Have you been to Hannover, New Hampshire - or checked out Dartmouth on-line? I can’t imagine being interested in that experience and also being passionate about USC. Both are great. But one is as not-like-the-other as you can get.
I would encourage you to spend some time getting to know the type of school you want to attend. Size. Location. Class sizes, % of international students. Ease of study abroad. What can you/your parents afford?
From watching a number of senior classes head out on their school search over the past few years, the students that have been most successful, it seems to me, are the ones who have IDed the things that are important to them in a school and then made a good vertical list (in terms of selectivity) that “stack” on a good number of the things you ID as important.
That way, when your acceptances roll in, you won’t have to choose between Dartmouth and UCSB when you really want to be at a big U in a hopping “city-that-never-sleeps” downtown. Or you won’t have to settle for a major you like, because the school didn’t admit you to a major you love. Or you won’t have to settle for being in downtown LA when you really wanted to be biking through a treelined suburb outside of Chicago or Philly…
Don’t choose a school based on the T-Shirt. Choose it based on what you love. You can only go to one. And you’ll spend 4 years and lot of money there.