<p>I'm a rising Junior, and my dream school is Yale. Currently my stats are above average, but I know that Junior year is my last chance to improve, to redeem myself of my past, foolish failures. What are you're past regrets, and sage advice that can help me to reach my dream? </p>
<p>I already learned to dispel the infamous concept of procrastination my sophmore year, :P</p>
<p>Get a 4.0, kill your interview, and win the state Tennis championship. Also helps to have an AWESOME essay if you're a borderline candidate, so start working on and perfecting that asap.</p>
<p>Past regrets? 3.1 weighted GPA for Freshman and Sophomore years!</p>
<p>In the past year, I managed to improve it to 3.7.</p>
<p>You're going to need more volunteer hours, recommendations, a killer essay, and everything else you see in those guide books.</p>
<p>haha, liist you got lazy? hopefully your sat score will get you in an IVY.
safety- UF</p>
<p>UF would actually be a great place to go, I think my safety would be UCF.</p>
<p>Plus, I'll always be a Gator!</p>
<p>And my SAT is only 2070, not quite Ivy material yet. I'm planning to go to finish my Associate of Arts degree when I graduate next year at community college, so I don't know if my credits would transfer out of state.</p>
<p>dude artofmind i could've sworn that your dream school was Cornell like 5 seconds ago lmao.</p>
<p>Btw, you seriously need to chill. (procrastination is an art, btw, worthwhile and helpful)</p>
<p>Just try to stay sane and keep things in perspective. This is the year people start talking about where they want to go to college and comparing standardized tests scores. Stay above the fray, concentrate on school work and ECs, and you'll do fine. And remember that it's ok to have fun.</p>
<p>no regrets, really...just make sure you do your SATs early</p>
<p>sweet. i love people try to compare their ugly scores with mine. LOL </p>
<p>I hope I get good marks.</p>
<p>My only regret was not being involved in very many ECs. Become the president of a couple clubs and win an award or 2 (science fair, writing competition, get some of your work published, etc.) if you want to have a chance at yale. All the applicants there have 2300+ SATs and 4.5+ GPAs, so you really have to make yourself stand out.</p>
<p>1 word. </p>
<p>Balance.</p>
<p>Balance? Balance my books? I can't do that.. lol</p>
<p>^^^ You're screwed then.</p>
<p>Dude, I can't.... My coordination is imperfect...</p>
<p>Ugly scores?</p>
<p>Wait until my 2250 comes out in October.</p>
<p>Liist is one of those students who have near-perfect SAT scores, but low GPA.</p>
<p>GPA for junior year?</p>
<p>4.19!!!!</p>
<p>...Damn underclassmen ruined my grades. Oh wait, that's my fault.</p>
<p>I regret that I slacked off in French, freshman year.</p>
<p>Goodbye, 4.0!</p>
<p>I regret that I continued to dwell on the fact that my AP Physics teacher sucked instead of picking up a book and learning it on my own. Bleh.</p>
<p>Make sure you get some leadership positions in the things you like doing! [which I definitely didn't.. ehhhh]</p>
<p>Okay. So I can actually talk about this for quite a while. </p>
<p>Junior year was a big year for me. I knew that it would count for a lot in college admissions, and I strove to accomplish a LOT. Freshman year I carried 5.5 academic courses (4 honors), sophomore year 7 academic courses (3 aps, 3 honors), but junior year I took on 10 academic courses (2 post-aps, 7 aps). If you think about it, that's quite a bit of homework, and mix that with heavy involvement in ECs, you're brewing a burnout. </p>
<p>Many people tried to warn me about burning out when I was setting up my four year schedule in freshman year (it's a school policy to have a plan), but I never listened. When I had a particularly good sophomore year, I was even more full of myself and felt that I could take on anything.</p>
<p>As second semester of junior came around, I began to burn out. Many of my friends who were seniors had gotten into college and even though I should have been feeling more pressure to work hard, I stopped caring so much about my grades as what Igained from each class. While this is very good in the long run, my grades started to decline.</p>
<p>Remember that second semester junior year is also when you want to start compiling your college list, going on college visits, taking SAT Is and IIs, and taking APs. Luckily for me, I was able to pull up most of my grades in the final weeks of the school year and that testing naturally came to me. I ended up completing junior year in at least a somewhat successful manner. But perhaps, if I had dropped one or two of my courses, which would still have made for a challenging schedule, I would have been able to do more (perhaps actually get stuff done with research, practice more piano) and gotten more out of life (friday nights I would often be too tired to be much fun).</p>
<p>My best piece of advice for all you rising juniors out there is to figure out your limits and to work as hard as you can to your limits, but to realize that the resource allocation of time is very very important. Figure out which classes you REALLY want to take, figure out how much time you really want to devote to something, and don't go overboard loading yourself with work. It doesn't all work out in the end.</p>
<p>:)</p>