<p>White
Male
California
Top 200 high school according to Newsweek ( aka average but not crap )
SAT:
M:760
CR:740
W:590 ( ultrafail, but I've emailed cornell/northwestern and a few others and they have said they are not factoring writing in at all, or placing a very limited amount of weight in that section. )
ACT: TBD this october..
SAT II: 700+ , english, math II and bio(?)
The first two I am consistently getting 700+ in and the bio is just there for kicks. I am taking AP bio as one of my 4 classes ( 4 by 4 system ) so I might be able to pull it off.
GPA: 3.9 UW
School does not rank.
Class difficulty: I have taken every academic non-honors course available but I am somewhat lacking with APs and HP classes. To make a long story short in 9th grade I took my first honors class with an english teacher from hell ( 6 hours homework, 4 page essays every night etc. ) and I assumed this was normal. Needless to say I was surprised at how easy AP classes were when I worked up the courage to take them junior year.</p>
<p>As a result my junior year's GPA is a 4.25. I learned the hard way that at my school you need to sign up for 3 more AP classes than you want to take. To make matters worse the AP physics B teacher recommended the class not take the AP test and due to circumstances out of my hands I was not able to take the AP english test either.</p>
<p>Senior year:
AP Biology
AP Economics micro
AP Government
AP European History
AP Environmental Science
Pre-Calc HP ( school wouldn't let me test out of geometry/Alg2 freshmen year )
Drawing and design ( required to graduate =( )
English 12 ( First non-AP/honors english but I can't stand the english teacher that teaches 9th and 12th grade )</p>
<p>My extracurriculars/miscellaneous :
I play chess ( 1600 elo rating, not the greatest but it's rising )
President of Computer Science Club
President of Game club ( not really helpful but it shows that I at least am involved with other things outside of school I suppose )
I lift weights ( 200 pounds seated triceps press )
I have had my letters to newspapers published multiple times.
I read at 700 words per minute?
Photographic memory?</p>
<p>These all seem pretty crappy ( I think extracurriculars short of curing cancer should be irrelevant but that's another issue ), but I hope my crappy EC does not prevent me from getting into some of these colleges.</p>
<p>I have had 100% on every final I've taken and my teachers like me so letters of recommendation should not be a problem.</p>
<p>I'm looking at computer science as my major and I'm quite keen on carnegie mellon.
I'd be top 28% for math and top 20% or so for reading. By the time I graduate I will have taken 3 honors classes and 7 AP classes I don't think this places me near the top, but I think I'm not at the bottom for carnegie mellon/cornell. I'm also considering northwestern because they flat out said they do not even look at the SAT writing score. Cornell said they might use it as a factor, but almost all of what they care about is SAT math and reading because they don't have the data for how the writing section correlates to GPA freshmen year.</p>
<p>I could retake the SAT for a 700ish on the writing section, but I think the subject tests would matter more ( especially since I'm interested in computer science ). I'm also going to take the ACT which on a timed practice run netted me a 33. If I have a 60-70% at getting into these colleges ( which is what I've guesstimated ) that is fine by me.</p>
<p>If all this fails I suppose UCSD and RPI are good schools for tech.</p>
<p>TLDR:
4.25GPA junior year, upward swing with 5 APs and 1 honors class being taken senior year.
Note: GPA is a bit lower than usual because of the 8 class system ( eg 6 APs with all As = 4.75GPA ofc )
1500/1600 SAT
Good letters of rec
Northwestern
Carnegie
Cornell
Rensselaer -safety?
UCSD -safety?
UCB
UCLA</p>