Just finished sophomore year of high school, with a cumulative GPA of 3.5 UW and 4.1 W. I have been taking all honors, come from a Catholic private high school, and got a 1150 PSAT score. My rank is 25/107. Had a rough start freshman year with almost all Bs, then got all As sophomore year and will try to get all As Junior year and I am predicting to finish with a 3.65 UW GPA by then end of Junior year.
ECs are
Mock Trial Member
National Honor Society Member
Science national Honor society
Math Honor society
English Honor society
Will get internship next summer
Part of a Hispanic debate club freshman year
Went to a law camp last year as well
My hometown is extremely close to Mexico, so my essay will be good
Golf Varsity
A community service leader for a group
My hometowns city council high school clubpresident and founder
I am pursuing a political science major to go on to law school. So far, how does it look and what should I improve on for colleges. I will try to get a leadership position in my honor societies. Will try to be a national merit scholar(or Hispanic in my case)
@RocketMan1256 that’s the thing, I don’t what to reach for. But I haven’t researched any safeties, but some reaches would be Cornell and u of Chicago but some that are somewhat in my league are UC Berkeley, WashU, UT Austin(legacy), and New York University. Could these be considered realistic?
Not going to lie, all of those schools are pretty high reaches. Your SAT would need to realistically break 1400 to have a good shot. Your UW GPA is also very low and you lack leadership in your ECs.
I rarely like to shoot people down but I think @thawksworth is on to something here. I think that leadership and higher scores could definitely help but many of your schools are considered hard for anyone. My recommendation is to go and look at more schools (or if there aren’t many in your area, research more schools) that aren’t just “big names”. Or even some big names that could be safeties or lower end matches.
Don’t listen to these other comments, made from a bunch of people who don’t know a single thing about colleges. What colleges are caring less and less about SAT and ACT and G.P.A. Don’t try to buff up your extracurricular, instead DO WHAT YOUR PASSION IS and get really good at it.
Are you instate for California?
The UCs look at your 10th and 11th grade performances for admission. They also look at your SAT scores. With no scores, it’s hard for anyone to give you some ideas about chances. A 3.65 UW GPA won’t get you into Berkeley.
They cannot admit based on race.
There is no funding for non-residents.
I will take exception to @TheLobster’s comment about colleges caring less about ACT/SAT and GPA. For those Reach schools, your ACT/SAT and GPA will get you over the first hurdle in having your application considered. Your essays, LOR’s and EC’s will help differentiate you from the rest of the students with the same Stats.
As mentioned by “@aunt bea”, for UCB or any of the other UC’s, they use 10-11th grades for their GPA calculation so you are only half way there so I would not rule out or include UCB until you complete Junior year. Also with no test scores, there is really no way to chance you at any school at the moment.
You should first find out your EFC (estimated family contribution) for FASFA. Then approach your parents and find out how much they are willing to pay/year for college. Finances are usually a limiting factor for most applicants. Once you have this information, you can then starting running the Net Price Calculators on any schools of interest.
As mentioned in post #6, if you are not an in-state California resident, you will receive little to no financial aid for any of the UC’s including UCB so make sure your parents are fine with paying $65k/year for you to attend or drop that school from your list.
You are on the right track so continue doing well in HS and come back next year to be chanced.