<p>I'm a junior in high school and am starting to look into colleges. My top picks right now are: Georgetown, John Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania, UNC (Chapel Hill), Duke, Notre Dame, and Vanderbuilt.
My profile:
ACT score: 34 (writing: 10)
Unweighted GPA: 4.0
Weighted: 4.26
Class rank: 9/277
All honors classes, two AP classes this year (AP Calc BC, AP Bio), and mostly AP classes next year
Extracurriculars: Key Club, Student Council, Art Club (president), National Honors Society, job at a retirement home for a year, 150-200 hours of volunteering, journalism staff member (writer and feature editor)
Awards: Chinese speaking and writing award, Freshman Art Student of the year, many awards from a local art competition (a gold key, a silver key, and multiple honorable mentions), probably a National Merit Scholar (We just got our results from the PSAT back and I scored in the top three percent)
Special note: I was the founding president of our art club. Since my freshman year, I've worked with and helped my art teacher to establish the club (which does many art related volunteer events).
Next year, I hope to seek more positions in my extracurriculars. I also hope to take AP art, AP spanish, AP statistics, AP microeconomics, AP English, and AP physics or European history. (It's still tentative).
Any feedback will help. Thank you!</p>
<p>Looks good. Should be competitive at those colleges. Though if you are a native speaker, then the Chinese speaking and writing awards aren’t impressive. If you aren’t, then that is definitely something you should make known, since Chinese is known to be very difficult.</p>
<p>You seem like a very competitive applicant. Keep that GPA up next year and maybe run as an NHS/SGA officer? Good Luck!</p>
<p>I think that you’ll be competitive at these colleges as your scores are decent. Good luck! Chance back? 
<a href=“Chance me for Vassar I'll chance back :) - Vassar College - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/vassar-college/1718961-chance-me-for-vassar-ill-chance-back-p1.html</a></p>
<p>You are a solid applicant for those colleges, but know that Ivies and really good non-Ivies are all reaches. This is just because of their acceptance rates. If you can twist your ECs into your essays and make yourself sound really exceptional, then you have a really good shot at getting into most of these colleges.</p>
<p>For the PSAT/NMSC, you need to be in the top 1% to be a semifinalist. Top 3% gets you in the commended students category, but note that the top scorers are the semifinalists (most of whom go to become finalists).</p>