Hi there–I’m a junior and I’m going to applying to college this coming year. Columbia is basically my dream school, and I wanted to major in political scienc and minor either in human rights or English.
I go to a college prep school in California, where all of our classes are honors and “ap” level–we don’t have official honors and AP courses at the school nor do we have a weighted GPA.
Here were my stats:
GPA: 3.67 unweighted
SAT: 1290 (lol we’ll pretend this just didn’t happen finna kms)
ACT: 34
Subject Tests:
English–> 790
History–> 800
Math II–> 780
Extracurricular Activities:
Clubs/Sports:
Soccer–> Varsity soccer for 4 years (I played for 4 years in middle school as well). I started freshman year and continued senior year.
Middle School Mentoring–> I did this my junior and sophomore years; unfortunately, I got kicked out for senior year because I accidentally spilled milk on the teacher running the club and it was considered “bad behavior” (i’m obvi not ognna mention this)
One thing I’ve been really passionate about is politics, here are the activities that I’ve done relating to that:
Debate-> I did it freshman year and Junior year and will continue it senior year; we didn’t really have a debate club last year since there wasn’t enough people.
Protest/march–> I helped plan a protest at my school for gun rights/gun control. Since I attend a private school, the rules about this were strict and i was about to cut my principal ngl.
Volunteering for an election campaign–> I helped volunteer at a Senator’s campaign. I helped volunteer at her presentation and helped her work on research.
Writing articles—>I write articles in my free time (which has really become limited nowadays) based on ongoing political issues and human rights issues, such as the refugee crisis. On one of my articles, I started a petition which actually consisted of people signing it.
I plan on doing an independent study on the Israeli Palestinan conflict in my school as well and want to continue my research throughout college.
Another thing I’ve been really passionate about is art, here are the activities that I’ve done
Piano—>I’ve done piano for 11 years now; I’ve participated in music festivals hosted by the National Federation of Music Clubs; basically, you get someone to evaluate your piano playing and are rated “superior, excellent, satisfactory, or needs improvement”. Every year, I’ve been rated superior and won awards for it.
Visual Arts–>If i’m not being a total sjw, I usually draw a lot; I have my own website which showcases and sells my prints and plan on making my business official (I’ve had the website for a while). For my senior project, I plan on starting my own business (make it official) and create and publish a book which showcases my prints (maybe, I’m still deciding on it).
The one thing I’m worried about is my GPA. I had a rough sophmore year and my GPA took a tanking. I had a 3.72 freshman year, a 3.4 sophmore year, and a 3.83 junior year. I think I can get a 4.0 in my first trimester of senior year, which will hopefully bring my gpa up more.
Do you guys think what I’ve done so far can get me into Columbia U, UW, Hopkins, USC, Villanova, Vanderbilt, NYU, and Cal Berkeley? What do you think I can do to increase my chances? I have specific reasons to go to each of these colleges, and I’m hoping my test scores/extra curriculars can make up for my GPA.
Thanks frands