Chances/Opinions!

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hello All,
I'm new to College Confidential and I wasn't really sure where to put this so please don't hate if this is wrong hahahah
Anyway, I'm a high school freshman who is really interested in attending Columbia someday. I would love it if you could give me ideas and suggestions and evaluate my ECs and class choices so that I have the best chance of getting to Columbia! Thank you!</p>

<p>Background Info
Asian Female
Born in the States
Moved to Korea at age 6
Moved back at 11
Attends a top ranking public high school in the east coast</p>

<p>Classes:
Middle School:
Algebra 1 Honors
Geometry Honors
Spanish </p>

<p>High School:
Algebra 2A (I'm really worried this will affect my application as I can't move up to the Honors class until I get to AP Calc except that will be a BC, not an AB class).
Biology + Lab Honors
English Honors
Global Themes Honors
Latin 1
Orchestra
Drawing 1/ Water Color 1 (1st sem/2nd sem. hope to take advanced versions of both classes sophomore year, very interested in art).</p>

<p>Extra Curricular:
Violin: I've played since I was very little. I've played in school orchestra since 6th grade. I've played in Chamber orchestra all through middle school except I couldn't due to scheduling this year and I hope to do it next year. I currently play in the pit orchestra for my high school's world renowned theatre program. </p>

<p>Dance: I danced when I was very little and continued in a very recreational manner till 7th grade. I completely re-fell in love with the art. Last year I did the Nutcracker, Alice in Wonderland, and various other shows. This year I will do the Nutcracker again and more shows to come. I dance ballet, jazz, musical theatre, and modern for at LEAST 10 hours a week. This year I co-founded the dance team at my school. I danced in school musicals for the past two years and I may want to do this again next year. I attended a 5 week dance summer intensive at an amazing ballet school this year. I hope to do this again this year.</p>

<p>Community Service
I volunteer at an organization where I tutor inner city under privileged children. It's really rewarding and even though I just started this recently, I hope to continue this throughout high school. I did sign up for a club where I would play violin at various nursing homes, senior centers, etc and one where you babysit and play with homeless children. I absolutely love teaching, and I love children so both my EC ideas felt perfect. Additionally, I signed up for a breast cancer awareness club because cancer(although not breast cancer in particular) took a very significant toll on my family's lives a few years ago and although he, my grandfather, was okay, it's still something that I really care about. However I may not attend the three at the end, but we will see.</p>

<p>PLEASE COMMENT MORE COMMUNITY SERVICE, EC AND SUMMER IDEAS(hopefully things that will unite my passions!)</p>

<p>Also, tell me anything else I may need to know if I want to get to Columbia!!
Thank you!!</p>

2

<p>Do yourself a favor: do not fixate on a school. There are so many that are excellent, awesome, brilliant, formidables! explore, using the Fiske Guide or Insider’s Guide to the Colleges or Princeton Review’s best colleges. If you like Columbia’s core curriculum/rigor, look into UChicago and Reed. If you like the location, look into Barnard and Fordham. If you like music, look into Oberlin, Lawrence, St Olaf. Run the EFC on all of those, along with on a public university that’d be a safety for you. Bring the results to your parents: what are they able/willing to pay?</p>

<p>To increase your odds:
get recognition beyond city-level; participate in some award-winning projets; better yet, initiate a project or club at your school; see if you can find a summer research project, or a “summer college” class you could take (and do well in). Don’t forget to have fun, to have favorite tv shows, favorite books, favorite bands/musicians. Pay attention to what’s going on, keep a diary - you may be able to use it later on to tell a story about yourself in your commonapp essay (and anyway it’ll be fun to remember your life in those days.)</p>

3

<p>^Thank you so much! Do you think taking Algebra2A (in oppose to H) affects my chances? Does anybody else have suggestions?</p>

4

<p>can you take a virtual school Honors class over the summer (like FLVS, but there are other programs)? This way if you can handle it you would jump into AP Calc AB, but if you can’t, you could just retake Precalculus and obviously do very well during the year.
All in all, taking Algebra 2A instead of H is not going to kill your application, especially if you can take Calc AB (not sure why you’d have to take BC? I don’t think it’d be possible from precalc regular to jump into calc BC.)</p>

5

<p>oh i’m not really sure, I thought BC was the less intense one. Whichever one is less intense is the one I have to go into. I can also go into Honors Calc but why would I do that…</p>

6

<p>Just for clarification the difference between AB Calc and BC Calc is that AB Calc covers the whole first semester of a college Calc course whereas BC covers the whole first year, so basically BC covers twice the material in the same amount of time. Therefore, BC is much more challenging and moves much more quickly. </p>

7

<p>Taking AP Calc AB vs. BC will not matter. Honors Calc is also good if your grades aren’t sufficient to garantee a B or more in AP Calc (no one’s impressed with a C in an AP class).</p>

8

<p>OOH i get it now. Thank you :)</p>

9

<p>Any more suggestions? </p>

10

<p>Does anyone have any summer ideas? I’m in desperate need!</p>

11

<p>you are a strong applicant</p>

12

<p>Thanks ^ BUT SERIOUSLY HOW SHOULD I SPEND MY SUMMER</p>

13

<p>What do you WANT to do this summer?</p>

14

<p>Well I want to dance this summer, definitely and do some sort of community service and maybe find a job but I don’t really know and I want ideas from people of what was fun and what wasn’t, whats wort my time, whats not…</p>