<p>Hi I'm applying for UCLA and Stanford for undergrad studies. I am from Canada though so things may differ.</p>
<p>My qualifications:</p>
<ul>
<li>About 91% average, don't know how much that is in GPA...</li>
<li>Founder of chess club, active participant.</li>
<li>Track and field, Cross country team. Made it to city finals.</li>
<li>Won the Waterloo Math Olympiad, getting 1st place out of many. They say Waterloo University in Canada looks highly at those who won it and even sometimes instantly accepts the winning or highly-placing student.</li>
<li>I started off my Freshman year quite poorly, getting about 82% average, then 10th grade (Sophomore), I got about a 97-98% average, and 11th grade I got around a 92-93%, though haven't completed 12th grade yet since am just sending in my applications. I heard freshman year isn't weighed much at all, and is only used in calculation of GPA.</li>
<li>Volunteered in many hospitals during the Summer to help out and gain experience in my possible future roles.</li>
<li>150+ hours of community service.</li>
<li>I'm in the IB program which is fairly tough.</li>
<li>Also, just out of wanting to gain experience and venture to new places, volunteered to teach English in low-income parts of Poland.</li>
<li>2380 SAT.</li>
</ul>
<p>How are my chances? I know I might not have an overflowing list of extracurriculars, but I tried to focus on just a few, 1 or 2 interests of mine, instead of 10+ because that just isn't manageable with the difficulty of IB and all.</p>
<p>I also understand my GPA isn't completely up to par-- understandable I guess, I screwed up on my freshman year, and took difficult courses. I managed to save my grades in gr 10 and gr 11 I guess, which I think universities value the most? I guess you could say I 'grew' as a student, from gr 9 to gr 11? Whereas my marks were once mediocre, I quickly grasped the importance of my studies and improved rapidly. </p>
<p>Just want to know what I can improve in the short span of time that I have.</p>
<p>I seriously don’t want my chances of getting into really top universities be screwed because I messed up and was young and ignorant in my first year of high school.</p>
<p>Stanford is a reach even for the best students, don’t count on that. On the other hand UCLA is a safe school. If you are looking for CA, apply for Berkley, UCSD, Davis.</p>
<p>Also, if this is noteworthy at all, I ran a CPA lead marketing campaign which is basically internet marketing in the form of incentive offers. In order to help my family out and basically just have my own kind of money, I ran these advertising campaigns and coded websites in HTML, hooking up the websites with the offers, and leading traffic to them. I made anywhere from $100-$120/day on my good days, and I think that was pretty good as a teenager. It took a lot of in-depth thinking and knowing how to get directed traffic of people to an incentive, so I think that really demonstrated my creativity, tech-savviness, etc.</p>
<p>@KnightOne, do you think I could get into UCLA? I heard that those really high ranked schools that are well-ranked, but just not the Harvard/Yale/Stanford type of thing like UCLA often take their admissions based on grades and percentages as opposed to EC’s and all. That’s what I’m kind of worried about. I see all these people with 4.0, 4.2 GPAs, and I only have like a 90%-91% average…</p>
<p>UCLA is pretty easy to get. A friend of mine got in with SAT 2010.</p>
<p>What GPA did your friend have? That’s what I’m worried about… :/</p>
<p>I think I have the SAT down, but GPA-wise I’m quite weak.</p>
<p>Without your freshman year, what would your GPA be?</p>
<p>I’m Canadian so sorry for being so foolish when it comes to GPA lol, we don’t use it here, so excuse my use of a calculator.</p>
<p>97 average soph + 93 average junior = 95 average.</p>
<p>95 average, according to <a href=“Calculate Your GPA With Our GPA Scale | The Princeton Review”>http://inquiry.princetonreview.com/leadgentemplate/GPA_popup.asp</a></p>
<p>is a 4.0 GPA, on a 4.0 scale. (4.0 encompassing 95 to 100 percent average).</p>
<p>I hope that perhaps my subjects will be considered more highly, or perhaps given bonus percentages because I’m in the IB programme. </p>
<p>I also heard that Canadians, when applying to universities in the US, can get a percentage boost of 4-5%. </p>
<p>I don’t know about that, but without any of the boosts, I’m sitting at about a 4.0 GPA.</p>
<p>i just graduated ucla so my info is outdated by 4 years… but with that SAT i’d say 90ish% chance to get into ucla.</p>