<p>Hello,
I'm a graduated high school senior (Class of '11) who participated in my state's Running Start program so, along with my diploma, I also received an A.A. degree from the community college that I attended classes at for my last two years of high school. My GPA is not bad, but nothing stellar (3.4) and I don't have any solid extracurriculars because I worked both years of my Running Start program (pizza joint junior year, worked on the student activities board for the college senior year setting up the guest lecture series and outreach events). Seeing as I've already graduated, continuing at community college classes to raise my GPA would be wasteful of time and money.</p>
<p>My SAT I score is 1990 and my SAT II scores for Spanish and U.S. History aren't great (550 & 610 respectively). I messed up and only ended up applying to my state school (University of Washington - Seattle) and a liberal arts college (Willamette). I got into the latter but decided against it in the end and was devastated that my late application and unfortunate timing with higher education budget cuts diminished my chances of getting into the first school, which I've always wanted to go to. My interest is foreign language, with particular emphasis in Arabic, Russian, Norwegian, and perhaps more. I absolutely love language courses and am fascinated by the structure and acquisition of language, though I'm not really interested in studying linguistics as a science, but rather focusing on actually learning as many languages at university as I can.</p>
<p>Anyway, I am now doing an AmeriCorps program through a site that focuses on anti-poverty and anti-racism organizing, tutoring children four days out of the week to raise literacy rates at low-income schools. This was something that I really wanted to do to give back to the community during this surprise year off and I'm glad for it, but I'm afraid that it won't be enough to overcome my mediocre GPA and alright SAT scores, which will remain the same no matter what I do during my gap year.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can get into a good language school, even those that might seem out of reach (i.e. Cornell, Georgetown). I'm very interested in these but will reapply as a transfer student (as opposed to "advanced freshman") at the University of Washington and perhaps Middlebury College. I'm very interested in feedback regarding programs, admissions, or even scholarships. Thank you for reading, and sorry this is so long!</p>