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Take AP/IB courses, get good grades, and score well on the SAT's.
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<p>You are going to be evaluated on taking the most rigerous curriculum that your school offers and doing well. If your school does not offer AP or IB you are not going to be penalized for it.</p>
<p>Remember the SAT scores are just a range. Being at the top of the range is not going to make you a shoo-in and being at the bottom of the range is not going to keep you out. A student scores are going to be evaluated in context of what is available to them. A 1300 from first generation student living in an impoverished area attending a school where the is a low graduation rate and a average sat of 900 is going to be evaluated differently from someone who is the child of 3 professionals attending a private prep school having every advantage and scoring the same 1300. </p>
<p>Since schools build classes based on their institutional mission, it will most of the time be the subjective things more than your grades and scores that move your application between the admit, deny and waitlist piles. Yes colleges willtake students with stellar grades and GPAs. Yes they are looking for the next rocket scientist, but they are also looking for classics majors, theater people, dancers, writers, musicians, athletes, and a few bwrks who are good people in building their community. Schools that are high on building cohesive collaborative communities are not going to care if you have perfect scores and gpa is you have no people skills and can't work well with others.</p>
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If your father is a MD, then describe him as a healthcare worker.
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<p>The application does ask you about your parent's education and highest degree obtained. </p>
<p>If your father completed an MD it is in your best interest to put it down on the application than having the adcoms dismiss you application for being less than truthful and trying to "game' the system through misrepresentation. </p>
<p>Remember only a hand full of schools are need blind. The ones that are not will look at your ability to pay and your taxes will state what your parents do for a living. </p>
<p>Adcoms are very knowledgeable about the territories they are in charge of. The know the schools, the neighborhoods, the average SES for that neighborhood, the market value of a home in that neighborhood all which can come from the top half of your application.</p>