I’m a high school soon-to-be junior with very little extra curriculars
I’ve only recently discovered the importance of the activities you do outside of school as my sight was set on non-elite schools such as University of British Columbia
Though it is probably close to being impossible for me to get in I want to broaden my chances
The only Extra Curriculars I have so far is:
Success Tutor – tutoring freshmen in all areas of subjects
Library Club – shelving books…
I only have 2 remaining years at my high school and my question is will it look bad if I suddenly begin to join an array of clubs?
Also, do universities look at your Sophomore GPA? Thanks a lot.
<p>Universities look at your sophomore GPA, yes.</p>
<p>They pay more attention to class rank.</p>
<p>Success Tutor sounds like a very good extracurricular, are you deeply involved in it? If so, it's a good thing, because it shows that you enjoy spreading knowledge to others.</p>
<p>And yes, it will definitely look bad if you suddenly join an array of clubs. The schools will assume that you're joining the clubs to try to impress the adcoms.</p>
<p>my sophomore gpa is quite bad... (3.7) is it relatively less important in comparison with the junior and senior gpa? if i do good in my junior and sophomore year will college marticulators be content that i managed to improve from a poor gpa or is it expected of me to maintain my grades all throughout high school?</p>
<p>and will it be best to join a lot of clubs notwithstanding the fact they will see i'm just trying to impress them, or avoid the blatant last minute effort and join a few clubs?</p>
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my sophomore gpa is quite bad... (3.7)
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<p>GPA by itself means nothing without a rank, a 3.7 GPA at an extremely competitive HS where the valedictorian gets a 3.8 is extremely good. A 3.7 in my grade-inflated HS where 12 ppl graduate each year with a 4.0 uw is nothing special.</p>
<p>However, if you show an upward trend, colleges will see it and take note of it. Likewise, if you start out with awesome grades and then decline, colleges will also note that.</p>
<p>Regarding your question about joining clubs: You gotta see it from the adcom's point of view. What would you think if you were an admissiosn officer and you saw an applicant who suddenly joined another 6 clubs starting from his/her junior or senior year? I wouldn't be impressed.</p>
<p>Joining a few clubs is a good idea, just don't make it blatant.</p>
<p>Great topic, and great advice. On that upward trend vein...I had a really low GPA freshman year (3.6) and I only took one AP class. Sophomore I had a 3.9, and this year (my junior year), I take three concurrent college classes at my community college and I have a 4.0. I don't have many ECs and I guess I shouldn't jump to sign up for every single club next year since it'll be obvious what I'm trying to do. I'll be part of a student ambassadorial program this summer, though, to Australia and New Zealand, which is nice since I want to major in international relations and political science. Freshman year I was in the top 20% of my class, last year the top 11% and this year the top 8%, but I haven't taken my SATs yet and I don't want to overestimate myself by trying to gauge what I'll get. For financial reasons (my parents make about 110k a year and we just bought a house in Sacramento, but there's no way we can afford a 40K school for four years), my parents want me to go to the local university, UC Davis. Right now my hopefully-match school is Whitman in Walla Walla, Washington and my absolute dream-reach school is Dartmouth. My safeties would probably be CSUs and UCSC. So, any opinions? Aside from volunteer work, I'm pathetically lacking in ECs, but I think I have a nice academic upward trend. I'm a pretty okay test-taker; math is my demon but I'm not dismal, and critical reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, etc. are my forte. Do you think I'm overreaching myself with Davis, Whitman and especially Dartmouth (which is a reach anyways, so heh...)</p>
<p>Oh, and I'll be taking Intro to International Relations next semester as a college class. Will having that class on my transcript when I'm applying as an International Relations or Poli-Sci major make any difference at all? Or does it just not matter?</p>
<p>It is very stupid that students who join ECs starting their junior year will automatically be seen as application padders. Most people who start clubs in 9th grade and continue for 4 years are still application padders, but they are just better informed than the late-starters. </p>
<p>How does it look that I didn't have any school-based ECs until basically 11th grade (although I joined the ping pong club in 10th)? I was doing a sport 4-5 times a week until 11th grade, and I wasn't very social so I didn't feel like joining school clubs. Then I joined 3 clubs in 11th and added another 3 plus tutoring in 12th. To adcoms this will look like pure application padding, right? So basically I won't be able to get into any top schools despite a 2370 composite SAT, two 800 SATIIs (going for third in Dec.), and 4.2ish GPA at a competitive school (within top 10%) ?</p>
<p>collegehereicome, my school is extremely grade inflated too, it sort of stinks. the most distinct example is that in my honors precalc class, the lowest grade was a 91 (B+) which was by a person that knew nothing and never did homework. the teacher even told me he was scared they would accuse him of grade inflation. a couple classes are hard, for instance, honors spanish and the sciences are some of the hardest classes but i'd say at least 40% of the courses are just inflated up the roof.</p>