After just finishing my freshman year of high school, I was curious to see if I’m on track to attending UCLA. I know it’s probabaly way to early to tell but I just wanted to get your input as to what I can improve on.
GPA: UW 4.0 , W 4.33
Schedule:
Honors English
AP Computer Science Principles ( also took the AP test, most likely got a 5)
Biology
Math with Computing
Spanish 1
Tennis
Class Rank : 23/920
EC:
A few clubs
11 hours of volunteer but I will be volunteering a lot this summer at my local science museum
PSAT 8/9 score : 1140/1440 ( this should be higher by like 50-100 points because I had to guess on the reading portion due to me not realizing how little time I had left)
Schedule for next year:
Honors Chem
Honors English
Honors Math
AP European History
Spanish 2
Tennis
UCLA like all the UC’s do not even use Freshman year grades in their GPA calculation. Doing well Freshman year however will set you up to continue that trend as your HS course rigor gets more challenging. 10-11th grades are the most important to the UC’s. Continue to challenge yourself, get some test prep and do the EC’s that enjoy. Do not try to mold yourself and activities to one particular college. There are so many great schools in the US, so do your best and see where you stand end of Junior year.
As you will see from that link, at the most selective colleges they are looking for depth more than just participation. Stanford, for example, says
UCLA and other very selective colleges will be looking for this as well, although for UCLA perhaps not to the extent of a school like Stanford. Still, member of this club/team and volunteered at that is not going to be the most competitive set of ECs at UCLA.
@mikemac How would Stanford figure out the amount of impact you had on the club? Would you have to write down what you did for the club? Or do they just decipher it in some way? Or is there something else involved?