I’m currently 16 years old, on summer break, about to enter my junior year of high school. My freshman year wasn’t too hot at all, I messed around too much and had no idea how important high school really is. Especially your first 2 years. I ended with a 2.8 GPA I believe, and wasn’t too pleased with myself whatsoever. I hopped back up sophomore year, and brought that up to a 3.3 W, 3.4 UW GPA. That is where I currently stand. I knew that’s where I’d probably land after a whole year of getting 4.0 GPA’s every quarter. I then made a pretty good decision of partaking in a program called ‘College Credit Plus’. It’s exactly what it sounds like. I’ll be taking 2 college classes my first semester this year (second semester college classes are still to be determined and scheduled). I’m going to be taking Honors English Composition (I scored a 7 out of 8 on a college essay and got placed into this course), and a political science course because that is going to be my major. I took these because I knew it would be a good GPA booster (similar to AP classes), as well as the fact that colleges would like seeing that I have racked up credits and have experience with it. I plan to continue taking college classes throughout the next 4 semesters of my high school career and see where that goes.
Along with that, I’ll be taking my fourth year of Spanish (considered an honors level class). I’m excellent at Spanish so I figured I’d go all the way. I’m aiming for all 5 years (the fifth year is an AP level class).
I’m also going to be taking pre-calculus/trigonometry this year, which I’m almost positive is a normal high school class. I then will go onto calculus my senior year which is an optional class.
I noticed one thing that I’m slacking on which is the lack of community service & extracurricular activities. Those things have never sparked my interest. I do have a job, but that’s nothing too major. I think that I will get involved with my school’s community service program, and get some hours in my junior and senior year.
Aside from my lacking of extracurricular/community service history, I think I’m on a steady path of possibly getting into OSU. I’m holding a positive, optimistic attitude. I toured there in March and it was absolutely beautiful and I will be applying there first, early action.
I’d say I need to keep a steady GPA increase (I think I can get up to a 3.7), study lots for the ACT, get those college credits and go all 5 years for the language. If anyone has any experience with OSU in specific, or any school similar to it, please let me know how I am doing. Also feel free to leave me suggestions for what I can do to make myself look more pleasing on applications.
I got into OSU with 1370 and 3.56. I was directly admitted into Fisher too.