<p>I feel like I'm wasting my high school life. My family has been pressuring me to get into a good college and I feel that Princeton would be my ideal college considering my interests, but I am also open to other suggestions.</p>
<p>I'm a first generation Chinese male from New York, if that matters at all.</p>
<p>I'm only in 3 honors classes (AP Euro, Chem, Algebra 2/Trig) , but this year, I'm maintaining a 3.7 that can be raised to a 3.9 with relative ease in my classes.</p>
<p>My current classes are:
Algebra 2/Trig
Honors Chem
AP Euro
Spanish III
English 10</p>
<p>This summer, I'm enrolling in a pre-calc class so my projected schedule for next year is:
AP Bio
AP Chem
AP Physics
AP Calculus AB
AP US History
AP English
AP Psychology
Science Research</p>
<p>Science research is a class preparing you to compete in the Westinghouse and Intel Science competitions by the way. A requirement of this class is to get a "mentor", or a scientist who you will consult/do experiments with. Do you think if I got a mentor from Princeton or something that it would help my chances of getting in even the slightest bit?</p>
<p>It seems like a tall order, but I thrive on 4 hours of sleep and a cup of tea.</p>
<p>I also plan on doing tennis this year and both cross country and tennis next year.</p>
<p>I'm part of my school's Outdoorsman Club and Ping-Pong club.</p>
<p>I haven't taken any SAT's yet, but I do have a SAT prep book that I used for prep over the summer and got an average of 2150 on all the practice tests which can surely be improved to at least a 2300.</p>
<p>If it matters at all, I didn't do so great Freshman year grade wise and attendance wise due to some outside issues I don't really want to divulge. </p>
<p>I'm also doing some volunteer work at a hospital and a soup kitchen, I have clocked 60 hours overall so far with a targeted 800 hours by the end of senior year. I am also heading to Taiwan next summer to teach rural children there English and to be a teacher's assistant.</p>
<p>I think I can use a couple of leadership roles and maybe a few awards, but the problem is I have no idea where to compete/win awards, nor do I have any ideas on what I could do to exhibit leadership.</p>
<p>What do you think I can change up/improve on as to up my chances to getting into Princeton/other schools? </p>
<p>Desired Colleges:
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
MIT
Columbia
Tufts
Boston College
John Hopkins
UCLA
NYU
Carnegie Mellon</p>