Help a hopelessly confused girl?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>So here's the thing - I, like half the country before me, have haphazardly wandered through high school while giving little to no thought to college, and now I find myself a rising senior and I have no idea what I want to do. This is my first post here (I know, throwing myself to the wolves!), but I'd just like you guys to .. kind of act as a stand-in counselor, I guess? Which colleges should I apply to? Where do I stand a decent chance of getting in? My dream schools are Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, and UGA for its Foundation Fellows program, but I'm so far out of the loop of what's 'required' or 'expected' that I don't know if I should even bother applying.</p>

<p>Anyway, enough talk, here's the breakdown.</p>

<p>SATI: 2360 (800 CR, 790 Math, 770 Writing)
SATII: 800 Math II, 770 Literature, 750 US History
ACT: 36
APs: 5 World History .. I took five more this year and I'm taking another four + college calculus next year. I'm expecting 5's everywhere, maybe a 3 in Physics B due to a number of unfortunate circumstances
PSAT: 240 sophomore year, 233 junior year (Yeah. FML.)</p>

<p>Rank: 10th out of 505
** My grades and class rank, basically, suck in comparison to what I've seen on here. Our school doesn't calculate GPAs, but what they do is add 7 points to our numeric average for any honors/AP classes. Using that system, my weighted numeric average is about 99. Unweighted, I'd say it's between 93-95. Anyway, I have no excuse for this. I'm just lazy.</p>

<p>Extracurriculars:</p>

<p>High School Symphony Orchestra (Manager, 3rd Chair)
+ Fiddle team (webmaster haha), pit orchestra for musicals, regional symphony orchestra, county honor orchestra, chamber groups .. I'm an orchestra slave.
National English Honor Society (President)
Gay-Straight Alliance (Founder/President)
VOX Communications (Youth Leader - it's a student-led newspaper in the Metro Atlanta area; I'm also interning there this summer)
'Varsity' Math Team (.. I qualified for AIME?)
'Varsity' Academic Bowl (Team got 1st in the state!)
Piano (Level 8 ABRSM, highest qualification you can get)
Competitive ballroom dance
Dressmaking (Starting a fashion line this summer and selling it online)
Environmental Club / Chess Club (I'm actually in these because I enjoy them! Oh my god!)
Percussion, guitar, figure skating (I do these for fun too! :D)
Foreign languages (I speak Chinese, Spanish, and Italian. I'm planning on learning Arabic and French this summer, which is sort of a daunting task but I'm armed with Rosetta Stone and nearly two months of leisure time.)</p>

<p>Community Service:</p>

<p>I'm a volunteer and part of the youth outreach program at a medical clinic specifically focused on HIV/AIDS. I'm dedicating the greater part of my summer to this; it's my only source of community service because .. dude .. I couldn't beat down enough of my dignity to join the 'service clubs' at our school.</p>

<p>Awards:</p>

<p>.. accepted to the Math Prize for Girls Competition, which only admits the top 250 girls in math in the country based on AMC scores. And that's basically it. I have a whole host of random school awards and things like that, but nothing spectacular.</p>

<p>So anyway, I've got quite a list of 'reach' schools, but where do you guys think I'm a good match? Can I rely on Emory (or NYU) to be a backup school, or is that being too arrogant? HELP! D:</p>

<p>(Also .. just to add even more text to this post .. has anybody heard anything about NYU Abu Dhabi? It sounds really kickin', and I think it'd be pretty awesome to be in its inaugural class. NYU is hoping that it'll literally have THE top students in the country go there thanks to loads of scholarships from Middle Eastern oil money, but I think that'll be highly, highly unlikely.)</p>

2

<p>Wow. Try to cut back on the ECs a bit. Otherwise, how do you manage to get any sleep or see your parents during the week?</p>

3

<p>Surprisingly, my extracurriculars have not taken a toll on my emotional health! Probably because it was my parents who chauffeured me for the larger part of the year, providing everyone with lots of bonding time.</p>

<p>But what they have done is killed my class rank. Ah, the days when I’d dream of being valedictorian …</p>

4

<p>Seriously, try to back off a bit on the ECs and focus on making a bigger impact on the remaining ones. Zero in on the math competitions. Girls are still relatively rare in the AMC/AIME/USAMO world. That’s probably your bet to getting into the upper, upper tier of schools on your list. I also think you need more “initiative” on your resume. How about setting up volunteer musical groups to play at nursing homes and hospitals (VA hospital would be great). You’ve got some leadership, but need a bit more (beyond starting a group or NHS). Can you get the Environmental Club to implement aluminum recycling at school, for example?</p>

<p>I could go on and on, but others would get bored…</p>

5

<p>All good suggestions, the first two (improving on math and setting up volunteer musical groups) are well underway already.</p>

<p>But TBH the thought of starting a new recycling program at school just bores me to death. There are definitely other things I am more passionate about. Like … the GSA! To me, it’s different from other ‘groups’ in the school; for one thing, it took half a year and a heavy load of research to even have it approved by the administration. If I were to begin ‘Safe Zone’ programs and have, I don’t know, breaking-the-stereotype workshops and such - would that show the “initiative” I need, as it were? I’m not too worried about the controversial aspect; I daresay it’d actually help (though I might be wrong).</p>

6

<p>GSA among the college admissions crowd is very PC and not controversial at all (except maybe at your high school). It’s probably no different than saying that you were an Obama campaign volunteer (one of 10,000,000,000 posting on College Confidential’s boards). Are you trying to curry favor with the liberal-leaning college admissions committees–the same ones that impose Asian quotas on students like you?</p>

<p>What do you think would be more difficult: reducing the amount of solid waste at school by 50%, or setting up “Safe Zones”? Setting up 100 daily carpools at school (in car-crazy Atlanta), or organizing a “break-the-stereotypes” workshop? I would argue that the environmental goals are much more difficult, and meaningful in their own way. And try to look at the environmental goals in a business-like manner, rather than taking the “you’re all going to die” Al Gore approach.</p>

<p>But wait, there’s more…</p>

7

<p>How about starting a dragon boat team? I just noticed you have no athletics. I started this 11 years ago: [California</a> Dragon Boat Association](<a href=“http://www.cdba.org%5DCalifornia”>http://www.cdba.org). Is there still a DB race in GA?</p>

<p>Yes there is! <a href=“http://www.dragonboatatlanta.com/[/url]”>http://www.dragonboatatlanta.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>PM me for a dragon boat/college story.</p>

8

<p>You say ‘curry favor’ like it’s a bad thing; we’re all trying to get into college here! But regardless - no, I do not do the GSA because I feel like ‘liberal-leaning college admissions committees’ will like me more because of it. I have been involved with gay rights for way, way longer (hell, I was lying about my age so I could sign online petitions in the fourth grade) than environmental club, and difficulty aside, I just do not care enough to set up a hundred daily carpools for school (not that we need them; we have things called schoolbuses).</p>

<p>If I end up not getting into top-tier schools because I’d rather pursue civil rights than environmental policies, so be it. On a slightly different note, do you have any suggestions of schools that a) would be attainable with my grades/test scores and b) have generally accepted people that, while well-rounded, don’t get crazy recognition in any one area?</p>

9

<p>Well … on the bright side … I LOOK athletic!</p>

<p>Seriously though, I participate in competitive ballroom dancing and figure skating - the first I take seriously, the second not so much - and that’s about all I see myself doing. I realize that many people don’t see dancing as a sport (I don’t know why; it definitely involves enough physical activity to be classified as such), but in that case, what would it be considered?</p>

10

<p>I do not mean to demean your passions, but what about your civil rights? Why should you be held to a higher college admissions standard because of the color of your skin?</p>

<p>I’m not a gay-basher, but gays have plenty of powerful allies in this country and where I’m from (Northern California-San Francisco), they dominate politics. The immigrant Asians in my area have no allies, and have virtually no voice (their fault partially, because they don’t vote much, and the good ones don’t think about running for office). Their kids get excluded from the best public schools in the city because the school board caps Asian enrollments from elementary school to high school. And as a result, they are forced to go to school across town in the worst performing districts. Then when it comes time for college, they face more quotas from the state university (University of Cal.) and from the usual suspects (all the top schools).</p>

<p>As for your chances, you are certainly a competitive student, but I would need to know more. Please see this thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/723222-chance-asian-kid-who-wants-ivy-league-other-crazy-schools-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/723222-chance-asian-kid-who-wants-ivy-league-other-crazy-schools-2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Although you are not from CA, the same thinking applies. Plus other factors too sensitive to discuss. PM for more details.</p>

11

<p>Haha. Well. Things work a lot differently for our little suburban city in Georgia. I’m a lot more concerned with, say, the passage of anti-bullying legislation than I am about ‘Asian quotas’ at top schools. Sure, it’s a little unfair. So is the opposite end of the spectrum, where you have much smoother sailing as a URM. But to me, there’s a difference between fairness and justice, and that’s why I’m not whining about Asian standards but I am speaking out about how gay people are treated in my community.</p>

<p>… I’ll PM you!</p>

12

<p>Check out this latest Chance Me thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/725534-honestly-where-should-i-looking.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/725534-honestly-where-should-i-looking.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>He was a Obama campaign volunteer (and will be using this experience as the focus of his essays). I think we’ll be seeing quite a number of those for the HS Class of 2010!</p>