help a rising junior see if they are on track for undergrad business schools!

hi! I realize this is a bit early because I am only going to be a junior next year, but I wanted some help/opinions on if I’m on the right track! Obviously this is subjective!

some background about me:

  • girl, upper middle class (have a lot of younger siblings though!), private school
  • parents will pay 10k for college so I have to either take out a ton of loans or get full tuition/big scholarships
  • interested in business/econ, or a dual degree in cs/bus (I love USC’s program for that)

stats:
gpa: 4.35 (school doesn’t do unweighted, but I did get one B+ in honors chem first semester! not a science gal) school doesn’t rank either, but releases top 10 the end of junior year. I think I’m pretty high up there, at least top 10%.

ACT: signed up for July, got canceled. Hoping for a 32-33 first try, I was 31-32 range on practice tests. Goal is 34 eventually, my weakest section is science, strongest is reading.

coursework:
9th: max rigor, no AP’s offered.
10th: max rigor, no AP’s offered. Took health over the summer so I could take a dual credit business course!
11th: almost max rigor, opted out of AP Chem to take an honors level science. Only other AP’s offered are Lit + US History. Taking 2 business DE’s, one online through community college.

Extracurriculars (no particular order):

  1. FBLA (9-10): member 9th, VP 10th, will be VP 11th, also will be on state executive board 11th and then run for state pres. or other position! My state is pretty small and it’s not rare for people from my school to be state VP or Pres.
  1. {REDACTED} Social Media Internship (11): doing this summer, 20-25 hours a week, paid! not going to say the name of the company for privacy reasons but they are becoming pretty well known in the educational world!! I love social media and marketing so this is right up my alley. I'm one of five social media interns, they had 1k+ apply!
  2. USC Technology Innovation Bootcamp (11): I'm interested in technology and business, so I applied to this USC bootcamp! Just wanted to see if I could get in + it was free. 3 weeks long. This summer ^
  3. Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program (11): The normal SIP that is 7 weeks isn't near me, but I put myself on their email list. Got notified they were doing virtual 2 week programs although those were mostly filled up from the 7 week attendees. I got into an accelerated 1 week program that covers the same amount of material. I'm interested in coding and technology, figured I would give this a shot.
  4. random business "ventures"? (9-10): not sure what to title this? I sold on poshmark all throughout 9th and 10th and made a couple thousand dollars. Retail arbitrage. I'm also a Posh Ambassador. Right now I have an Etsy shop with apparel, however I use a print on demand service that integrates with Etsy so I don't have to do as much work. I was working on all the designs for the last few months + launched some of the designs on Etsy a week ago! Already have a few sales, just super busy right now and don't have time to market it on social media.
  5. Cross Country (10): I was injured in the summer of 9th grade so I just decided not to be on the team because I wouldn't have been able to run for half of it and I also was required to go to basketball conditioning even though the sport was in the winter! I'm doing xc for 11th and 12th though, I should be varsity for 11th. Our team is VERY competitive, we always place super well at State.
  6. Key Club (9-10): just a member for both grades. I volunteer when I'm free but I'm so busy with all my other activities that I just don't have the time to be an officer and go to every single service activity (you're required to). We had officers when I was a freshmen, but nobody wanted to when I was in 10th grade lol.
  7. Student Council (10): just a member 10th, but will be secretary in 11th! honestly wish I joined this freshmen year. I could probably be student body president in 12th if I wanted, however my school only lets you be president of one club. I think I would rather be president of FBLA!
  8. Gymnastics Team Manager (10): go to all the gymnastics practices + meets, help with the mats, scorecards, floor music, misc stuff. I used to do gymnastics + had so many relatives that did it that I understand a lot of what's going on and like watching the routines! We also did really well at state (3rd) although obviously that's not my accomplishment because I didn't compete!

other activities: yearbook (9-10) but it’s turning into a regular class so I’m not doing it, basketball (9): the reason why I couldn’t do much freshmen year because it was so time consuming, track (9-10): my coach got mad at me because I had to go to gymnastics meets + kept throwing shade at me so I told him I just wasn’t going to do it anymore because I didn’t have the time. Then a week later the whole sport got cancelled because of corona so technically I could say I did it 10th, but also no. If xc gets canceled, I might come back and do track.

  • also have a pinterest account with 80k monthly viewers? kinda interesting I guess? I'm interested in social media so I test different methods with it to see what gets the most engagement.

Awards:

  1. fbla state 1st place in some event
  2. fbla state 3rd place in some event (had to do with social media)
  3. school service award

*our fbla state conference was canceled this year. I’m doing 5-6 events next year though, and like I said earlier, my state is small and not super competitive.

thank you so much! hopefully I posted this in the right place! I just want to know if I have a somewhat competitive profile or not! I think I have a mix of ec’s related to my major, but also some other basic ones most people have. also, all the activities that say “(9-10)” I plan on continuing through 12th!

By far, your biggest constraint will be cost. Having a 4 year on campus experience is going to be very difficult. What is the total cost of attendance at your state flagship? Are there any schools that you could live at home for two years to save money? To go to any other school will require a full tuition scholarship. They are very difficult find. Do you have any chance of making National Merit Finalist in your state? That would open up some doors.

I could probably get my parents to pay a little bit more (15k) so that all my room and board is covered, my state flagship is a couple thousand over 20k (don’t want to say for privacy reasons) so worst case scenario I would have 10k debt max per year for 4 years. I was looking into my state school and the University of Arizona as safeties. If I get a 4.0 and 32 ACT I can get 35k oos which is 1k less than their tuition oos.

As far as national merit is concerned, my state has a lower index. I’m a much better test taker with the ACT though, rather than the SAT because the math on the SAT trips me up.

The other schools I was looking at almost all of them have full tuition scholarships (which again I realize are hard to get). Examples of places I was looking at:

  • USC, Vanderbilt, Miami Ohio, UGA, University of Miami, SMU, UNC Chapel Hill (literally my dream school but I’m oos and their full ride scholarships are crazy hard to get), South Carolina.