I am currently a high school junior. My entire life I have been brought up knowing to ALWAYS try your hardest in school and my parents have always told me how important it is to get good grades. Throughout middle school I got mostly A’s with maybe 1 or 2 B’s during all 3 years. My cousin had graduated from Stanford just a year before I went to high school and my motivation had never been higher to succeed. My freshman year I had taken the hardest classes possible, all honors and AP’s weren’t offered that year, with the exception of orchestra and gym (both graduation requirements). I finished with a 3.81 weighted GPA on a 5.33 scale and 3.5 on an unweighted scale. My sophomore year I had taken 3 AP’s: History, Psychology, and Spanish and received a 5 on Spanish, 4 on Psych, and 3 on History. I finished with a B- in psych (that class is notorious for being hard) and got a C+ in Precalc (just an FYI the teacher had only been teaching it for 2-3 years and now is not teaching the class anymore) also low B’s and high C’s were really common amongst his students. I finished that year with a 3.80 weighted GPA but ended with 3.05 unweighted GPA that year. For whatever reason, the honors classes were way more homework heavy and way harder than the AP classes. It now gets interesting, I now take college courses at a local community college (calc, chemistry, physics) that counts as AP weighted. I am almost 90% sure that I will end up between a 4.7-5.0 weighted GPA this year and around a 3.9 to 4.0 unweighted GPA, it’s a long story but just now that these classes are super easy compared to high school classes. I have around 500 hours of community service, participate in around 10 extracurriculars, have made 2 varsity sports teams, and I have testified to save the jobs of around 150 teachers in my state due to the bill I helped pass in the state senate. I am doing two medical internships and one business internship. I was not born here and I immigrated when I was 3 and I am of Hispanic heritage. My dream is to land at UCB, UCLA, or USC (I love California) but I am also open to U of Michigan, Duke, maybe an Ivy League hail mary and a few more selective schools. What are my chances or what can I do to improve the possibility of getting into some of these schools?
- Home State?
- PSAT/PLAN test results? Have you taken the SAT/ACT yet?
- How much can your parents afford to pay each year?
Since you started your Junior year, it is still a little early to give you an idea of your chances but you are heading in the right direction with your grades, EC’s etc… Your hard work will pay off, but you also need to find schools that fit your stats and not the other way around.
Affordability may be a huge factor in your chances and formulating your college list. Answer the questions above and posters can give you some suggestions to help make a realistic list of colleges to consider.
- Ohio
- PSAT: 1120, ACT: 27, both without studying but now I have learned a lot of tricks and tips and I can feel that I will do so much better on September 10th for the ACT and PSAT later on.
- I am not someone who wants to sound like a snob but one of my parents makes $300K+ before taxes however they have not told me how much money I have for college except "Don't worry about the cost just focus on studying".
Thank you for all the help!
Just so that anyone who ever reads above all the core classes (math, science, reading, and social studies) are all either AP or Honors.
Just asking about affordability since many applicants are shocked that as an OOS applicant they will have to be full pay.
You will need to bump up your test scores to have a good chance at UCLA/UCD. You want to be at or above the averages in test scores and UC GPA.
At the end of Junior year, you need to calculate your UC GPA weighed capped: https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/
You want to aim for a 4.0+ for the UC GPA. UCLA/UCB also will use uncapped weighted GPA (unlimited honors points for the a-g courses 10-11th) which could help you.
Use the link for the UC Freshman profiles for 2016 so you can get an idea of target ACT/SAT scores. The internships will help you but you did not specify a major. Be aware that only UCB/UCI/UCR have Business schools while the rest of the UC’s do offer Economics instead of a true Business major if you are leaning towards that area.
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/profiles/
The more competitive the majors, the higher the stats need to be for a solid chance. UC’s are very GPA focused so grades will be very important.
- Ohio
- PSAT: 1120, ACT: 27, both without studying but now I have learned a lot of tricks and tips and I can feel that I will do so much better on September 10th for the ACT
- I am not someone who wants to sound like a snob but my father make $300K+ before taxes
Thank you so much for the help!