<p>Hey im an Australian just finishing up highschool over here and just wanted to see if some people could help me out. It's become pretty clear to me while browsing these forums that I have pretty much no chance of getting into a college that would be worth my while (top 30 or so) and have hence started to look more closely at postgrad. Firstly heres a brief description of me and my education;
-Male of anglo descent.
-Have traveled extensively, including North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. I believe I have pretty good life experience.
-Go to the second highest ranking school in my state, with the first ranked being a girls school.
-I am doing my final year this year and believe I will achieve somewhere from the 96th-98th percentile.
-Have a maths/science background, hoping to score somewhere around the 99th percentile in a mathematical subject that is heavily scaled, meaning that only people that are very good at maths do it in the first place.</p>
<p>I have 2 major problems, firstly that I have only been really motivated this year. One of the downfalls of our 6 year high school program is that it is easy to become complacent during the middle years and tell yourself that you will try later on. My second problem is my lack of EC's. This is partly due to me having to travel for 3 hours a day to get to school up until the last 2 years and partly due to a lack of opportunity.</p>
<p>So what this all really comes down to is; I need some advice for university next year. I will be attending Melbourne University and am unsure what course would be better looked upon by top 30 colleges in the US. There is the science degree, which has an entry requirement of 85th percentile or there is a commerce course that has an entry requirement of 95th percentile. In the science course I believe that I could get first class honours, while in the commerce degree I would have to try extremely hard to get this, which I would be willing to do.</p>
<p>Do you think that if I was one of the highest ranking people in my course I would have a chance of postgrad in the US, also what could I do to maximise my chances.</p>