Hi, so I’m a freshman at a good private high school. I want to go into engineering, and my top choice school is Stanford University, or Berkeley, if Stanford is above my reach. I live in California, and have all As with a 4.5 GPA weighted. I’ve started SAT and SAT subject test prep, but I do have a problem.
Now my problem: I am unsure about my extracurricular activities. I originally planned to do Robotics, but I quit after a couple of weeks. I also planned to play badminton, but was just cut from the team. Now, all I am doing is participating in 2 clubs that barely meet every few weeks, as well as volunteering at a church about 2 hours every week. This far into the year, there are few options left for me, and I am feeling pretty dejected I want to volunteer more, so I signed up for a program at a local library but have yet to hear back from it. Next year, I want to enter my school’s speech and debate program.
What will colleges think if I only did an activity for 3 years instead of 4?
I think you will be okay as long as you join some more things next year. A lot of kids don’t get involved freshman year.
It’s okay, overall… but for Stanford you need to do one thing and reach national level by junior year, and for ucb you need to be in the top 5 of your high school.
So, you need to find actual target schools - affordable colleges where your odds are 50-50, not one in ten.
You need to find 20 of them you like and can afford.
Now, for ec’s : what can you productively spend your time on and be good at? What do you like to do?
Why did you quit robotics, if you want to be an engineer this is a good program
They wouldn’t mind too much because freshman year is a transition year for many students. They won’t look down on you because you didn’t have good EC the first year of high school.
First of all, the top schools look at GPA and test scores FIRST. So you can have all of the ECs that you want, and it won’t make a dent if your SAT/ACT is not competitive.
(How do you have a 4.5 as a freshman? How many AP classes do they allow in your school for freshman year?)
Do well in your classes first, then study for the tests.
EC’s are secondary. Find something you actually like!
It sounds like you’re doing anything just to get into a college. Don’t do that! The colleges can sniff that out. They value quality over quantity. If you’re jumping from activity to activity you’ll have a laundry list of nothing significant.
Honors classes have higher credit too. I know that I can’t do a bunch of ECs half-heartedly, but I’m still trying to find one that I like to do. I guess I don’t really have a passion yet.
I think that speech and debate is a more rewarding program. Obviously, if I would not be able to do both of the big programs at my school, so I ultimately decided on speech and debate. I would have done it freshman year, but trouts for it was last may, and I missed it. My school also has intro to programming, which I plan to do next year, as well as AP Comp sci
You don’t need national level. You do need math-sci activities, which can show the engineering related experience. When a hs offers robotics, that’s good.
But so is debate. But you’re not in debate? Or robotics? And you’re dreaming high after one semester? Classes in programming and AP CS can’t offer the same as ECs where you experience the challenges and teamwork over time. And why do you think you want engineering?
Miles to go.
I know some will dispute this, but when you’re “interested” and it’s a 5% college, you show them.