<p>Hi. I'm a junior in high school right now, and I have just started really looking into colleges. I have an outstanding gpa (3.97 unweighted for freshman and sophore year), with a good chance of being valedictorian, with a rigorous schedule and I expect to get around a 32 to 34 on the ACT (I got a 32 in freshman year on a practice ACT with very little knowledge of the test). I did take the SAT, but I did not prepare for it much (got a 1940) though I intend to practice more for future tries. I also plan to take Multivariable calculus at Princeton next year, since the school is offering several courses for high schoolers.</p>
<p>So yeah, pretty much as the title implies, I have very good grades, but I have poor extracurriculars. I have absolutely nothing for freshman and sophomore years (I wanted to make sure I could handle academic work before trying to go for clubs), and for this year, all I have is Science Olympiad and a small, medical based club that my friend started. I do have a part time job, which I believe can definitely help, but I doubt it is enough.</p>
<p>My school does not offer a very broad range of clubs, and the ones I wanted to join I generally couldn't because I don't have a reliable ride to or from school (my school doesn't offer after school busing). While I do plan to participate in FIRST Robotics next year, and I hope to get into NHS, I really do not think these will help much.</p>
<p>I understand that the top top schools, like Harvard and Yale, are pretty much out of the picture. But what about schools like UPenn, Columbia, and Dartmouth? Do you think I can get into these schools with my limited extracurriculars?</p>
<p>No… LOL all the schools you mentioned are top top schools. For an unhooked student(no URM, ath. recruit, or international award) all the Ivys besides Cornell at high reaches. It seems you are definitely very smart, but neither the test scores nor ECs are good enough, no chance at all really. A 34 would be at the low end of the Ivy spectrum, but still enough. However, anything under would be a little low. I would also believe the ECs are low for other top 25 schools. You definitely have time to improve them. Don’t give up hope. Good Luck</p>
<p>Also another question, why did u decide to go in for the SAT unprepared? If you want to gauge your raw potential in official testing conditions, most major test prep companies offer official practice tests. It is a very bad idea to go in unprepared because taking it over 3 times looks pretty bad, and it is now on your app. East coast schools also have a bias toward SATs. Hopefully you erase that score on your next try.</p>
<p>You have almost no shot at top 25 schools.
They are all ridiculously hard to get into and accept students with almost perfect scores or incredible, incredible ECs or both.
Look at schools in the 25-50 range.
Those are the schools that purely academics can get kids in…
But then again… a 1940 is not a good score…
Unless you get a 2150+ even those schools will be really reachy for you</p>
<p>Every so often, CC gets threads like this one: oh, my activities are so limited… Get yourself out there and get involved. Do something for your community, mentor/tutor, win at Sci Olympiad competitions, get some sort of research or vol position in the sciences, outside hs. Even if you do raise your scores, your competition will be doing this.</p>
<p>@lookingforward
While I don’t doubt that starting new extracurriculars now will help my chances, I do know that colleges look for long term devotion to an activity, rather than a few activities squeezed in at the last minute. If I were to say, join the robotics team, model UN, and perhaps get a research volunteer oportunity over the summer, do you think I would have a decent chance of getting into, say, UPenn?</p>
<p>And about my SAT scores, I had always planned to rely more on the ACT after taking a practice exam of each, though I did want to take the SAT too, of course. I did prepare, just not as much as I wanted to. I ended up taking it 2 months earlier than I had originally planned, leaving me with very little time to prepare, not to mention I was preoccupied with midterms and such. I decided to use this test to show which areas, in particular, I needed to focus on. I was under the impression that colleges only look at your combined SAT score, rather than each individual one?</p>
<p>UPenn, Columbia, and Dartmouth are as top top as Harvard and Yale, and they will be high reaches. If you get some club leadership positions and do some summer research, you’ll have a shot at the lower end of the top 20 spectrum; they’ll still be reaches as they are very selective schools, but definitely not impossible. However, you are pretty solid for the 30-40 range, and the 20-30 range is not out of reach.</p>
<p>Oh, and it goes without saying that if you win major awards for your research, your chances become much greater.</p>
<p>Most colleges just look at your best scores in each category. Penn has been a very tough read over the last few years, so be sure to find a variety of schools you love and can afford.</p>
<p>About activities: colleges look at what you did and how long, yes. Plus the level of leadership. But, it’s not so much the title as the responsibilities or achievements and how you describe them. (Like, who cares if you were student prez but did diddly?) Stick with Olympiad and robotics, but there’s not much time to win at competitions or achieve some high position in MUN, so go with a strong Plan B. Some things, like tutoring/mentoring, peer counselor, research, an internship or hosp vol, are just right for a junior/senior. Same for Habitat style projects. (Good community service is not mostly social.)<br>
Think about how you can expand that medical club to take it up a serious notch and have some reach and importance. Think about getting involved with something different for you (like a school play or whatever that can show some breadth, your willingness to try.) And, PM me sometime, if you need.</p>