<p>@topaz1116 Do you go to one of those really preppy and hard to get into public schools or a private school?</p>
<p>@topaz1116 We have 1. gg.</p>
<p>@livelaugh7 </p>
<p>That was really general advice, did you really get something from that lol? But yeah, I constantly make little arithmetic errors as well. You just have to triple-check everything (in a reasonably time-efficient manner of course). Try not to slow down your thinking and actively doubt yourself like I do though, because that could hurt you on standardized tests where you have a certain amount of seconds per question (if you do the math with 60 questions in 50 minutes or whatever). </p>
<p>You guys are over-achievers. 
I live in the middle of no where, and I’d rather work next summer, so I’m just taking the PSAT to see where I’m at with the SAT. </p>
<p>OT, the Senior girl at the top of her class at my school is applying to Johns Hopkins for Chemical Engineering. People like her are kinda rare at my school. I hope she gets in. I don’t know her test scores, but if they’re good, I’m sure she will. </p>
<p>@lyra88
I am!</p>
<p>@livelaugh7 Ours is fully public (no admissions testing needed; we do have a few really, really dumb people). But we are 86% Asian, if that counts for anything (welcome to my high school, home of the overachievers). If you don’t take at least 3 APs, it’s considered weird (and that’s just a minimum number; most people take far more). A fifth of each grade is a year ahead in math. I swear, if we went to other high schools, half of the people here would have 4.0s (as it is, if a class doesn’t have at least 25 valedictorians, they’re “dumb”). I think we send ~40 kids to Berkeley a year? But it does put a lot of pressure on the students. </p>
<p>I’m not studying very hard for the PSAT, though; I’m probably just going to look over my sister’s old SAT CR workbook and be done with it. It’s a week after I take the SAT Bio, so I won’t have much time to study. </p>
<p>@magicial Oh cool! I don’t do AP but I do IB, so I’m trying to figure out how big the jump would be from French 3 to AP. I’m around French 3 level now in my school. Have you gotten any advice about it?</p>
<p>@lyra88
Well, I’m in French 3 at the moment and the normal path at my school would be to go to French IV next year. However, I’m going to try to take AP French next year like you. So far, I haven’t had any advice about how AP French is in my school. I do know that very few kids take it though. I think the jump from French 3 to AP would be fairly substantial. But if you were able to learn a lot of vocabulary and grammar over the summer, then I think you would be fine. Also, daily or weekly conversations in french with people will help your listening and pronunciation a ton.</p>
<p>@ThatOneWeirdGuy You would be surprised what I got from that. 
But thank you. I honestly don’t doubt myself when I do math, cause I’ve never had a reason to before.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say I’m an overachiever though… I’m just really lucky to have opportunities.</p>
<p>@topaz1116 You are so lucky… </p>
<p>It sorta sounds like my school. My grade has two valedictorians a year, it’s weird if you haven’t taken at least two AP classes, if you are one of the students who cares about school (thats 70% of the school which is a lot actually) The top of my class is a giant competition but everyone is soo nice. For the first time in 6 years has the history department had to make a second APUSH class and for the first time in 9 have they had 15 sophomores in Pre-Calc or higher. The first time in like 4 years have they had 6 people take physics as sophomores. Our grade at my school is filled with geniuses. One kid could graduate next year. He has enough credits to.
Actually, I take it back, sounds NOTHING like your school. I may be transferring in soon watch out ;)</p>
<p>@lyra88 Don’t you have to take French 4 before taking AP French?</p>
<p>@livelaugh7 Lol xD For us, the prereqs and stuff are super-strict; they don’t allow people to skip courses even if they’ve taken a CC course or a summer course (probably because if they did, half the school would skip courses; I’d probably have skipped courses as well). We can’t graduate early or anything, no matter how many outside credits we have.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t necessarily call myself lucky, though. It makes everything a huge competition, and half the teachers at my school are subpar (I also think two of my teachers hate me at this point, but that’s another story. I hate one back equally (everybody hates him–he’s really, really, really rude), so yeah; and I’m pretty sure the other one thinks I talk too much.). The district gives us less funding because we’re the “good” school (great logic there). We hear how hard our school is from elementary school onwards. And our football team sucks.
Like, a lot.
We lost our homecoming game 0-47 last year (tbh, no one likes our cheerleaders much either; they don’t have the pull they have at other schools). </p>
<p>@topaz1116 SAME!!! No one has ever skipped. XD I took an Algebra 2 course online with my middle school cause I was ahead when I moved and I had to retake it when I got into high school. No one at my current school is allowed to graduate early. The one kid that moved from VA was at an “excel” school and skipped like three math courses and biology. Even though he could graduate next year, he can’t. He asked though. Everyone else got lucky cause they had an open space in their schedule and could double up or something.</p>
<p>You are lucky though. So am I. That competition drives you and when colleges look at you in perspective, they will see how good you are. They know which schools have a lot of competitions. </p>
<p>My physics teacher is not that great. You learn at home and then go to class and do nothing. He teaches via YouTube videos that aren’t really done that well. You have three tests per term, each is worth 30 POINTS…</p>
<p>I live in a wealthier neighborhood so we get funding. And our athletics are insane, except for football. We are like state champions in almost everything. Its crazy</p>
<p>That sucks, for homecoming… We have like 10 cheerleaders, only two of them are good.</p>
<p>@livelaugh7 We are good in some sports (tennis, badminton, swimming, etc.), and the ones we’re good at, we’re really good at. We live in a really wealthy neighborhood, but half the parents don’t donate and the district doesn’t fund us. At all. </p>
<p>The thing is, my GPA isn’t all that stellar. I got 3 Bs last year (one in Alg II first semester because I was being an idiot, and two in English, where I ended up with an 89.6 first semester and an 89.9 second semester). Thankfully, most colleges don’t look at freshman year GPA and my school doesn’t rank (then, people with 3.8-3.9 GPAs would only be in the top 20%). Colleges know my school is competitive (there’s a reason we have a lot of people go to Ivys and stuff), but we’re absurdly so. </p>
<p>I just hope I get a 4.0 from now onward; although based on my current grades, I probably won’t (especially in Precalc–there’s no partial credit on tests that are ~6 questions, and I make a lot of silly mistakes. For example, I got a 10% off on a quiz recently because I got the end behavior of a graph wrong. Like, I didn’t even look at the degree of the function because I’m really stupid).</p>
<p>Our homecoming week is great (100% epicness), but nobody goes to the game or to the dances. Our dance isn’t even semi-formal. Our multicultural week is also really awesome, partly just because of the food. </p>
<p>@topaz1116
My GPA, weighted, is 4.5618. Unweighted, my GPA is at 3.762. Its cause got I got a 89.5 in English too and my teacher was stubborn and wouldn’t round up. The thing that sucks especially is that a lot of people take Band as an “Honors” class and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE gets an A in that class, so they have fluff in their GPA. </p>
<p>Last year, at my school, the top of 10% got into the uber-selective schools. Our valedictorian got into Harvard (almost each year we send one person).</p>
<p>PreCalc isn’t hard. I as well make such stupid mistakes though and thats why I have an B- in that class right now. Have to work on that so I can at least have an A- at the end of Term 1. </p>
<p>I’ve never gone to our homecoming though. But we have an amazing week before winter break where every class has parities and teachers get food. My Alg. 2 teacher last year made us cookies every week for our double.</p>
<p>This year, all my grades are spiraling down the drain. Gotta go fish them out :|</p>
<p>I know, right? I have a B- in Precalc as well simply due to dumb mistakes. I need at least an A- in order to get into AP Calc BC…</p>
<p>I have a 3.75 GPA both weighted and unweighted; most of our Honors courses aren’t weighted, so it’s impossible to have a weighted GPA until sophomore year.</p>
<p>My school sends somewhere around 2-5 students to Stanford each year, and we had two each to Harvard and Yale (I know one of the girls who got into Harvard, and she had gotten into Stanford and Yale as well; I don’t think she was rejected anywhere. She was like, crazy smart) last year.</p>
<p>We have an awesome Homecoming week as well; but the week before winter break is usually test week. It’s really annoying. They, for some reason, cannot give us a break. </p>
<p>@topaz1116 do you go to TJJHST?</p>
<p>Nope. I’m from California. Anyways, even TJJHST is more ethnically diverse than my school xD</p>
<p>@topaz1116 Same, need at least an A- for AP Calc BC. </p>
<p>Haha right before winter break you will have, say, double Spanish on Tuesday and then on Wednesday you get your test back and eat :)</p>
<p>My friends, who are crazy smart but don’t challenge themselves with a hard course schedule, have a 4.0 unweighted… and my other friends who don’t have an all honors schedule have a 4.0 unweighted… then there is me with a 3.76 looking around and feeling stupid (but I take hard classes so I feel better)</p>
<p>Oh your so lucky to live in CA. I’m in MA.</p>
<p>The kid who could graduate next year got into TJJHST before he moved.</p>
<p>Anyone here do Math Team, HOSA, or SciOly?</p>
<p>Wait guys how is your GPA calculated. My school does it on a 6.0 scale which messes up everything. But is it like 2.7 for an 87 and 4.0 for a 100? </p>