Hi guys, so I’m currently in the sophomore (grade 10) year of high school and starting to look into colleges. I’m an Asian international student in Canada, and I was wondering about my changes for top tier American universities.
My Qualifications:
GPA- 6.7/7 average (IB grading scale, grade 9), 3.1 (freshman year)
SAT- Haven’t officially taken the SAT’s yet, but I got 1700 on a practice test without any previous preparation or studying
Course load: Full IB Diploma for grades 11 and 12, Full IB MYP diploma for grade 10
Awards:
Excellence in Individuals and Societies (2014-2015)
Extracurriculars:
- Debate Team (1 year)
- Peer Tutoring (1 year, also counts as volunteer)
- Yearbook Committee (1 year)
- Drama Club, backstage lighting (2 years, 1 year each for the two schools I’ve been to)
Volunteer:
- Peer Tutoring (1 year)
- Migrant Children Foundation: taught underprivileged children in Beijing how to speak English (1 year)
Summer:
Stanford International Youth Program (Summer of 2015)
Please be honest, any feedback or suggestions are greatly appreciated!
Too soon to be chanced. Keep getting good grades, prep for the SAT and/or ACT and continue with your EC’s and look for leadership opportunities. Come back at the end of Junior year, with all the relevant information including how much your parents can pay and you will be chanced.
To be honest, you’ll need to do some work if you want to get into Ivies and the like, but it’s still very early on so you definatley have time.
First off, you need to bring up that GPA and SAT scores. You’ll want to be up to 3.75 and 2200 at the very least. Great job on the course rigor though. Colleges will look favorably on that.
Secondly, your extracurriculars could use a little bit of work, but your not far off track for your age. Start to commit your time to a few activities that you really like and try to really get involved. Your volunteer work is great. Definatley keep that up. Another thing that would be great is if you start to explore careers and fields of study you might be intrested in. Using medicine as an example, one might shadow a doctor, volunteer at a hospitals, or participate in biomedical research.
So as you may or may not know, being an international is going to give you a disadvantage. Being Asian, which is considered an over repersented ethnicity, will also do this. That’s not an area I know a ton about, so I’ll let other chime in with more advice about that paticurlar topic.