how am i doing as a sophomore?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
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Personal Information

Race: Asian
Gender: Female
Income: 120-150k
Background: I go to a top 20 high school in IL. At my school, A-s, A+s, and As are all considered As. There is no class rank and valedictorian.
School: Public, ~1400 students, ~350 in class

Academics

Background: I did terribly freshman year because of the drastic change in environment, schoolwork, and other reasons. Also, my grades suffered because I swam freshman year and wasn’t able to balance swimming, extracurriculars, and my grades. I improved a lot sophomore year though and got straight As first semester, so I guess that counts for something.
Just wanted to say that my GPA will definitely improve. I know that 3.67 is bad but I can get it up to maybe 3.8ish by the end of junior year
GPA: 3.67 (freshman year + first semester sophomore year)
Rank: school does not rank
Freshman year: Chinese II Honors (A, A), AP World History (B, A), Geometry Honors (C, C), Treble Choir (A, A), Freshman Lit Honors (B, B), Biology Honors (B, B)
Received a 4 on WHAP exam
Sophomore year (so far): Chinese III Honors (A), Algebra II Honors (A), AP European History (A), AP Computer Science Principles (A), Chemistry Honors (A), World Literature Honors (A)
Junior year: I will be taking AP Chinese, AP Computer Science A, AP Lang, AP Physics I & II, Pre-calc Honors, US History
Senior year: haven’t thought that far. I’ll worry about that later.

Extracurriculars

FBLA or Future Business Leaders of America (9, 10):

  • 9: Placed 3rd at state in my event and qualified for nationals
  • 9: Attended nationals but did not place :frowning: but it was a great experience anyways
  • 10: State qualifier (state results are coming out in like 3 weeks… hope I made nats again)
  • 10: going to run for a leadership position; I have a REALLY good chance of getting one
    Math Team (9, 10):
  • 9: On regional and state team
  • 9: Placed 2nd at regionals as a team and 8th at state as a team (our personal worst)
  • 10: Did not qualify for regional state team sophomore year (competition shot up bc more people joined)
    Computer Science Club (9, 10):
  • 10: Assisted in the creation and behind the scenes work for my school’s first-ever Innovation Fair
  • 10: going to run for a leadership position; it’s basically guaranteed because there’s not much competition
    WYSE or Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering (10):
  • Background: WYSE is an Illinois and Missouri academic challenge competition created by UIUC where students
    compete in many categories, such as chem, biology, physics, english, computer science, engineering graphics, math
  • On regional and sectional team
  • Placed 1st in our division as a team at regionals
  • Qualified for sectionals
  • Did not get on the state team, which is dominated by like 98% upperclassmen
    JB Pritzker Organizing Fellow (10):
  • I am an organizing fellow on JB Pritzker’s Campaign for Governor
  • I engage new potential voters and volunteers through canvassing
  • I also help organize local campaign events
  • Will continue to be interning because Pritzker will most likely win the democratic primary
  • do not plan on interning for political campaigns in the future, but it was nice and cemented my
    Girls Who Code Club (10):
  • I am currently in the process of starting a Girls Who Club club at my middle school because of the lack of STEM
    opportunities there
  • Once it is started, I will be the Founder/President/Facilitator (promoting the club, recruiting volunteers, teaching the
    girls once a week, planning field trips; just a lot of involvement)
    NHS (11, 12):
  • At my school, students can only join NHS during junior and senior year.

Questions

  • How will my GPA overall, especially my geometry and biology grades, impact me since I'm majoring in STEM?
  • How is the level of difficulty of my courses?
  • How are my ECs? I kind of feel like they're really generic Asian extracurriculars and I feel like I won't stand out. Also, I feel like my ECs are going to be seen less impressive compared to others at the type of schools that I'm going to apply to.
  • Would I be put at a disadvantage because my dad (only one working) make six figures? We live in an expensive neighborhood, so a lot of money goes into basic things like our house, insurance, etc. We might be seen as "wealthy" depending on the person but at the school that I go to, my family's level of income and house size is considered average. How would colleges take into the account of the cost of living in my area??

If you’ve read til here, thanks, and please help me out! Any advice is appreciated :slight_smile:

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bump

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bumppp

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I am another sophomore, so I won’t judge anything of yours, but what colleges are you interested in? A 3.8 could be great in the context of certain schools or below average at other schools. I think your ECs are great, but I would try your best to focus on the STEM area. Right now, it’s hard to tell what your passion is. You have listed a political campaign, engineering, math, and business which are all different subjects. They actually could fit into groups of two. Business and politics, and then engineering and math.

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@ab2002 Thanks for your feedback! I plan on applying to schools like UIUC, Georgia Tech, UC Berkeley, and MIT (haha what a joke). Yea, I definitely agree with you, which is why I never plan on interning for a political campaign or getting involved with anything related to politics during high school. Also, business is just one of my extracurriculars, and it is one of my interests because I plan to get an MBA in the future. I also plan on running for VP of Technology on my FBLA chapter’s exec board, which nicely combines both of my interests (STEM and business).

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Your stuff looks good. Hard to say how your first year mishaps can impact you. A selective school might be able to see past them and give you a chance, others might just write you off there. Definitely you have good chances though shall you continue impoving. Keep up the nice stuff

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@theinvokingsyndicate Wait…some selective schools would immediately toss away my application after seeing my freshman grades? I know I screwed up during my freshman year, but that’s just one year and I’ll have an upward trend in grades, difficult classes, good test scores, and okay extracurriculars to make up for it. Do schools really do this?

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@needtosucceed27 before getting upset about the advice that people leave for you, click on their name and look at their posting history to see what their knowledge base is. If you do this, you will find that @theinvokingsyndicate is a high school freshman, so there is no need to freak out about what he/she has to say about college admissions.

Colleges like an upward trend. Just keep working hard. You can’t change the past so there is no use worrying about it. When you finish your junior year, you will need to take stock of your gpa and test scores and find a range of schools that you are interested in attending. Also, a 3.67 is not a bad gpa.

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With selective schools anything and everything can make a difference. I was in a similar boat though too in 8th grade my two high school classes algebra and spanish both ended up with a B both semesters. Now I have improved to straight A’s this year but it’s difficult to say how those two grades can impact me. Maybe an admissions officer will scoff when they see it and toss my application away but most likely not. It shows growth in character to improve like the upward trend referenced above. You are taking challenging classes and have many good ECS and a sport. Seems like a great path you’re paving.

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@theinvokingsyndicate I doubt that they would do that, but thank you for your advice :slight_smile:

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As a high school senior, here is what I think about the grade situation…

1.) Don’t be concerned about what someone who is a freshman is saying… middle school grades have no bearing on college admissions, and freshman grades can be finicky.
2.) Most colleges like to see an upward trend, and if you are able to bump your Cs up to Bs and Bs up to As, colleges will recognize that.

Also… having flawless grades aren’t absolutely necessary to getting into college, even the prestigious schools. I was accepted into quite a few elite schools, despite having Bs in 2 classes my freshman year. Your test scores, extracurriculars, college essay, and Letters of Recommendation carry much more weight and importance at prestigious schools than at less competitive schools (less competitive does not equal a lower quality school, however).

Good luck!