<p>Maybe I'm a little late for asking this question or joining this site but I've been curious my entire high school career how work experience could contribute to a college application. Now, here's my awkward situation:</p>
<p>A student 4 hours of work 6 days of week with relevancy to their major (let's say Web Design work and CS major) since 8th grade (final year of middle school). In more detail, this student has started a community forum with 1400 members and leads a team of 6 people for both management and development. Regarding development, this student has worked with new, innovative technologies such as video streaming and and socket programming.</p>
<p>Of course, 24 hours of work per week has a major impact on your grade. Although this student is not top of the class, he's within the top 20% of an upper-middle class school with a nationally recognized Acadec team (and also on of the top 10 highschools in the state of CA). </p>
<p>With a school and town such as this, economical disadvantage is unlikely; however, this particular student works in order to continue pursuing education at one of these top highschools.</p>
<p>Given a 3.5 GPA, 1750 SATs, how would work experience and economical disadvantages weigh against this? Simply by glancing at my transcript, all the factors seem to weigh against me. I haven't seen much discussion on the topic of work experience (maybe because not enough students work to go to school at the high-school level).</p>
<p>I honestly believe that I have a greater chance of getting into UC based on my essay than getting into state universities based on my grade. Feels like a catch 22.</p>