How to be prepared for High School?

Applying to College Admission Stories
1

Hey guys! I’m currently an 8th grader at X school. It’s a very rigorous middle school (4+ hours of homework each night), and tons of papers to turn in. But it’s a very crappy public school. Apparently we’re too “smart”, so we’re able to learn by ourselves, without our teachers actually teaching us or anything (one of those state Magnet schools).

I’d like to be prepared for college, you know, because high school is only one year away. I believe that we should thrive in high school in order to get into a good college (that’s a given). I’m thinking Ivy League or top-tier, but my stats may prove otherwise. I mean, I’m not a genius/athlete or anything like that.

Grades: Straight As
My Algebra 1 grade is really low, partly due to my horrible teacher (currently it’s a B, but I will work to improve it).
Perfect scores on state exam

ECs:
Mandarin Studies (8 years), Peer Leader
Flute (5 years), 1st flute
Piano (4 years, level 5 music theory)
Art Club (3 years)
Lego Robotics (2 years), Research

  • I know this isn’t alot of ECs, I don’t really like our school clubs. I’m also a tennis amateur, but I’m getting better.

I’m probably dropping Art Club and Lego Robotics, because I will have no affiliation with them for my future major. Flute and Piano comes easily to me; I can fit in practice time easily. But the thing I’m really interested in is science/ political studies, but our school doesn’t have anything like that. How do I start getting more involved? What ECs do you recomend doing for HS? I’m thinking Debate, Mocktrial, Model UN, Science Olympiads, etc. My strongest subject is science. I love reading scientific journals. My father is a molecular biologist and he is offering an internship to his lab (seriously, why me? only geniuses work there) when i reach HS.

Should I also start applying for ivy league prep schools (like Andover, Exeter) or not? My mom was thinking about it, but she said they only accepted “excellence”, and it’s super expensive. My local high school is super crappy/ghetto, so I’ll probaly attend one of those less-prestigious, college-prep Catholic academies.

Also, I heard that it’s an extreme advantage to be nationally recognized. How do I make myself more nationally recognized? Isn’t it super hard and rare?

Do you guys rec any study tips? How to study more effiecently in less time, while still doing excellent? C’mon, you guys are all geniuses! I know I’m a weak candidate. I just don’t know how to well-round myself!

Any input is EXTREMELY HELPFUL to my situation. Gracias, adios!

2

I would say you are far from a weak candidate. Your stats already look better than many high schoolers that I know. Very few middle schools require 4+ hours of homework each night- you contradict yourself by saying it is a very rigorous m.s., and then saying it is a “very crappy public school.” The EC’s that you listed would be very appropriate preparation for poly sci and science. I would say that you should stop worrying about adding any EC’s at this point. YOu are already more than prepared for most high schools, and can add appropriate EC’s once there. Colleges are not going to look at your m.s. achievements, and you will have 4 years in h.s. to take part in activities.

Few m.s. kids have the activities that you now take part in. You list your stats as straight A/ perfect test scores, but then say you are a “weak candidate”. You need to relax and have some fun- way too serious!

3

Dude. You’re in eighth grade. Relax. Have fun. You’re in plenty of ECs. You’re set for HS. Just have fun. Worry about all of that at the beginning of sophomore year of HS.

4

Sorry, but middle school stats are meaningless.

The summer before freshmen year, spend 20-30 minutes reading CC once a week. Check High School Life, Parents Forum, and College Admissions. Read through the entirety of the “I Wish I Had Known…” (or something like that) thread in the Admissions Hindsights/Lessons Learned forum. This will give you much needed perspective (smartest kid in school =/= guaranteed Harvard acceptance, etc) and a good idea of how college admissions work (the popular idea is typically wrong). And then, once school starts, stop. Only check CC to ask questions. You are better off without it.

In August before freshmen year, create a very rough plan for high school. A preliminary schedule for each year, an overview of what extracurriculars you know you want to do, dates and prep plans for competitions and standardized testing, etc. This plan will likely change drastically throughout the course of high school. Make it anyway, it’s helpful in making choices and will be reassuring once you are a stressed upperclassmen :wink: You should have no free time freshmen year. Some people think freshmen year is for slacking, since the classes aren’t as hard. Wrong. Take advantage of the easier, even if only slightly, workload and instead fill your freetime with extracurricula. Join anything that sounds interesting. If you hate something, drop it. If you are unsure about it, don’t continue with it sophomore year. Sophomore year you should cut extracurricula to the bone, to make time for an increased workload and let you focus on that which you love to do most.

Chill out. You are way to uptight about this already and you haven’t even started high school yet.

5

if you’re seriously considering applying to a boarding school, you should be doing everything for your applications NOW.

I highly recommend that you take up a sport and continue playing in high school. Even if you’re not “good” at it, it’s a great way to relieve some stress.

I also have the slightest feeling you’re asian. If you are, and you want a top tier college, read up some stuff about affirmative action and the like. They talk about “typical asian applicants” and that should give you some perspective on what you should be wary of.

You really should take up that lab internship as soon as possible, that’s a wonderful opportunity.

6

First thing is first. Relax.
Second just do your homework, and have fun. I wish I would have done that.

7

One bit of advice: Try not to procrastinator too much. Keep your priorities straight and make sure you can plan a schedule out.

I’m a junior and I participate in several clubs/ECs and I have learned that if I want to get good grades, I have to have my schedule planned out. I used to play online games and stuff, but i’ve cut those out. I try to maintain my sanity by making an hour for TV on Wednesdays, or keeping 30 minutes-1 hour open every night for reading, but sometimes things don’t work out perfectly. If I have a busy day with a lot of stuff to do for Thursday, i’ll DVR my TV show and spend my hour studying. I always try to watch the Redskins game, but that takes like 3 hours, so I spend a few hours doing homework on Saturday.

It’s fine AND necessary to have free time to have fun online and such, but make sure you’re doing your best on your work.

8

woww!!! Some of the people on these boards are so impressive…you being one of them Catsby!!

If you think you’re going to a crappy middle school - try mine: we barely learned any grammar, we never read a full shakespeare play, except Romeo and Juliet which was a high school class English I Honors (I took it in 8th grade), our science assignments were just answering questions from the chapter review sections, except once – my 8th grade teacher had us make a boat out of wood, fabric (for the sail), straws and plastic bottles – she also wore a lab coat almost every day. I liked pretty much all my teachers, because I was a good student , but I think she was one of the coolest, however, aside from the boat building, I don’t remember receiving any challenging assignments…6th grade was a joke – we learned the 8 parts of speech as if we were learning it for the first time where I’d already learned them in elementary school up North (I had just moved from Ohio), so um, not really challenging. we never had clubs like the debate team, or robotics club :confused:

in high school I really wanted to join the debate team and environmental club – but they didn’t have a debate team, and the environmental club met like once a month, and it had 3 people in it – I think it eventually fell apart. I did have a opportunity to be in newspaper tho – but I wrote once nice story on the effects of Punk music, and I slacked on the rest of the articles and was always the first to take horoscopes :confused: big regret, now I feel like I should have taken on more challenging projects.

to have taken Chinese for 5 years, and Spanish for a few years and become fluent in them would have been awesome!