How to increase my chances to get accepted to a good college

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Im barely through my first sem as a highschool soph but what are things i can do to make my application for college, when i make one, better?

Freshmen year
For grades freshmen year, I had around a 3.5 gpa but with no honors or aps (came from NY to CA 1 month late into school year so schedule got messed up)
as for Ecs I did Mock Trial and HOSA

summer after fresh year I volunteered at a kids summer camp, and put in about 85 hours

Sophomore year
Taking 1 AP class and the other 5 are regular. I can probably get my gpa for 1st semester to an 3.8 unweighted but forsure above a 3.5.
For Ecs im in Speech and debate and MUN

Yeah, not very good looking but heres my plan

for the rest of Sophomore im going to join track, im volunteering at the hospital, trying to get an summer internship for a law firm, and again volunteering at the summer camp 80-100hrs. Ive also been writing articles and hope to get it published for Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post.

Ive been experimenting with My Ecs and I havent liked any of them (HOSA, MUN, Debate, “accidentally quit Mock trial”… complicated story) But im going to continue Debate for the rest of highschool.

Junior year im taking a lot of APs and im starting a club where basically im raising money for an organization that gives kids free surgeries, and joining yearbook and the school paper, and hopefully tennis if i make it.

I’m stressed because theres kids who have literally started their own business already and have everything set, but i feel like my Ecs are all over the place and that i havent made a difference in them. For the ECs im hopefully trying to get into i made the them “themed” so helping people (summer camp, hospital, law firm) and Writing (freelance, school yearbook & paper)

I want to major in political science or philosophy because my goal is becoming a lawyer. The schools I really want to go to are UCs, NYU, Uchicago, Georgetown, and Stanford

Any tips to strengthen my app is appreciated!!

2

Concentrate on raising your GPA.
Study for the SAT. Practice and practice and practice the SAT. Our family found that prepscholar website provides excellent practice targeted at your weak spots. We signed up for the $399 package and you can just keep practicing and practicing until you reach your target goal

You have nice ECs but the GPA needs to rise to much much higher levels to get into your target schools.

  • Attend all tutoring sessions.
  • Be on time for classes
  • Get every single assignment in on time
  • Ask for extra credit work and do it well

You will also need great recommendations from your teachers. You probably already have some nice relationships with teachers, but if you don’t be sure to make friends with some esp in junior year so that they can write recommendations.

Bottom line:

Raise that GPA.

Also: see if you can find other schools that you love just as much. The schools you note are hard for anyone to get in even with perfect academic records. See if you like, say, Muhlenberg or Gettysburg or some other schools. Look at CTCL schools (google for that). One way to think about that is: Can I afford X school? NYU is notoriously bad with financial aid and it’s one of the more expensive schools. As your parents to run NPC (located on each school’s website) to see if your family can afford that school. If you’re not a California resident, those schools are super expensive or OOS (out of state) students. If you love UC schools, look at Occidental instead. If you love the West Coast, also consider Whitman. See if you love any of the schools in your local state system.

3

Yeah, very good advice from @dustyfeathers. All the schools that you’re wanting to go to will look for UW GPAs of really at least 3.8 unless you’ve got some otherwise top, top things. While helping people is an admirable goal, if your only objective is college admisisons, you could go in a slightly better direction. What colleges want to see most in ECs is engagement and leadership. So while a general theme across a lot of ECs could be good, you may want to pick a few that can still give you the same helping people and writing effect, and take really big leadership positions in them.

Other things: TESTING
This is so often the thing that disqualifies people from a lot of top colleges, and it’s something you have to WORK at. If your family can afford one, get a tutor. If not, get a test prep book, or use khanacademy’s test prep, or the prepscholar thing that dustyfeathers mentioned. Do a little bit every day, or every other day, to try and get your scores as high as possible. Even if you’re not planning to take it for over a year, it’s really good to start now, and it will take discipline, but it’ll pay off.

You’ve got time. Work at things, raise your stats, take some leadership roles. It’ll help your chances at those places, and that’s all you can really do.

4

What state are you in? The UCs are very expensive if you’re from out-of-state and they won’t give you aid. Expect to pay $60,000 a year there. Can you afford that? NYU has bad financial aid, too, and New York is a pricey place to live. Meanwhile, Chicago, Georgetown, and Stanford turn down hundreds of applicants every year who have perfect grades and test scores – and you do not have perfect grades, and you might not get a perfect test score.

I don’t want to be too harsh here, but you really ought to consider expanding your list. Look at your state schools. Look at colleges that offer strong programs in the area you want to study. Look at colleges that your family can afford with minimal or no loans. Without knowing your test score(s) yet it’d be hard to help you more than that, but when you do take the SAT or ACT (after studying for it!), refine your list based on which colleges have average stats higher than yours (reaches), ones where your stats are similar to the average (matches), and ones where your stats are higher than the average (safeties). This should not be too hard – with a 3.8 GPA, there’s plenty of very, very good schools out there that would take you!