HS Freshman; thinking too much about SAT's and Ivies -- HELP!

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
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<p>Hi guys; I'm new to this forum, so I don't really know the ropes that well.....Buw what I do know is that I've been thinking about about colleges lately, namely the prestigious Ivies (Yes, sadly I've espoused to the nation's meritocracy, blah, blah, whatever).....I'm looking to do pre-med, specifically a neuroscience program at either Georgetown, Brandeis (Hopefully Matches), NYU or Stony Brook (Safeties), and finally Brown, Columbia, Yale or Dartmouth(All reaches). Btw, if anyone can recommend another school with a great neurology program, I'd be thrilled. I'm a pretty good student, not so involved as most of the Ivy league alumni or those who got accepted, but I'm getting there (still a freshie in HS). In my school the honors program (which are the most rigorous courses available) is exclusive, meaning all or none. You have to have a 3.7 GPA or higher, and basically 92's and higher in every single subject, with the exception of 3 which are at the principal's discretion to choose. It's a Jewish prep school in brooklyn (hosting an amalgam of literary subjects and sciences, along with Hebrew and Judaism-related subjects). This is my courseload for the first semester, which accentuates my bad performance (I was distracted by some other business the first half, so it's not as competitive).......I think I'm in the top 18%, not really sure, but I'm getting back to my usual performance this upcoming half. Every single course I will list will change on my transcript to honors classes, since I am switching back in a week (when we return from intersession): </p>

<p>Bible: 92
Living Environment Biology: 88
English/ Literature: 95
Social Studies: 95
Jewish law(Basic): 90
Hebrew Language: 93
Spanish :94
Jewish Prophets: 93
Int. Algebra: (final grade isn't out since I missed the final, so my teacher approximated a 91 average): 91
Jewish Oral Law (Advanced Level): 92</p>

<p>Again, this is not my best efforts in play. Hopefully I will bring everything back up to 99's.....
Please give me your feedback!</p>

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<p>Hah, you make me laugh, but I realize this is not that funny to you, so I will try to be serious. First of all take a deep breath. Your not the first student to decide Ivys are the way to go, but hopefully you will at least narrow them down to some of the ones that match *you *within the next two years. </p>

<p>Secondly, you can’t really determine your matches, safetys, reaches, or whatever yet, your a freshman. So much can happen to change everything. You could fail all of your classes; you could get a -300 on each SAT, previously thought to be impossible until you came along and they had to change the grading scale; or you could become an amazing teen-doctor genius/researcher who every School in the nation will want and you’ll have to get a restraining order against the Dean of Harvard who keeps showing up at your door. Anything can happen. </p>

<p>Now, as far as beefing up your profile, I would suggest a few things. Please, don’t be offended, because I realize that your going to a faith based private school, this is a little different for Jews, correct? But, religious classes can sometimes seem a little soft or easy. Besides if your going to go into medical you’ll want some other classes. Your only a freshman, so its really no big deal, some schools (like mine) don’t even offer honors anything let alone AP. But over the next few years I would try to balance out your religious classes with AP (if they offer them) math and science. Depending on where you live you could also try out a few college classes. The foreign language is great, if you can I’d continue both, or at least Spanish.</p>

<p>Defiantly try to do some EC that interest you. You could volunteer at a hospital to start. Maybe shadow a nurse or a doctor? I don’t know how easy that is to do, but find what you love and dedicate a lot of time to those things.</p>

<p>If you look around here you’ll notice test scores appear to be of high consideration, so you might want to try out the SAT and the ACT, just for practice.</p>

<p>Oh yeah, live a little while you can. Going crazy your junior and senior year is enough!</p>

<p>Hope this helps!</p>

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<p>Hey Jacobtess, I was just like you when I just started HS. I also kept thinking about grades, SATs, and HYPSM. And what was worse, my parents pressured me about it. I think you should ease it up on yourself right now, your just a freshman. Don’t keep pressuring your self about those Ivies and those long term goals, instead, focus on the things at the tip of your nose:</p>

<ol>
<li>Stay on track by taking the most rigorous course load (try to take some courses that relate to your major ie. engineering=calculus, physics, chemistry…)</li>
<li>Get familiar with SATs this summer. You can go to the SAT forums on CC for advice. You can also buy a prep book this summer. </li>
<li>Raise (and keep) those marks to your full potential.</li>
<li>Do some ECs/volunteering (that you like)</li>
</ol>

<p>I did pretty much all those things in my freshman year, and now I’m in Yale.
And I agree with you Traveler2be, Jacobtess should balance his courses with a healthy mix of math and science</p>

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<p>And in the future, please don’t cross-post to all 8 Ivy league sub-forums.</p>

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<p>oh yeah… I just realized that he actually posted it in the other Ivy forums! guess he’s really desperate…</p>

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<p>Sorry guys, as per the aformentioned info “I am new to this forum”, I didn’t realize excessive blogging was an issue…I’ll try not to hurt or strain your eyesight by posting more than 1 thread next time. Au revoir.</p>

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<p>and dear yalerocks - you should have began high school thinking about Columbia too. we don’t bite :)</p>

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<p>and to the OP - you mean neuroscience, not neurology. neurology is a medical specialty. neuroscience/neurobiology are usually basic sciences based in arts and science parts of universities. though certainly with some similarities, neurology is more clinical in nature, neuroscience is well more lab based.</p>

<p>there are a some solid programs well known in neuroscience, some are ivies, some are not. washu is solid in ugrad and grad for neuro, as is johns hopkins. columbia and harvard being the top ivies. and stanford another great program.</p>

<p>having a strong neurosci program does not equal a great neurology program, though at times they share faculty.</p>

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<p>Mr. admissions geek, my primary concern is that by saying neurology one most certainly means a neuroscience major or cognitive science under a psychology major track. Secondly, Columbia is actually looked upon as the middle point of the Ivies; clearly if you have done research you would undertand the term HYP, as well as “the Big Three”, referring to Harvard, Yale and Princeton. This means that those are the three top universities, both nationally and internationally. Third, if I wanted to, I could major in psychology and then go to grad school and begin to specialize in my potential career. Undergrad college is merely a prerequisite in which you need to do any form of pre-med, therefore I think the difference between a neurology program and neuroscience might be quite shallow if it were looked upon; even a rather obsolete contrast. To supplement to this, I’d like to say that a specialty is declared in Medical school, not based on what you major in undergraduate college. Fourth, Harvard does not even have a neuroscience or neurology program, the only HYP with availability to that major is Princeton, which has been given funds to apparently begin a neuroscience program. It is rather hard to begin a neuroscience major in Harvard; the closest thing to it would be Behavioral/Cognitive Pyschology, with several contributing neuro- anatomy/physiology classes. Finally, as to your statement which is mot irrelevant to me, YaleRocks has mentioned that he already thought about HYPSM, similiar to me, during his freshman year. I think that based on his helpful advice and current status, he was able to make the desicion between Yale and controverial Columbia.</p>

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<p>what the heck?</p>

<p>wow, you really want to go off on columbia on here and to me? </p>

<p>1) i was emphasizing the differences between neuroscience and neurology, which are important to note because they do note equate.</p>

<p>2) i too was interested in neuroscience when i was looking for colleges, and i got a list made up with help from professors at my nearby uni. this is a solid program at harvard - [Harvard</a> Mind/Brain/Behavior - Undergraduate Tracks - Neurobiology](<a href=“http://mbb.harvard.edu/undergrad/neurotrack.php]Harvard”>http://mbb.harvard.edu/undergrad/neurotrack.php). and this is one too at columbia - [Neuroscience</a> and Behavior Major Requirements](<a href=“Undergraduates | Biology”>Undergraduates | Biology). both are related to top grad programs in neuroscience that are cross-disciplinary, but highly lab science oriented.</p>

<p>3) there is life after HYP. i chose columbia because i believe undoubtedly it is the best collegiate option out there. i was chiding yalerocks for not mentioning columbia, i think it appears he didn’t look at Columbia more closely earlier on. it was in good fun, i suppose you couldn’t read the subtext. i said so because i do love columbia. beyond the fact that in the sciences it has a premier reputation, it offers an incredibly rich and diverse undergraduate life and an overall transformative experience. i’m sorry i bucked the trend and went for a middle ivy, but i don’t have any regrets. i believe i picked the best place.</p>

<p>so here’s the lesson: if you want to use rather absurd notions such as HYP or the big three as your basis of reality then that will be your reality, but it certainly is not an informed position. first HYP doesn’t mean they are the top universities, rather, they are the most popular. within each are great programs, great aspects to all, but so too you can say about columbia and the ‘lower ivies’ as if you could distinguish between apples and oranges. in fact, historically, columbia has a stronger reputation for its academics than either yale or princeton. entire intellectual movements emanated from columbia. mostly this is because columbia and harvard emerged as research universities far more comprehensively than yale or princeton. </p>

<p>there are genetic descriptions that can explain our own perceptions of society - universities since they began to expand to more and more students have always privileged exclusivity, something that columbia was less about. columbia has always been a leader in allowing in underprivileged students, and it was primarily a commuter school throughout most of the 20th Century; columbia thought that an urban university didn’t need to be residential, that its goal was to serve the populations that surrounded it. i guess that you are jewish and go to a dual-curriculum school? perhaps you didn’t know, but from the 1950s until 1980s many of the leading jewish high schools sent students to Columbia and Penn because they were still being excluded from the likes of yale and princeton (most ivies from the 1910s onward practiced some form of discrimination). the irony now being that since the HYP schools have lifted their own levels of discrimination they have quickly obscured our own understanding of history. the university has changed and now we favor things like fully residential experiences, the need for resources, and other things that govern what we choose. columbia’s gamble at being a full commuter school lost out and maybe in retrospective it wasn’t a great idea - but it was what landed columbia the likes of jack kerouac and eric holder from queens, jerrold nadler and joel moses from brooklyn, michael mukasey and lou gehrig from manhattan. and history has become what it is - but it doesn’t discount the steps that columbia went along the way. a narrow reading of history looks at HYP as supreme, a more nuanced perspective understands that 1) all these unis are great, 2) there is life after HYP.</p>

<p>i don’t deny your own individual opinions, please hold them. but whereas i was being playful with yalerocks, and informational with you, i definitely do not think your retort was warranted. in fact, i gather you didn’t even read what i wrote, you just gathered i was being negative. guess what, i wasn’t. jeez.</p>

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<p>Seriously…chill, Jacobtess. It was a harmless joke. This is the COLUMBIA sub-forum after all.</p>

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<p>Jacobtess: CALM yosef, bro. Nuthin doin bah frigging yosef up, digz? Yoz in freshie, tayk it ez sleezy an’ injoy yo laf manggg. Yo gahz gut sumthin two mucha skoolwuhk, manggg. An’ remembuh, ahvees aint th’ only way tuh goes.</p>

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<p>Hahaha Jacobtess spent a good hour or so drafting and editing that post. Kudos to you Jacob, you certainly exude intelligence.</p>

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<p>I’m laughing because you said that your grades aren’t up to your usual performance, and yet they are EXACTLY your usual performance, seeing as you’re a freshman who’s only completed one semester.</p>

<p>Get a life.</p>

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<p>I’m sorry guys and admissionsgeek for coming off as too harsh; it is people such as conorske who are the brutal ones for which I’ve built a “defensive immunity” on this forum. For all those who’ve derided me as a misguided freshman, you are right, I came to this site for answers, advice and help. And conorske, usually before kids go to high school, there’s something called elementary school, which is followed by junior high. My performance in those institutions merely exceeeded that of my first semester as a freshman. I thought you’d be able to figure that out; guess not…</p>

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<p>I don’t need your sarcasm.</p>

<p>Elementary school and junior high aren’t considered for college admissions, because they are supposed to be harder. High school grades are. Your GPA is what it is. It can change, but so far that is your high average.</p>

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<p>Jacobtess, just a word of advice: people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. You haven’t even applied to college yet, let alone been accepted to one. For all you know, you’ll end up at Johns Hopkins. The AVERAGE successful applicant at a “middle Ivy” like Penn, Dartmouth or Columbia has an SAT score of 1460, and it will most likely be higher by the time you apply. And that’s just the beginning of the admissions process… a successful applicant is so much more than an amalgam of GPA and SAT scores.</p>

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<p>Are you really using Johns Hopkins as an example of a safety school? It’s a cut under the Ivies, up there with Georgetown, Washington University, and Chicago in terms of admissions. If the OP doesn’t improve his attitude, he could end up at community college.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Of course not, but it is definitely, as you say, a cut below the Ivies and thus presumably slightly less prestigious than such “mediocre ivies” as Columbia, Penn and Dartmouth. Which is to say, despite the fact that he now appears to sneer at such schools, he may well “only” be lucky enough to attend one of them.</p>

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<p>Trust me, the difference between neurology in medicine and neuroscience in undergrad is not a shallow divide. BTW, you should definitely give Columbia some love if you are interested in neurology/neurosurgery/psychiatry/Psychology (PhD for this one of course).</p>