Hi and first off thanks for clicking on this thread!
Ok so I am basically so lost right now. I want to go to a University after High school, I am a Junior right now, but i don’t know what my chances are of going to any GOOD colleges are. Backstory: I fucked up hard freshman year, I got a 1.8 or something GPA, This was due to a lot of family problems. Sophmore year I did decent took honors classes and such and got a 3.0. Junior year is where it gets tricky OK so i had to leave the country for a year so I withdrawed from my school and did online school. I took AP lang, AP Bio, and French 1. When i arrived back to the states, around april, I was enrolled back to school and started up on Psych 2 and Indvi sports.
TLDR; I messed up freshman year, Did ok sophmore year, and junior year i took only 2 core classes and about to take math over the summer So I can take pre calc senior year. I also got a Internship at the UAE financial markets but i dont know if i can send that to colleges or not.
SO the main question is, what can i do right now to make myself look better to colleges? Get a summer job and help my family(My family has a really low income)? Take more classes online Over the summer? Join to a pre college program?
Thank you for reading this all and i hope to hear from you soon!
Grades and test stats aside given your high school career to date do you feel prepared academically for college? If not then consider spending a year or two in a community college, this is in part to catch up on basic coursework. To the extent that (1) you’ve caught up, and (2) you graduate with reasonable grades from the community college transfer at that point to a 4-year college.
I agree with Fogcity in that community college may be the way to go for you and then transfer, but if that isn’t right for you, then look for small, LAC who look at the application holistically.
You’ve had a disjointed high school career and made the best of it, so try to use that to your advantage in both your choice of colleges to apply to and in your essays. Take your math class over the summer and calculus senior year. You absolutely mention your internship on your college application.
Look into local community colleges as your first option though.
You should plan to delay graduation and catch up on classes. Give yourself 2 years to complete requirements and show what you’re capable of. If you were out of the country taking random online classes, you did not complete a junior year.
Does your school or state have dual enrollment? If so would you be able to take a summer class at community college in addition to your summer HS class? CC classes go much faster but if you’ve already taken 3 online classes you know how to be independent and a self starter. The advantage is that they take place at times convenient for adults, so that you could work part time and attend your CC class more easily than if you have 2 summer school classes at the HS.
Your current GPA is about 2.4, I’m guessing, which means you need to take a lot of classes and get A’s before you can think about college.
Since you’ve just taken French 1, you need to plan to take French 2 and 3. You need a certain number of math classes, at least up to precalculus (sounded like you were ready for Calc AB, which is good). You’ll need sciences (physics, biology, chemistry) and, if you can, after you’ve taken one of each, one AP class (did you complete AP Bio? What grade did you get)? You’ll need APUSH or Honors US History or Regular US History, you’ll need more history/social science classes such as Economics and financial literacy, government, art/music, and of course English (did you complete AP English Lang?) IN short, you’ve got enough classes to take over the next 2 years that you wouldn’t be bored and you’d be able to prepare for college. It’s like you had a gap year in the middle of high school due to unforeseen circumstances… you grew and matured but didn’t take classes, so you resume where you started.
Since you’re very low income, look into Berea. It’s a very good college that’s dedicated to lower income students. NO one can apply if their parents make too much! Thanks to generous donors and alumni, the college is completely tuition-free and in exchange for 20 hours a work per week (which you can put on your resume), you get free room&board.
^^^ Excellent suggestion about delaying graduation! If you are in a public high school in the US, they have to let you stay until you either complete the graduation requirements or until the end of the school year if you turn 21 after school starts. Given that you have been moving back and forth between countries, it should be a fairly simple matter to convince the guidance office that it would be reasonable for you to stretch your education out a bit longer so that you can fully recover from any of the classes that you have missed along the way.
