<p>Whenever I look at someone's chance me threads, I immediately CTRL+F the ECs section, and am inevitably disappointed.</p>
<p>I have pretty much nothing so far:
Outside of school orchestra- competing in Sydney this summer
Volunteering at Tree Nursery (planning on doing ~200 hours and learning a lot)</p>
<p>Everything else is pretty meh run of the mill NHS/volunteer type stuff. Now of course, I'm not going to leave it like this and call it a day. Here's what I plan on getting by application time:
A few Science Olympiad Medals (no idea our school had this until this year)
North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad Medal (planning on double majoring in linguistics at MIT, so)
AIME
Tutoring
Produce ambient electronic music (working through AP Music Theory first)
Program calculator games maybe lol idk</p>
<p>Is that enough to wow HYPSM (more so on the latter three) admissions? And I'm pretty much cramming everything into Junior year, do you think they'll get suspicious?</p>
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<p>Anyone know any good competitions that I could apply to as a CA Asian male (yeah, I know)? I can do pretty much everything, from essays to poetry to math to you name it. I just can't find anything that sounds remotely interesting, or on a national level, and lord knows my school is no help at all.</p>
<p>And any recommendations for a place where I could possibly get a lab internship? I love doing research too (ask me anything about MIT), I just haven't done anything formally. I have like no connections at all in the industry, so.</p>
<p>It looks like you’re doing a lot in terms of ECs activities. As the cliche goes, it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality. They’re going to be looking at your GPA, AP/Honors/IB classes, and SAT/ACT scores before they look at your ECs list. The ECs is a way for them to know you better, and to know you’ll become involved on campus. As I said before, as long as you’re putting in the time, and becoming involved and not stuffing it for your application, it’ll look good for whatever college you’re aiming to apply for. </p>
<p>My scores are typical overachieving Asian male, i.e. 4.3 WGPA so far and going for 4.8 with 6 AP classes this year (12 by the end of senior year), retaking a 2320 SAT (740 math lolololol), etc. I’m obviously not worried about those. If I put in the effort I’ll come out fine, which is easier said than done but meh.</p>
<p>And really, that’s too much for ECs? I have 2 notable achievements so far (and they’re all in the future :x). And with everything I’m going to do this year, it’s all stuff I’m actually interested in. I love science. I love nature. I love linguistics. I love music. I have a ton of interests. I’m not just stuffing my ECs list for college apps. These are things I want to continue doing at where ever I go to college.</p>
<p>Thanks though. I needed the reassurance. I’m just super scared right now because I haven’t been active in my school at all and I have to do all these ECs at the same time as I’m taking 6 AP classes (which no one else in my entire grade is doing).</p>
<p>You’re going to Sydney for orchestra, that’s really cool! Remember, it’s quality over quantity :).</p>
<p>One thing, though. Are you really going to retake a 2320?! I wouldn’t do that, it’s a waste of money and time. After a certain score, it doesn’t really matter what you have.</p>
<p>Let me repeat that cliche from Supersenior: It’s quality not quantity. Do not waste time padding your resume with meaningless stuff. Do a few things that you care about and do them well. No one cares that you won a poetry contest if you aren’t deeply interested in poetry. Or that you did 500 hours of volunteering instead of 50 if you aren’t really excited about the impact that you have had with your volunteer work.</p>
<p>Research isn’t that difficult to come by if you don’t insist on it being bench research: Any non-profit in your area probably has research needs on their client population that you could help with. S did an interesting project with a local public health clinic related to frequency of obesity counseling by different population groups. NIH also has lots of research opportunities for high school students for which you can apply beginning in November, I believe. Google it. </p>
<p>The good news is that, Asian parents’ opinions not withstanding, there are lots of other great schools out there besides HYPMS all of which will set you up for a successful career.</p>
<p>Of course, of course. I do have a ton of interests, but I’ll have to narrow them down if I ever want to graduate in 4 years.</p>
<p>Like I said, everything I have listed are things that I genuinely care about. My original question was “do my ECs suck?”, but I guess they don’t if I can explain them adequately.</p>
<p>I’m going to apply to a few summer programs in lieu of research. Or maybe they’ll be research programs. I don’t know. I just want to occupy that long stretch of time with something productive.</p>
<p>And of course there are a ton of great schools outside of HYPMS. I’m not doing it for my parents; rather, I’m doing it to further my education, and prove that I can get in. I’ve done a ton of research on them, and to imagine life at anywhere else than MIT or Stanford would be very disorienting. Dedicated graduates will succeed no matter whatever college they go to. And getting into a top tier school would dedicate me indeed.</p>
<p>@Retaking 2320
Normally I wouldn’t retake it, but a 740 is the bottom 25% percentile and I feel like it would preclude me from a ton of schools. Of course, it doesn’t, but you know OCD and all.</p>