Khan Academy does have SAT prep and online practice tests. My oldest started doing online SAT practice in sophomore year and really improved his score dramatically over time. He would do a 15 minute lesson every day and a practice test every two months or so. The digital SAT will not be so radically different from the paper test so this is something you could very easily start today.
Good luck to you.
I’m referring to the digital SAT. The current SAT practice thingy is meant for the Physical SAT you do on paper which while the same in mathematics, is very different in the English section (I went down from a predicted 700 on paper to a predicted 600 on digital) and I don’t really want to practice English without using something that’s geared specifically to the new new SAT
I think you can say you’ve done something but if you can’t prove it, it’s not believable. @CCName1 just noted that you have ways to provide evidence - and that’s what you’d need to do.
I think with the refugees - and my daughter does this - start a club as she did in college. Get teachers engaged. The local group that supports refugees - likely either Catholic Charities or the Lutherans - they will be the governments agency. Raise money - get every attendee at football or basketball games to donate $1. Run a supply drive. Do what the local group needs - get kids at your school involved. You’d feel great about yourself and you’d be helping the community. That it’d look good on an application is a bonus.
There’s no question that an upward curve is a great thing - and yes, you have this - so put in the grades, get some output from your wanna be things, and do things because you are passionate about them, not because they look good. You just need two or three.
Good luck.
Yeah no way in hell I’m going to make an arab cultural club or something like that. I’m already receiving death threats for just this single fundraiser, if I make an actual club and advertise it then some white klansman is going to cut my damn head off 
I would make it, but sadly this town I live in does have a bit of a racism problem, especially for Arabs and it does make it dangerous for me to make anything arab oriented for extended periods of time. + My school only lets you do 1 club per year and I already have my next 2 clubs figured out.
To OP, I think right now you should stop being defensive. The title of your post is “Is This Sophomore on track for T20s and OxBridge”. Some of us said “No” - which answers the question whether you are on track or not. You frankly didn’t ask for anything else.
In my opinion, everyone here is trying to help you. They give you a dose of reality, no matter how unpleasant it seems for you. You can even go to other T20 admission forums and see yourself, students have more impressive backgrounds, GPA, ECs etc were rejected and/or deferred. You can even go further to T50 and see similar situations.
But, there are tons of suggestions that you can start focusing on and instead of fighting the suggestions. I think you know what you can do and/or what you should do. You can continue being defensive and it won’t change your situation or you can do what the other suggested here and improve your chance.
Come back next year and tell us that you have done those things and improve your grades. Better: come back also Spring semester of your Senior year, tell us that you got into wonderful school. We really want you to be successful, but the first step starts with you.
And in case you haven’t noticed like has been seen multiple times: the only time I get defensive is when someone says some form of criticism and does not have anything else to alleviate the criticism.
If someone asks “is this dish good?” while yeah, you can answer “no”, if you do you’re usually expecting some answer besides just that, you’ll usually hear “It’s too sweet so you should cut down on X”. In this sense, it’s a lot of people just saying “no” and then putting a lot of fluff to that answer or maybe giving half a critique by saying “it’s too sweet” which really won’t help the chef besides giving them the vaguest idea to go off.
So I can relate to you because I also had a terrible freshman year (thanks Covid) and I had a period of panic about what I would be able to do and questioning if I somehow ruined my life.
Now I am a junior and I feel so much better. Have my grades been perfect since then? No, but I feel a lot better about where I am going. My mistakes my freshman year have led me to really evaluate what I want from my education instead of simply chasing prestige.
I think you are focusing on the wrong thing. You can get a great education anywhere. What are your goals? What do you need from a college? What type of environment do you want? I see you said math & business or physics & business for your major. The business part makes sense to me from someone starting a record label as a teen. Why math? Why physics? What about your creative pursuits? You write novels and rap lyrics. Are either of those something you could see yourself continuing? You don’t need a top 20 to take you where you want to go and it might not even be the best place for your individual goals. I think you should broaden your horizons a little and see what else is out there.
I see people here every day with perfect grades and test scores asking about top 20s and they are told the same thing - your chances are low, make sure you have a balanced list, focus on targets and safeties. The best thing you can do is earn the highest grades you can, think about what field you want to pursue, learn about other colleges. For you specifically - you seem a little scattered with books you don’t want to publish and music you don’t want to release. You need something that you can show on an application - “I did this. I am really proud of it. I’m excited to share it with you.” For me, I am a dancer so I will share my resume, dance reel, and choreography reel.
I understand. This can be a tough place with a lot of tough love. My apologies for piling on, as it were. In the end, it matters not what anyone here thinks or says. What will happen will happen.
What to do to help your chances? The obvious. Follow through on the IB Diploma, get better grades starting immediately, get fantastic test scores, start genuine relationships with faculty so that you can get killer recommendations, and do a focused EC that is realistic, genuine and, you need to hear this (tough love coming again), plausible. Most people’s lives don’t play out like Walter Mitty’s day dreams. Save the big stories and do something that seems like something a normal but committed HS kid can do. Don’t go crazy on this part. Your grades are more important, and IB Dp is going to be heavy. We’ve lived it.
Along with that, I’d really revisit your target list. It’s an odd menagerie of schools. USC and Johnson & Wales? There are sooooo many good schools in between those two random selections.
We have one thing in common: I love Providence too. But not enough to target Johnson & Wales as my backup for Brown. Cast a broader net man. I’m predicting that will be amongst the most important things you do to help your cause.
Lastly, if you really do have a strong plug at USC, use it, of course.
Good luck.
No one said an Arab Cultural Club - I said, take what you did for the refugee and expand it. My daughter did exactly this at her college - it’s an interest of hers - but she has a passion for it - that’s the difference. My wife and she started mentoring an Afghan family when she was in HS and at college she has started a club. Your comments show your lack of maturity - talking about your head getting cut off - we are trying to help you but you need some maturity, an ability to take this quest seriously with those that are trying to help you.
You need to find a passion - and that’s why you do things - not - because it will look good for college.
What is your passion? Is it music? Raise money for instruments for kids? Whatever it is - or perforrm concerts. What’s your passion?
PS - you don’t have to do ECs within school. Do you like dogs? Go walk dogs at the shelter. Get a job. Whatever it is. Do something - rather than state why you can’t do things.
That’s a good trait for life…
Be you. Whatever that becomes, become comfortable with it.
Take a strong courseload and get all A grades.
Do ECs that you enjoy…not things you think will be wow factors for an admissions officer.
Open your mind to a variety of colleges. You absolutely do not need to go to a tippy top school to get a PhD in the future. You just don’t.
Make sure any issues with depression, etc are under control. That’s more important than any other thing.
You have been given suggestions on prepping for the SAT or ACT. Do that (of course, CA schools don’t need those).
Find an affordable college that you would be happy to attend. You have the CC route on your list above, which in CA is a good option.
You mention that your parent income fluctuates due to commissions earned. Keep in mind that need based aid at some colleges will also fluctuate…IOW…if income goes up in the next couple of years, your need based aid could come down.
Yes…look at the net price calculators. But keep in mind that they are currently set for students starting fall 2023. You won’t be starting college for a couple more years…and yes…financial aid awarding policies DO change sometimes. So be watchful.
I tell you what, some of the wisest members of this forum are the high school students. This is an excellent, thoughtful, and accurate response. And it’s all the more impressive coming from someone still so young.
Seriously? Please stop arguing with the people trying to help you. I was in no way criticizing, rather giving you a practical suggestion that you can start on right now. And it’s only 15 minutes a day! You just made an excuse as to why you can’t or won’t do it. It seems like the only person holding you back is yourself.
I do agree, unfortunately the OP spent time arguing with most of us and looking for excuses. This is not a personal attack but I think everyone here agrees that instead of being thankful for honest feedback and suggestion, the OP chose to criticize people who are honest and have spent their time to provide feedback for the OP.
Good luck to you - you are a junior but I think you are on track to be successful because you understand your situation and how to work on things. You have the right attitude and in life, attitude matters a lot.
I believe I said it earlier but the reason why is because I just love math and physics. I’ve always found them extremely fascinating. To me, my company is a means to an end and the actual end is really just research in physics or mathematics,
I don’t think I’ll stop my creative pursuits as is, if I did think I’d stop them then I wouldn’t really be out here mentioning them.
The T20 thing is more just because of the fact that (at least in my eyes) once you go to T30 and above, all of the schools are pretty much equal so the only reason why you’d chose one over another isn’t because of something that one would consider legitimate but rather pretty damn hollow reasons. (As I said, UCLA only because they have a large arab population, Brown cause I love their open curriculum and OxBridge only because I want to get out of the U.S.
I am not making excuses I am simply saying that the changes in the SAT have been large enough that I feel that if I were to study for it on something like Khan Academy, it would not be helping me out. All I was doing is asking for a different site that’s geared towards the changes in the new SAT.
All I asked was somewhere for me to spend those 15 minutes a day more efficiently. I do not see what the big issue is with asking a question like that.
So what I’m getting at here is:
Appearantly just saying “You’re not getting in” and nothing more with a bunch of fluff is “honest criticism”
Look, maybe it’s me being a bit hurt but I’m being honest here: Just saying something like that will not make someone receptive to criticism regardless of how many people say it. That’s no where near how the brain works and people have proven that time and time again. And if you also haven’t noticed: I am being receptive to criticism. Perhaps it’s an issue with the way you’re percieving my responses as all defenses?
Usually, I’ll respond to a response with genuine criticism with what I can do with another question for more specifics or just… not respond to the criticism because there’s nothing to respond to. I feel as if this site itself might have started becoming a bit toxic due to some people just… not wanting to give any form of criticism and me needing to wrestle something out of them in return.
There’s a difference between the 2 that the initial wave of posters just didn’t seem to understand. If you look at my behavior over time, you’ll see that I did become more responsive to criticism when people started posting criticism besides just “you’re not getting in”.
I understand that it is not a personal attack, but neither was anyone else here making a personal attack. Instead, it was just me being frustrated at a lack of anyone willing to actually… You know, discuss the issues? It felt like people came in and said “open and shut case” without bothering to explain why it was open and shut. I hope you can start seeing why I was so frustrated initially if you scroll up and saw the initial wave which is what I was described.
I understand my title should’ve been more descriptive to ask for people to explain why but here we are, now I’m establishing that I’m looking for a why and the responses have indeed became better than in the past.
I think here - you can apply to top 20 and not sure what that means because different schools have different strengths so top 20 in what ?
But you can major in math and/or physics at most any college and get to exactly the same place as a top 20. And you need those because top 20 if going by US News are reaches for the perfect student.
Study the curriculum of each school of interest when you have time (not now) to see if they are robust in their offerings.
99% of kids are not at top 20s. It’s a great goal but unlikely for all. So you need to be prepared. And the advice above matters because many top 50 or 80 schools are hard to get into.
But if you find the right school, the rank is forgotten when you show up on campus (we’ll except UF….they have banners everywhere) 
It seems like my original response for this has disappeared so ig I’ll rewrite it bu the tl;dr is: While I am considering on expanding on it, the fact of the matter is that I do not want to expand on something that I’m not too interested in expanding on. While I do love my brothers and sisters in Syria, I also love myself enough that I don’t want to spend a bunch of time just for fundraising for them. The current fundraiser isn’t really event meant to be a fundraiser as I was more interested in just giving the kids at a local elementary school a field day more than anything else, it just so happened that I could include an element of fundraising and I did.
As for my passion, learning mostly. I believe I established above that while I love running my business and making music, I’m far more interested in studying and researching in mathematics and physics. Why I haven’t done that yet is because I haven’t made a genuine effort to reach out to local professors to see what I can do. I would like to do some research in those fields over the summer of Junior year however when I’ve taken DP1 of Math and Physics HL because I think by then I would have enough mathematical and physical experience to actually be in the running for research in those fields.
But idk, would it be worth it for me to start doing research in those fields even with a very elementary education in Physics and only taken Algebra II? I do not think so but if it is possible, I’d very much like for someone to help me with that. I know there are sites out there that help students like with professors but I haven’t been able to find an equivalent to them in California, is there one out there?
Most posters are trying to provide a reality check. You are ranked in the middle of your class at a non-competitive high school. Statistically, it is extremely unlikely and perhaps impossible to move that rank to the top 10 in your high school. The colleges you are currently considering do not look beyond the very top ranked applicants from such schools except in extraordinary cases, which you do not have. You do not presently possess the minimum requirements to qualify to take the entrance exams at Oxbridge, which can review on their websites.
If you come up with a list of more suitable schools, posters will be happy to help.