<p>Hi. I'm an international student (Canadian) who wants to go to JHU. I just finished Grade 10 on a sour note.
My mom just messaged me my report card and it's not good.</p>
<p>Beginning Spanish 11: 88%
English 10: 91%
Orchestra 12: 98%
P.E 10: 86%
Pre-Calc 11: 95%
Science 10: 89%
Social Studies 11: 90%
Textiles 10: 89%</p>
<p>In Canada, 86% and above is an A, so technically I did get straight A's... but it's not the case in the states, is it?
I know I'm gonna seem like making a lot of excuses, but hear me out.</p>
<p>I had a lot of extra curriculars this year.
-CASI Level 1 (Snowboarding instructors certification)
-BC Provincial Orchestra
-Korean Language Challenge (passed with 95%)
-Canadian Math Contest (just participated--didn't get anything fancy)
-AMC Contest (just participated)
-Snowboard Team (placed 4th in ladies in Whistler race)ations
-Auditioned for the province's top orchestra (and was accepted)(this is the orchestra that played for the 2010 Olympics)
-Honour Strings
-Volunteered at Kumon Reading and Math Centre
-Model United Nations
-Worked at a music store (irrelevant, kinda, but I needed money to fund for these activities)
-Got Kendo 1 Dan
-Elected to Student Council as Gr. 11 Rep.</p>
<p>Next year, I'm planning to do these activities:
-Get CASI Lv 2 (although it's 99% I'll fail, so you can almost disregard this one lol)
-BC Provincial Orchestra
-Korean Language Challenge Grade 12
-CMC
-AMC
-Snowboard Team
-Audition for VYSO again
-A different orchestra (honour strings will not exist for next year)
-Continue volunteering at Kumon
-MUN Vice President
-Kendo 2 Dan
-I will try out for Student Council President</p>
<p>New things I will do:
-Volunteer at BC Childrens Hospital (I couldn't this year because I'm 15 and their min.age is 16 -_-)
-President/Founder of Orchestra Club
-RCM Grade 6
-Freethechildren Program (to Kenya)</p>
<p>Excuses for lousy grades other than extra curricular:
Spanish 11: ...I don't have an excuse. I didn't slack off, I'm just bad with French/Spanish in general. I really did try my best, and this is all I could get. I still feel really shitty over it but I mean, I really don't think I could change it.</p>
<p>English 10: I have a major one for this. Our teacher disappeared in the middle of the school year and we rotated through four different subs. All of them marked differently and wanted different things. I had a hard time trying to adjust to the new teacher every fucking month (sorry for the profanities, I just remember how term 1 I had a 96% and after we had the crazy subs my marks slipped considerably)</p>
<p>Orchestra 12: I'm in Grade 10 in a Grade 12 orchestra. I participate in the top orchestras in the province. I'll start 'testing' this winter. I can't raise my grades any higher (my teacher is kind of set on me getting 98%, he doesn't even evaluate us!)(how does he mark? I don't know.)</p>
<p>P.E 10: The only sports I do well: kendo and snowboarding. I was surprised I even got an A this year.</p>
<p>Pre-Calc 11: No excuse.</p>
<p>Science 10: If any of you guys are familiar, the province of BC is having a strike right now. We have rotating strikes, and we eventually cut off an entire week before exams. What did this do to me?
Well first off, I'm used to having a schedule that went: 1 unit test every 1-2 months. After the strike started, our lazy science teacher 'tried' picking up his pace and we had 1 test PER WEEK. Uh, excuse me, but I have provincials this year and I'd really appreciate actually learning, not 'okay I'm not sure what to do so I'll give you 20 packages to solve by yourselves, good luck' kinda thing. I sound like a total ignorant brat, sorry, but I was so mad the teachers were holding signs that said 'For the Kids!' when really, the strike action was hurting us more in a way. And some teachers were sincere about it being 'for the kids' (which I appreciated), but one teacher actually called me 'selfish' for me complaining that they were doing this action right before our provincials (I'll stop rambling now)</p>
<p>Social Studies 11: no excuse. Except for the fact I was the only Gr. 10 in my class and it was hard asking my seniors to help me with my projects lol, so I ended up just soloing most of the time.</p>
<p>Textiles 10: I didn't even want to take this course, but I had no other electives (I mean, woodworking isn't my thing.)</p>
<p>Future Courses:
Grade 11 (this September): AP English Lit. and Comp, Spanish 11, Pre-Calc 12, Physics 11 Enriched, Chem 11 Enriched, BA Psychology 11, Writing 12, Orchestra 12, History 12</p>
<p>Grade 12: AP Eng Lang. and Comp, Spanish 12, AP Calc 12, AP Physics, AP Chemistry, Orchestra 12, Law 12, Bio 12</p>
<p>Couple things to explain:
-I will finish English 11/12 online so I have room for more advanced courses (thus they are absent from the timetable)
-We do not offer AP Spanish (not that I want to take it now after seeing how disastrous it was... <em>sighs</em>)
-Enriched... are kinda like Honours I guess?
-We only offer Psychology at the Gr. 11 level
-In our school, you don't need Bio 11 for Bio 12 (one is like nature and biomes and ecology, the other is human anatomy (which is what I'm interested in))
-Law 12 is just in case I want to pursue Law instead of Med (I think I have an even number of Eng/History and Math/Science so I'll be ready to take on either one)</p>
<p>Also, for those cringing at the fact I want to be a Lawyer/Doctor... I have my reasons other than the fact that my parents are Korean/Asian, lol.
One part of me wants to be a childrens doctor (as you can see from my EC's, I teach kids reading, math, snowboarding, and even volunteer at a Childrens Hospital), because I took everything for granted when I was younger. Now that I'm more aware that I'm actually one of the luckier ones, I just want to kind of give back everything I took for granted when I was a kid. It's a lousy reason, but it just feels important to me. (plus, I absolutely freaking love kids)</p>
<p>The part of me that wants to be an oncologist is a bit more personal. My life 'changed' in a way when I started kendo. I was bullied for a long time (yeah your typical angst teenage story lol) and I had a severe lack of confidence. The dojo that introduced me to kendo changed me, one step at a time. The man that was the biggest influence on this was the head sensei of the dojo, a former member of Team Korea, and someone I considered as a father. In the spring of 2013, he was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. When someone has cancer but survives, they are known as 'survivors' (wow didn't expect that one). When an ATHLETE has cancer, but survives, we say that their career is over. Even if his career has ended however, it inspired me to be an oncologist. I had an interest for it since long ago, but this even really made me sure that this was the career I wanted to pursue.</p>
<p>ANYWAYS, before I worry about that oncology shit, first things first.
Given my EC's, do you think they're even strong enough to consider JHU? 3.6 GPA is pretty damn lousy, although I really want at least a 3.85 next year (given that there is no strike, because that was the thing that hurt me the most). I also hope JHU will consider the fact that even if I'm in Gr. 10, the majority of my courses were Grade 11 (textiles 10 was actually textiles 11, but I wrote 10 because I forgot until like right now lol and I'm too lazy to change it), and I'm taking all the AP's my school offers me. (we actually offer a lot more, but 2 are AP Art courses, 1 is AP Business or something, and we have AP French--which doesn't concern me lol).</p>
<p>If JHU sees that I have a 3.6 grade 10, 3.85 grade 11, and something maybe even higher in grade 12, with all these EC's, do you think they'll consider accepting me?</p>
<p>Sorry for this ridiculously long post. I just don't know when to stop writing (plus I'm bummed out. and when I'm sad, I write like crazy.)</p>