Lost High School Sophomore

Hi, I’m currently a high school sophomore and I’m just very stressed about about college. I don’t have many extracurriculars and I have OKAY grades (mostly A’s but sometimes a B). I was wondering if there are any advice that could help?

Right now I’m taking all honors classes with one AP class and I’m planning on taking IB diploma in my Junior year & Senior year.

MY extracurriculars include:

Asian club Vice President
Violin lessons
Volunteer Projects
Speech team (not gone very far)
Spring play
& diplomat

Advice to how I can get into more selective colleges?

Load up on the most rigorous courses at your school if you think you can do well in them. Obviously, get high grades and find meaningful extra-circulars that are unique and have leadership experience. Start figuring out what you want to study in college and pursue that field through your extra-circulars.

Drop the ECs you are doing solely for colleges, and fill up with those that genuinely make you happy and engaged in your community. Selective colleges will see right through you if you try to fake it in. Just something to be aware of as you cruise around CC looking for answers.

Fret not. You are doing great! There are 3000 colleges in the USA…there are many that will fit you perfectly!

I agree with others that you are already doing very well, and are on track to attend a very good university.

“I’m planning on taking IB diploma in my Junior year & Senior year”

Personally, I am not a fan of the IB diploma. It seems that we started with normal CP classes and a few honors classes. Students weren’t stressed out enough so we added AP classes. In the off chance that there were still some students who were not sufficiently stressed out the most selective schools decided that students needed to have leadership extracurricular activities, not just normal ECs. This is already enough to have students arriving at school at 7am, in class until 3:30 or so, then doing extracurricular activities that get them home at 6pm, then they have dinner, and somewhere around 7pm or so, already exhausted, they start their 6 to 8 hours of homework. This is too much. Then we add the IB diploma on top of this to make things even more stressful.

You don’t need the IB diploma to go to a top school. The richest and most successful people that I know graduated from their state flagship’s, and they are very successful. You don’t need to go to an Ivy League school in order to be a success in life.

Thus I would only do the IB diploma, or even take more than 2 or 3 APs, if you are sure that you want to do it and are sure that you can handle the stress.

Thank you for your advice! I know IB diploma is going to be very stressful but in my school, a lot of emphasize goes to IB and many of the good teachers teach IB so I thought it would be better if I take those classes.

Thank you for your input!