My son is in a high school in San Diego
He is a good student . Taken 2 AP and honors classes in 10 grade . Got one B
Now he is taking all AP in 11 grade
His PSAT10 score was 1340
He is JV volleyball player
Plans to become eagle by summer
He also taught science Olympiad and won medals
Did a lot of robotics but never exceptional
What he should be doing in summer ?
There are so many options
Like focus on taking some ap courses
Do some internships
Teaching at summer school
What should he doing maximizing his chances at school ?
Use this link to look up the honors courses he took in 10th grade. Check to see if they receive weighting from the UC system (orange band with yellow star). University of California A-G Course List
Over the summer, he should be doing things he finds fun, definitely NOT taking AP courses, and either working or volunteering somewhere, writing down the experiences he found most interesting so that he can refer back to it later (useful for the essays).
What does he want to major in?
Just so you know, all the UC’s and CSU’s are test blind and will remain that way until further notice.
Your son’s EC’s look fine and I agree that he should be spending his summer doing the things he enjoys. There is no formula in getting into any school so let him pursue his passions and he will end up where he is meant to be.
Thank you all for wonderful responses. He got 1480 in SAT and current GPA shows as below
GPA Type
GPA
Credits Attempted
10-12 Total GPA
3.94
16
10-12 Total WGPA
4.44
16
10-12 WGPA w/o PE
4.50
14
9-12 Total WGPA
4.30
30
He has taken a lot of courses this semester that AP and honors . His GPA should go up from here.
He is also varsity in beach volleyball, should become Eagle, Plays tabla as instrument, helping with diabetes prevention. what else should he be doing to get into UCs ?
It looks like he is doing great! Keep in mind that the UCs calculate GPA from only grades 10-11 so neither freshman year nor senior year will count towards his UC GPA. You can calculate his UC GPA using the link above for RogerHub. That will give you a better sense of where he stands in terms of UCs.
Is he currently a senior? If so, time to get started on his PIQs.
he is in 11 grade. Apart from UCs, any other colleges you recommend. He really loves volleyball and wondering if any colleges give extra consideration for 6’ 2’’ VB player who got good academics
As Californians, we are very lucky to have both the UC system and the CSU system - and both are excellent value and give a quality education. And there is a great variety of campuses in terms of both location and selectivity. A California resident that applies to a nice mix of UCs and CSUs is almost guaranteed to end up at a great school for a good price. Some CSUs do offer men’s volleyball so he might get some good play opportunities, too, so they are worth looking into.
If he’s recruitable for D3 volleyball, there are some good contenders where it’d be a hook: Vassar, NYU, MIT - he would get excellent financial aid but no ahletic aid so run the NPC on each.
Same hook for UCSanta Cruz but not sure he’d need a hook there considering his stats, perhaps for CS?
Among the Ivies, Harvard and Princeton have men’s volleyball.
My son got 1520 on PSAT 10. That hopefully makes him standout on college apps. Ofcourse, he still need to become finalist. It might require some additional work.
does he still need a lot of extra curriculars or may be get a job like he wants ?
As I said upstream…your son should be doing things HE wants to do, not things he thinks will impress some college adcom in the future. A job is a very worthy summer activity.
That’s right. It’s psat 11 not psat 10
Does getting national merit scholarship (ofcourse getting full score might not guarantee), doesn’t that open up more opportunities in terms of colleges for him ? He might not be val because he got a B but he might end up in top 10 percent May be
It’s complicated because a lot of kids are taking courses from other colleges and they are getting added to transcript .
Well…really, you need to know that your son is named a national merit semifinalist. And that requires some other steps…a satisfactory SAT score, and continued good grades.
But you can start looking…
University of Tulsa
University of New Mexico
University of Alabama
I know there are others…other folks will chime in.
If you do a regular chances thread with more info about what he is looking for in a college, that would help.
@AustenNut probably can help create at least a list for you to research.