My story.

Applying to College
1

Hi. This is my first thread on CC.
I need advices about getting into college.
I am a sophomore in public high school (near Los Angeles. 2500+ students).
I moved to the USA in April 2011 (from Russia). I took a test in our School Unified District Office. They put me in ESL (4th level out of 5) classes and Algebra 1 (even though I did 25/25 correct).
My counselor told me that I won’t get credits for any of the classes that year (I came too late).
So, my schedule in April-June looked like this:

ESL 4 Reading
ESL 4 Writing
Algebra 1
Intro World History
PE
Guidance

I went to summer school and did ESL 4. There, I realized that I don’t ESL classes.
In September, I got out of ESL and now I’m in Regular English.

In April-June I got 100% in Algebra 1 (well, of course. We were studying PreCal stuff in Russia). It was the only class I got credits for (my teacher is a very kind man).
In September, I was in Geometry. I tested out of it in the beginning of October, and now I am in Honors Algebra 2.

So, my schedule and grades for 1st semester (10th grade) are:

Biology (I need it in order to graduate) (B)
Honors Algebra 2 (A)
PE (B)
World History (A)
Jazz Band (I’m a keyboardist) (A)
English 10 (A)

I was sick for two weeks, and that affected my grades (that’s why I got Bs in PE and Biology)

I’m sure that I’ll have all As this semester. My W GPA will be 3.98. And UW GPA will be 3.83.

I want to become an aerospace engineer. I know chemistry, and I had it in Russia. I want to take AP Physics B next year. Should I take Chemistry over the summer? Will my app look better because of that?

So, my junior year schedule will look like this:
PE (I need credits for the 2nd semester of freshman year)
AP Physics B
Honors PreCal
Spanish 1-2
APUSH
English
Health 1st semester, Career Prep 2nd semester (need credits)

I just wanna know what should I do to get into good colleges like UCLA, USC, maybe even UCB.

I can’t have many ECs now, because I’m teaching my younger sister how to speak English. I spend about 2 hours a day on that. But I’m in 2 bands that are after school. And I’m a volunteer in local Armenian Church (by the way, I’m Armenian).

Advice people please. Thank you very much!!!

2

Ill try to help you out as best I can first of all I understand where your coming from ran into many hurdles in my high school time as well…To start good weighted and unweighted GPA but I have seen them higher…SAT and or Act will also be very inportant factors when trying to get into those schools because all there are pretty excellent schools in there own right. Although extra curriculars are some what of a problem not to have you may could try to focus more on how you helped your sister and your volunteer work. Now for the schools UCLA by far will be the hardest to get into in 2011 incoming freshman had a SAT score of around 2030 and 4.2 ish GPA also coupled with the mind blowing amount of apps they had and it makes it very hard to get into unless you really stand out I believe like 45 percent of there class was Asian American you having a international background could work to your advantage…USC would be somewhat easier to get into with freshman averages in the 3.7-3.8 range and SAT’s in the 1910-2000 range if you take the ACT you’d need in the 30-33 range and I’d think you’d be pretty solid…UCB will be right in the ball park with UCLA on how hard it is to get into 4.1 median grade point average and a composite score of 2031 on the SAT’s all the schools if you work hard are reachable keep taking as many AP classes as you can study hard and score good on your SAT’s and or ACT’s or both and try your best to find time for some sort of EC’s I know right this minute isn’t a good time for you but between now and the end of your senior years your going to need some resume boosters and BTW UCB is your best bet for aerospace its a top 5 engineering college.