<p>I'm 17, and a junior in high school. I was born in France and moved to the U.S. when I was 3. </p>
<p>One important thing before we start. I was wondering how the early admissions thing works. Could someone help me on that and tell me if I should do.</p>
<p>Alright, so I feel like I've been suffering from taking challenging classes. My GPA is being weighed down because of the academic rigor and extracurriculars that I've been taking part in. I can say that 3/6 of my classes are at honors level and 1/6 are AP. I've taken AP Chemistry this year and I've been doing pretty poorly up until now. It's been weighing down my performance in my other classes. Also, I do varsity basketball, which has also weighed down my academic performance.</p>
<p>In my two trimesters of AP Chem, I've gotten two C+s. Usually, I never got below a B+ academically. As I said, I do a lot of sports and this contributed to my poor grade. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty good at Chemistry, but I screwed up on some pretty important stuff. Right now I have an A- in the third trimester.</p>
<p>I attend a really tough private school, and it's considered among the top 5 in my area.</p>
<p>I speak French fluently along with a small amount of Mandarin.</p>
<p>I got an 1890 on my SAT without a tutor or any studying. I'd gotten a 620 CR 610 MATH 660 WR. I feel like I can get my math up to a 740, since that's my best subject and I made a lot of stupid mistakes on the test. As for reading and writing, I'm not too sure. I hope to improve to a 2100+.</p>
<p>My overall unweighted is about a 3.4-3.5, and weighted is 3.73. Without freshman year, I'd be pushing a 3.8. I can honestly look back and say that I wish that I'd tried a lot harder in the past. :( I do have an acceptable amount of clubs and things of that nature under my belt.</p>
<p>I have over 60 hours of community service.</p>
<p>I'm now looking into doing Science oriented majors, but I'm not sure what I want to do yet. I was thinking about looking at doing pre-med or else some sort of research.</p>
<p>I'm in a pretty tough financial situation. I live primarily with my dad, and he makes under 40,000 a year. I've only got 20,000 saved up for college. So any financial aid would be a major bonus, as I'd like to get out of college with less than 50,000 or so in loans.</p>
<p>I'm considering these schools as my top choices:</p>
<p>Boston College
Boston University*
Emory*
UC Davis*
UC Irvine
UCLA*
Carnegie Mellon University*
John Hopkins University*
Loyola Marymount University
NYU*
University of Southern California
Villanova*
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin Madison</p>
<p>*= I really like it, and I've looked into them. The others, I just don't know that much about.</p>
<p>Have I got a shot at making it?</p>
<p><em>More below in second post</em></p>