<p>hi everybody, i am new on the forums, and am currently a sophomore in high school. </p>
<p>So far, I have a 4.0 gpa weight. and a 3.8 unweight. My EC's are school swim team, am a member of the PAVA Jr club, community service, and I will soon do volunteer work for UCLA. </p>
<p>As far as my GPA goes, I can increase it to a 4.2 by the end of the 1st semester, as it is a very high B. </p>
<p>I am taking one AP this year and am planning on taking 3 AP's next year, and about 3~4 AP's senior year.</p>
<p>My school of choice would be UCLA or UCB.</p>
<p>Am I in the right path?</p>
<p>If not, can anyone give me constructive criticism?</p>
<p>On another note, advice on how to prepare/do well for the SAT would be appreciated as well. </p>
<p>Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>Honestly, as a sophomore lacking SAT scores and AP scores, there’s not much we can tell you. Your GPA is fine, though the UCs recalculate your GPA I believe, so you might want to look into how that’s done specifically. I do know that most colleges look at unweighted, not weighted, GPA, as weighting systems tend to be subjective depending on the school. </p>
<p>Also, we can’t tell you how good your number of AP classes look. How many are offered at your school? How many do people at your school traditionally take? Your rank offers some insight into all of this for colleges, and you’ll probably need to be top 10% for the schools you’re looking at (though you can check princetonreview.com for class rank distributions as well as a host of other helpful stats…SAT distributions, average entering GPAs, student opinion, etcetc).</p>
<p>EC-wise, I’m not sure what PAVA is, but it seems you have an interest in community service. That would be good to pursue–if you delve into these forums, you’ll find the EC-buzzword is “passion.” What you’ll find is that passion in one or two interesting activities tends to be more impressive than a laundry list of random club members with no officer positions, that have nothing to do with one another, and that you’re only in for a year or two. At the tippy-top schools, passion should be supplemented by achievement (Intel, Siemens, Scholastics); at less competitive schools, passion may be enough. At UCs, I’ve heard that they’re much more stats-focused, so don’t let ECs stand in the way of your grades. </p>
<p>And keep in mind that detailed answers to most of your questions (are these ECs/scores/etetc good enough?) can be found elsewhere on the forum…search! There’s a wonderful SAT prep section.</p>
<p>hm, I’m not totally sure how many AP programs our school offers, BUT</p>
<p>most students tend to take no ap class sophomore year, with the minority (the ones with the higher gpas) tend to take 1 ap or maybe even 2 ap’s. But at junior year i think people are starting to take at least 1 AP, while the people with the higher gpa’s take atleast 2 or 3</p>