Another year, another list of EC’s, classes, test scores, and a bunch of hypotheticals that I plop down on a random forum thread. This time I’m in my Junior Year, I have all of my classes mapped out and a pretty good idea of what the rest of high school will look like. The only problem is I don’t know if this is enough.
My dream school is still Columbia University [more specifically Columbia College which I plan to early apply to], however, my more realistic list includes schools such as Boston University, Boston College, American University, George Washington University, Rutgers, Fordham, and others. I’ve also taken interest in UChicago and Northwestern and also plan on applying to UCLA and USC. How well do I look for these colleges as well as something like ED Columbia College?
Let’s begin!
School: Public
Race: White
Income: Upper Middle Class
Class Rank: 1/272 last year before they abolished rankings this year
Tests: All of these will be projected estimates based on current performance. They are obviously susceptible to all kinds of change.
ACT: 34-35
SAT II Spanish: 710
SAT II US History: 740
SAT II Literature: 760
Classes: I will put in the grades I received for both semesters for everything I’ve completed as well as current grades for this semester. [1st semester grade/2nd semester grade] All AP classes that I’ve taken exams for will have their respective scores attached.
Freshman:
Health/CCR: A/A
Spanish 3: A/A
(Double Period) STEM Physics: -A/A
English 10: A/A
PE: B/A
Geometry: A/A
Sophomore:
AP European History: A/A Exam Score: 4 STEM Biology: +B/-A
Honors Spanish 4: A/A
Algebra 2: A/-A
English 11: A/A
AP Human Geography: A/A [Exam Score: 4]
Junior:
AP Spanish: Current A
AP US History: Current -A
AP Biology: Current A
STEM Chem: Current A
Student Body: Current A
Pre Calculus: Current -A
AP Language and Composition: Current +B
Senior:
AP Statistics
AP Literature
AP Economics
AP Government
STEM Engineering
Student Government
French 2 or Journalism [May decide not to take either to make room for Art History]
Community College Art History Class for those sweet sweet art credits
One thing I’ve heard a lot about in terms of Honors/AP classes is that colleges don’t care necessarily about the quantity and instead about how many you take as compared to what courses are provided. As for my school, the only honors courses are Spanish 4 and some music electives I believe. I would also be taking 10 AP’s out of 15-20 AP’s that they offer.
Extracurriculars:
Misc. EC’s:
-4 Years Varsity Tennis
-Team Captain Junior and Senior years
-California Scholarship Federation Member all throughout HS except for 2nd semester Sophomore year
-Climbed Mt. Whitney
-Co-founder of the Quiz bowl club at my school.
–I run a Quizbowl Instagram account that has amassed about 250 followers and I work with other notable QB accounts to maintain QB’s Instagram presence. Mind you the official NAQT account has 1.9k followers.
World Citizenship:
-Boy Scouts
–Received my Eagle
–Received an Eagle Palm
–Nominated for Scout of the Year
-Spanish
–Near fluency
–Studied abroad for a month in Barcelona and received a glowing recommendation from the school I was with.
–I currently volunteer at a local youth center. I was a bit iffy about putting this in the Spanish category because as of right now, I use Spanish from time to time to help kids out, however, I do hope to work more in tutoring ELD kids so consider this a half hypothetical I guess.
-Russian
–Proficiency
–I’ve been self studying and self teaching Russian in order to communicate with my Russian family. I can hold a conversation and can read and write at an elementary level.
–I will be applying to the New York Times Student Journeys program to travel to Russia. Consider it a hypothetical as I obviously can’t be certain of it happening.
-French
–Weak proficiency
–Just like Russian, it’s self-taught. I’ve only been doing this in order to be able to possibly place into French 2 my senior year.
Writing and Literature
-Started a writing club at my school and have been running it since Sophomore year
-Have been writing mini-essays and articles for the school paper
-I attended Columbia University’s Master Class in Fiction over the summer and left with a glowing recommendation from my instructors
-I’ve been submitting work to various professional writing contests and journals (but to no avail haha)
-I’ve started to focus more on high school level contests recently and have yet to hear anything back from them so far.
-I’ve been writing short stories for my school’s literary magazine.
-I currently have a 200 page manuscript of a book I’ve been writing since freshman year. I don’t think that it will be ready for publication by senior year. I do not think that I will get any kind of publication or contract with a literary agent by then either. Instead, I will be attaching my manuscript with photocopies of some notes for the book.
So that’s everything. I personally feel very shaky about what I have. I am very passionate about writing, literature, and languages, however, I feel as if I have very little to show for them. I also feel like my grades and AP exam scores are in a weaker range. And all of this is pretty stressful because I have a bunch of schools that I’m really interested in and the dream school that I’ve become so enamored by and invested in that I have started to feel as if I’d actually be attending regardless of the super-competitive statistics and selective nature of admissions. And this belief deeply worries me because there’s a very good chance that I’ll be rejected. At the same time, I really want to go there. I honestly don’t know man. Goddamn, these admissions are crazy. Anyways, give your feedback, tips, ideas, areas of improvement. I still have a year or so before college aps go out so I still have time to do some things.