<p>I'm a rising senior and these are my ECs :
National Buddhist youth ensemble choir alto (freshman)
National Buddhist youth ensemble fife and drum corps champion (conductor) as a rising junior
National Buddhist youth ensemble fife and drum corps champion (snare drummer) as a rising senior
fife and drum corp snare drummer (performances throughout the year)
Treasurer of Book club to donate books to poor children (junior)
Vice President of poetry club(sophomore and senior)
Member of the feminism club(junior)
Member of class senate to raise senior year funds (all 4 years)
Varsity golf (senior)
Jv golf (junior)
National youth leadership forum on medicine as a rising junior
Participated in Charity golf tournament as a senior
Peer tutor as a junior and as a senior (basically on call for whenever they need help or want to meet and on Wednesdays and Thursdays I tutor after school from 2:40-4:30 from October through March, and for free of course)
Dance 2 years
Choir 2 years
Japanese National Honor Society
FRC Robotics rookie all star @ regionals (20 hours a week for 8 weeks) and was able to travel to world championships to compete
Interfaith youth leadership initiative-2 years
Interfaith youth film festival 3rd place-junior
South Coast Interfaith Council youth of the year-sophomore
SCIC member (2 years)
Participant in local beach clean ups
AP and honors courses taken/will be taken
Honors English 5-6
Honors precalculus
Honors chemistry
Japanese 5-6 honors
APUSH-4
Ap euro-?
Ap Japanese
Ap bio-?
Ap physics
Ap chem
Ap calc ab
Ap English lit
Ap English language (self studied)-?
Us history sat II- 710
1 community college course: us history and I got an A
Weighted (honors and ap are worth 5 for an A) my gpa is 4.13 or 4.25 (if u don't include freshman year where I took no APs)
My GPA is extremely low I know, but I'm confident I can get a 35 on my ACT as I've been studying like crazy and have been consistently getting 36 on the practice tests.
Extra info: I'm third generation to go to college in my family and I'm an African American young lady :)
My mother is a graduate of UCLAs PhD program also.</p>
<p>@soze Is that bad? I mean am I only getting in because I’m black -__- ? I mean I was hoping I could get it UCLA easier because I’m a legacy and I live in California, but lots of kids are the children of UCLA alumni… Should I work on something? Is there something specific I’m lacking? I really want to improve</p>
<p>3.76 @tooty44 sorry, I didn’t realize I could tag people haha
Btw my school doesn’t rank but I’m definitely in the top 8% just because of my program. And I do have some safety schools such as Cal States, Ohio State, UC Merced, etc. I’m just curious about the others.</p>
<p>A Few More Random Things I Wanted to Toss In:
-My program does not offer AP English Language
-My English, science, and history classes are already chosen for me because of my program at school. I did not choose when to take what. In fact, I was unable to take any APs besides US History until this past year. when many became optional.
-Japanese honors is a class that I had to test into. Out of the hundreds of students taking Japanese, only 30 are in Japanese Honors.
-I would have taken more academic classes but if you don’t pass the fitness tests, you are required to have PE or a sport for all 4 years so I chose golf.
-It probably means nothing but after I sent my AP Scores to Harvard last year, I was contacted by their Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program.
-I had some issues with overextending myself my junior year which is basically why my grades suck, so I’m going to ease up on the time commitments this year and perhaps take a university class in the Fall.
-I am pretty sure that I got a 4 or 5 on the European History AP, and for that my history teacher will officially change my grade for both semesters from a B to an A which is really good for my GPA lol.
-there are only a few student that actually help out at the after school tutoring session so I sometimes tutor 4 kids at the same time in anything from Algebra to Government.
-I took government and econ as a freshman and I’m taking personal and corporate finance as a class next year.
-My golf team is looking to go to the playoffs this year.</p>
<p>Questions:
A relative of mine is one of the top neurosurgeons in the country and I was thinking of interning with him in some way. Would that be worth it if I’m not sure what I want to do yet?
-If I explain that I’ve been working a lot on character and personality improvement rather than having perfect grades, will that mean anything to colleges?</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s a correct description. Colleges value diversity and if you’re a high-performing member of an underrepresented group, it helps a great deal in the admissions process.</p>
<p>As to if that’s “bad” or not, I’m not going to judge / comment on the merits of this approach as it’s been debated to death on this venue and elsewhere, it’s simply a fact that that’s how it works.</p>
<p>Yes you will probably get in at least 2 or 3 of these schools because you’re black. It’s just how the system currently works. That being said, you have impressive ECs and good projected ACT so you definitely deserve to get in. </p>