Please help! College decision!

<p>I have been slacking off a bit in freshman and sophomore year, but junior year I worked VERY HARD. Due to my behavior in the past, my GPA was killed.
But I’m wondering about a couple of things;
• Would colleges look at my unweighted GPA or weighted GPA more?
• Do colleges specifically look at my Junior year grades? (Because it’s the only year I got straight A's)
• How much does my SAT matter?
• Are my clubs and awards really helping or do colleges not really care about them?
• How important is my college essay? Compared to GPA and SAT
• I will apply to Cornell, CAL Tech, Carnegie Mellon, UPenn, and some state safety schools. Which ones can I make it into? I would love to go to Cornell or Cal tech.</p>

<h2>Junior Year Courses:</h2>

<p>AP Physics
AP Chemistry
AP Calculus AB
AP US History
AP Lang
Spanish Honors</p>

<h2>Numeric Distinctions:</h2>

<p>3.75 (max 4) -- unweighted GPA
4.41 (max 5) -- Weighted GPA
2320 -- SAT score
800 - SAT Math IIC score
790- SAT Chemistry Score
790 - SAT Physics Score</p>

<h2>Clubs and Awards:</h2>

<p>District Science Fair winner for Physics Project
Science Olympiad Medal Winner
Secretary of Protein Research Club
National Honors Society
Vice President of Academic Decathlon Club
School Physics Team (4 people from entire school are selected)
State Science League Medal Winner for Physics
Volunteer 100+ hours</p>

<p>I think (which might not be what colleges think) that unweighted GPA is more important, because private high schools tend to inflate your GPA or make everything an Honors course, making you have high GPA when you really shouldn’t.</p>

<p>Colleges look at all your grades, and it is probably good that you’ve pulled them up.</p>

<p>I don’t know how much your SAT matters, but it is a very good score so you shouldn’t worry.</p>

<p>Clubs and awards do help, you seem to have good ones.</p>

<p>I think your college essay (and extracurriculars) are extremely important. I have some friends with perfect grades and scores yet did not get into any privates.</p>

<p>Most colleges don’t mind freshman year grades too much, if that helps anything. I think you’ll be fine. :)</p>

<p>from my experience reading the acceptance thread for Caltech, people usually has the same scores like you (SAT I, SAT II), but their UW GPA are like 3.8 to 4.0…scores and grades like yours makes you qualified for Caltech (i think), but if you want to get ahead, you need to proof that you are what Caltech needs…it’s like what this website says <a href=“http://www.its.caltech.edu/~tgwinn/Caltech.pdf[/url]”>http://www.its.caltech.edu/~tgwinn/Caltech.pdf&lt;/a&gt; and this link [Is</a> it hard to get into caltech? - Yahoo! Answers](<a href=“Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos”>Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos) …you need to have something that spykes…judging from your ECs, I can see that you’re into physichs…that’s good keep it up! get more of those ECs (physics related) into your resume…the impossible ones…and don’t worry about well roundedness…as an Admission Committee said in the second link, you don’t need to be well rounded to go to Caltech, well rounded people can go to Harvard…you just need to proof that you’re a science whiz kid</p>

<p>Good Luck :)</p>