So I came to America last year, and I am a 9th grader now. I love biology and I am currently
involved of servers things related to biology. My dream is to go to a good school(like harvard) and become a doctor. However, I have heard people saying that because I came to the US and started high school right a way, so if I do as good as or better than other kids, it would help my college admission chances a lot, while other people saying that harvard doesn’t care about how you immigrated hear and how you learned English as your second language. Which one is true?
Another question is should I do something else that is special? I’m only doing things related to biology right now and I’m kind of confused by what elf I can do( heard of people saying that harvard doesn’t like “nerdy” students…
PLs HELP
A few things come to mind reading your post.
First of all, there are hundreds of very good universities in the US, and thousands of reputable universities. You don’t need to go to Harvard to be successful.
Secondly, you do need to work on improving your English. There are quite a few grammatical errors in your post. Hopefully over time this will get better. I will note however that your English is much better than my second language.
Take it one day at a time. Keep ahead in your classes and keep ahead in your reading and homework. Work to improve your English. Read a lot of English and when you are watching TV or movies do so in English. Over time you should do well.
Don’t do things for Harvard. Do things for yourself.
(Even top, qualified students get rejected by Harvard. 95% of them in fact. )
Students who cite harvard often do so because they don’t know many colleges, so that stands for “selective 4-year colleges”. But there are literally hundreds of excellent colleges.
Get a Princeton Review S best colleges and start reading. Find at least 12 colleges you hadn’t heard of that you like.
If you’re in the 9th grade, concentrate on getting A’s in the hardest level classes you can take (honors). Have one each of English, Math, foreign language, science, social science, plus one more academic class of your choice. Participate in many clubs, sports music groups and figure out what you like, what you’re good at.
My best suggestion is to not think about the “dream.” Think about reality. By the time you are ready to go to college, I can’t even fathom what Harvard’s acceptance rate will be. If you spend the next 3 years on your “dream”, you might have a rude and unhappy awakening when reality hits you in the face. I guarantee that if you spend the rest of your high school career doing things that you think will get you into a top school, you are going to be disappointed.
Take the excellent advice from MYOS1634, above. Ignore what people have wrongly told you about your being an immigrant and learning English. That is simply not true. There are literally tens of thousands of immigrant children in the US who learn English. They have no advantage at all over anyone else* who applies to Harvard.
*There are some people who DO have an advantage when it comes to getting into the most prestigious colleges. These people are “hooked.” It means they have something special that a college needs or really wants. For the most part, being hooked means you are a recruited athlete, an under-represented minority (sometimes), a legacy student (meaning your parent or maybe grandparent attended), or the child of a very wealthy donor.
Being an immigrant is not a hook, nor is learning English. It is simply an expectation that you must have a fluent command of English by the time you go to college in the US. You will need fluent English to get a top score on the SAT or ACT, and you will need a top score to even think about a chance at Harvard, Yale, and so on.
It’s good that you have come here to ask a question, because you might as well learn all this now. Just be the kind of student you want to be. Do things that make you happy. Do things because you want to do them, not because you think they are what Harvard wants to see. And by the way, there are nerds at all top colleges. There are also cool people, freaks, geniuses, boring people, artists, musicians, athletes, nobodies, foreigners, ordinary kids, prep school kids, kids from the middle of nowhere, and everything in between at top schools. There is no magic formula to get into a top college.
It’s good to have a dream. Nothing wrong with dreaming large and setting your sights on Harvard, for now.
Continue to develop all your interests not just Biology. Harvard likes interesting people and compelling applications. With your immigrant background, you may be able to persuade an admissions committee that you bring a lot to the community.
Thanks guys, I learned a lot! I’ll enjoy my high school life and continue to develope my interests!
In the U.S. you need to go to a medical school to become a doctor. And medical school is graduate school. So you first need to go to a college with any major, but make sure to take basic math and science courses that medical schools want to see, and get very very good grade on them, while doing as much health related internship as you can find.
You want to go to a good school, somewhere in top 100 maybe that can give you good education to help you ready for medical school. It is not necessarily and can be even detrimental to go to the most challenging college and suffer math & science GPA. So I wouldn’t worry about going to a top college and instead focus on academics, especially math and science.
Also, a lot of kids don’t get in to a medical school as it is very competitive, so you want to develop another back up interest that you can major in college, while also prepping for the medical school admission.
Lots of my husband’s relatives told us that our daughter would automatically get big scholarships because he is an immigrant and she was born outside the US. That kind of thing simply isn’t true, but a lot of immigrants believe it anyway. Our daughter got her scholarships because of her good grades and hard work in high school.
College gets more expensive every year. Since you are in 9th grade, you still have time to get the good grades that will get you a merit scholarship, or admission to a place that offers good need-based aid. But your family might not have much time to save money for your education. Your parents can run the Net Price Calculators that are on the websites of each of the colleges you are interested in to get an idea of what those places would expect your family to pay if you were going to be a student next fall. This will help you all to start sorting through your options. There also is a lot of good information in the Financial Aid Forum, so look at some of the threads there with your parents.
It is way too early to think about specific colleges (especially the hyper-competitive ones). You don’t even have one full year’s GPA and you have no standardized testing. You also need to recognize that HS should be an experience in and of itself – a time of learning and growth and not just a 4 year college application prep experience.
It is good to take school seriously and know that college will be on your horizon, but it is too early to start planning for specific colleges. I would highly recommend that you get off of CC until your junior year.
For now you should focus on:
–Working hard, learning, and doing as well as you can in the most challenging curriculum you can manage.
–When the time comes study for standardized tests.
–Continue your involvement in activities you care about and work towards making meaningful contributions to those activities.
–Enjoying spending time with your family and friends.
When the time comes asses your academic stats (including GPA, standardized tests, course rigor) as well as your financial needs and apply to a wide range of reach, match, and safety schools that appear affordable (you will have to run a net price calculator for each school you consider) and that you would be happy to attend. You need to expand your horizons and recognize that there are many wonderful schools out there where you can have a great 4 year experience and get where you want to go in life.
What is your citizenship status?
I am not a citizen but I have green card