I am currently in my second semester of Junior year. I currently attend Naperville North High School, which is a rather competitive school in Northern Illinois. Since I will be applying to colleges in the Fall, I will likely be applying to UIUC (among other colleges in the Fall), so what are my chances of recieving admission there if I continue the following trend?
GPA:
GPA (unweighted): 3.82
GPA (weighted): 4.167
AP Classes:
AP Classes this year: AP Physics 1; AP Biology
AP Classes I’m taking next year:AP Chemistry; AP Calculus AB
Note: Yes, I was a bit late on my AP Classes, as I only started taking them this year. However I have taken about 6 “honors” classes in semesters past.
Extracurriculars:
JSA (Political debate orginization where I have won 2 debate awards)
BSA (I will likely be an Eagle Scout soon and was Assistant Senior Patrol Leader of my Troop)
Volunteer tutoring ( for 60 hours thus far)
Volunteering at a nearby hospital (for 260 hours in total)
Follow up question: If I do have a chance of getting in, what major should would you recommend for Predental/med?
Pre-med and pre-dental are not majors but advisory programs designed to aid those at UIUC who have a desire to pursue medical or dental school after college. Regardless of major, any UIUC student can sign up for the pre-med or pre-dental advisory program. Getting into med or dental school depends on college grades and the completion of certain coures in college, a number of which are science classes. Many with plans to attend med or dental school pursue a science major, often either biology or chemistry, but you can pursue many majors and still get into med or dental school with completion of required courses, high college grades and high test results (MCAT or DAT).
Thus, in applying to UIUC for a major, you can choose whatever major you want, although the more the major relates to science, the more chance that many of the required courses for admission to med or dental school will be part of the same courses you normally take for the major.
As to your chances for admission, all that can be said is that you currently appear to be doing fine to have a real chance of admission but you still have a semester to complete and an SAT or ACT test before one can even begin to guess at your real chances of admission.
A lot will depend on your ACT/SAT score and your intended major. Like drusba said, with the right courses, almost any major is a valid pre-med or pre-dental option provided you get very good grades and MCAT… For example, a 1400 SAT or 30 ACT along with your other stats would be a very good chance for admission into ACES or Health Sciences and a reasonable chance for LAS (like Biology or Chemistry), but a reach for various engineering/business majors. You’d likely need much higher test scores to have any chance at a very selective major like Bioengineering.
You have great stats for all but a handful of majors at UIUC. I would say 1530 SAT plus at least maintaining your current GPA above makes ACES/HS majors nearly a safety, a very good chance for most LAS majors (other than some selective ones like CS+x) and a very good chance at many engineering and business majors. The exceptions would include Bioengineering, Computer Science and maybe Mechanical Engineering that may still be borderline and should be considered as reach majors. If one of those interests you, you could always list something like Engineering (Bioengineering) as your first choice and something like LAS (Biology, Biochemistry, Molecular/Cellular Bio or Chemical/Biomolecular Engieering) as your second choice major on the application. Or whatever interests you of course, those are just examples.
UIUC doesn’t accept SAT2 subject tests directly, but you could list those results on the achievements section of the application. I would not even bother unless another school suggests them or you are trying to get into a very selective major like Bioengineering where anything relevant you can add to extracurriculars and academics may help.
Hey, EngPhys major here. If you’re into Physics there’s a pre-med specialization in the engineering physics degree. I don’t know anyone in it, but it does exist.