<p>As of right now, I'm a freshman in high school and have a 3.6 GPA I think (not that great) and I'm in all honors classes. I didn't start taking school seriously until literally two weeks ago when I almost had a C in bio.
Now getting to the point, I think I need a little advice on how to go about making myself more competetive for college in a few years. I would love to be accepted into UCLA, and that's the only reason I took the honors classes in the first place (I'm not as much of a slacker now)
Right now I don't have any extracurricular activities, but next year and the later years this is what I plan on doing:
playing soccer on the girls team
maybe playing tennis
joining my local community center's peer educator group
doing my school's musical and possibly other plays
doing stage crew for the musical
joining my school's speech and debate team and
rifle team
I'm not sure about clubs, though I would like to join SADD and Youth Traffic Safety Club.
I also plan to get a job soon next year and maybe volunteer at my local dog shelter or something.</p>
<p>This is just what I know I'd like to do. Hopefully I could get into most of these things.</p>
<p>Also, next year I have AP American History scheduled, and in future years I plan on taking AP Bio, AP Chem, AP Physics, AP Psych, AP European history, AP English classes, AP math classes, and possibly AP Economics. The rest of my classes will be all honors for the rest of my high school career.</p>
<p>I also hope to get my GPA up as high as possible. I really screwed this year up because I used to think I didn't have to study like in middle school...big mistake haha. But lately I started to study a lot and have actually gotten A's and high B's on recent tests :D </p>
<p>So to the point, can someone tell me if I'll be going in the right direction and give advice of other things I could do to make myself more competetive?Expecially for UCLA c:
And what about SATs and ACTs?I'll be taking the pre test thing next year or whatever..</p>
<p>I’m glad that you are realizing at this relatively early stage that you need to work hard to achieve your goals. That in itself is a huge thing. You “get it.” Good luck to you.</p>
<p>Don’t focus on getting into a particular college. Focus on developing yourself as a student and as an interesting person. Taking the most challenging curriculum available to you is an advantage in college admissions. However, also listen to your guidance counselor at school to be sure you are also appropriately placed. Many kids (most) have specific academic strengths they capitalize on. You don’t necessarily have to take every AP in the universe.</p>
<p>It’s great that you have thought about all the things you could do with your time outside of school. However, your transcript and GPA are the most important things that will get you into college. </p>
<p>Test prep is advisable. You can self-prep by buying a book and working through the problems, or you can take a class or get SAT/ACT tutoring. You can raise your score significantly through preparation. Familiarity with the types of questions and the format of the exam is very important. Most others who are taking the test and shooting for the same schools as you will be prepped this way, so you can’t afford not to be.</p>
<p>You want your EC’s to tell some kind of story about who you are and what you value spending your time on. The proverbial “laundry list” of activities doesn’t look all that impressive. Spend time on fewer activities that you really get involved in and make a contribution to, rather than doing everything under the sun in a superficial way.</p>
<p>Looks like a laundry list of ECs. Your best bet is to find something you’re passionate about and focus on demonstrating that passion to your potential colleges.</p>
<p>I agree with the others. Find a passion, build unique activities around it to support it and to make it a benefit to others. Document what you do. Adcomms build each class so that it has personality. Adding another kid with just selections of the school’s standard EC’s won’t build personality into the class. Make yourself stand out. You can also knock out the easy required subjects that don’t have challenging alternatives in summer. That will give you more time to take challenging classes during the year and may dilute your lower freshman grades by adding credits, especially weighted credits. You can do it if you develop passion. </p>
<p>Although I can appreciate the value of just developing yourself, I don’t think it hurts to have a specific school as a goal, understanding that you may change your mind midcourse or may end up having to go to another if you don’t get in. Having his signts set on MIT helped my son make many, many decisions during high school. Do I sleep in or get up and get that science project done well? Do I take that extra heavy course load to get all the math and science in my junior year or give myself a break and take a few things at the end of my senior year when most people slack off at my school? Do I take the SAT II in Physics while on a trip to CMU even though it means a ton of extra cost due to another day in the hotel and cabs and my mom having to come with me to get me to the SAT site and freezing our buns off waiting for that school to open? I even said to him a few times when he was tired and didn’t want to do something, “Let me know if you decide against MIT because it will make my life a lot easier.” That brought him back to his goal and got him to do what he needed to do to reach his personal goal set when he was ten. It really helped him stay the course, and it paid off. He got in to MIT and other schools in that category. </p>
<p>Just don’t pick a school for prestige. Pick it because it will let you do the things that you really, really want to do. And, then do what it takes to get there. You can always choose another school if you change your mind. And, you can change your major. My son started out in electrical engineering because he wanted to do that since he saw cool stuff in Scientific American built at MIT when he was very young. But, in his first year at Caltech, he realized that he didn’t want to sit in a cubicle farm. I had told him that, but he had to think about it I guess. So, he picked Computation and Neuroscience when it came time to declare. It will allow him to blend biology, computer science, physics, and psychology–all interests he developed by reading college textbooks during his adolescence. It’s not unusual to change majors your first year. But, if he had not focused on preparing to get into MIT and study electrical engineering, he would not have gotten into Caltech and would not be prepared to study CNS. So, consider a goal and realize you can change it.</p>
<p>All of the EC’s I mentioned are usually set at specific times in the school year and only once a year…kind of…
like soccer, tennis, peer educating, and speech and debate are all year things while rifle, musical, and stage crew are only during the fall.
Also, for clubs at my school, we do A B C and D days where tons of different clubs meet each Wednesday depending on which letter day it is…so there’s a lot of different interesting clubs at my school. I know for SADD and Youth Traffic Safety, they do a lot of fundraising and have a lot of presentations that they do outside of school for younger students and others schools.
I’ve been told by my speech and debate teacher that I have a “wonderful” voice and she loves my speeches and important points I make that some people usually don’t think of.
I know I could really play my strenghts in most of these things.
Also, I’m really into all the science stuff right now, I’m great at writing and math, but sometimes history is just boring to me…I really love learning about economic things in the world history class I’m in right now too.</p>
<p>One of the main reasons I want to attend UCLA is because it’s in LA. Last year I decided I wanted to get as far away from my small town as I could for a while, and I thought LA would be the perfect place. It’s like…5,000 miles away. It also seems so much more lively than where I live now (obviously) and it seems to have so many more opportunities. There’s so much more to do and be involved in…I would really like to become a dancer too one day, and there’s absolutely no place around here to learn hip hop(unless you go to the places that think cheerleading is hip hop). One thing I really love about UCLA is the amount of student organizations and campus(although I’ve never seen it in person ). The school also seems pretty well rounded.
I also liked USC last year, but I’m not sure about it…I’d still apply there later.</p>
<p>And just to add this, I only have about 13 hours of community service now -____- 10 were helping little kids decorate pumpkins at this trolley museum and 3 were at my middle school’s open house handing out cookies and drinks. There aren’t very many opportunities around here, but most of the peer educating is considered community service and they have meetings every wednesday around 6 pm. I will definetly have a job at the end of next year after I turn 16 and most likely during summers after.
There is also a National Honor Society for my school, so I’ll probably be in that in 11th and 12th grade.
Kinda long but…
Does anyone have any other tips for me after seeing this addition?</p>
<p>tl;dr many other posts but my advice is don’t so things simply just to have them on your college application. If you don’t genuinely enjoy an activity, find something you do enjoy and do that instead.</p>
<p>And yeah start prepping for the SAT earlier than later. You’ll thank yourself later.</p>
). The school also seems pretty well rounded.