Pretty poor freshman year. Do I still have a chance at these colleges?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

My high school career started off a little bumpy, I wasn’t really aware how important that year was. Nonetheless, now its sophomore year, do I still have a chance at my top colleges?

School Type: Competitive Public Magnet (Pretty selective has about a 10% acceptance rate)
School Size: about 800
My school is mostly White and Hispanic with both of them taking up ~70% of my class, then Asian taking up about 25%, the rest would either be Pacific Islander, Native American, and African-American. I am one of the five black people in my class.

Location: New Jersey
Ethnicity: Mostly Black, however I am 13% Portuguese, 13% Native American, and an unknown percent Irish (around 6%)
Gender: M

At my school they say all classes are weighted as honors. (I’m pretty sure that doesn’t include classes like Phys Ed)
Unweighted Freshman GPA: n/a
Weighted Freshman GPA: 3.96
Class rank: n/a
AP: Currently taking AP Physics I, other AP classes were only available for juniors and seniors

Intended Major: CS
Family Income: ~200k (My mom got laid off a few years ago and now teaches part-time at a nearby community college. I currently have 2 sisters in college and one just out of college)

My extracurricular are fairly weak. Last year I was in JSA and played soccer and basketball, both JV.

For summer activities I spent last summer taking Algebra II, however I plan on interning next summer. I have a good amount of knowledge in front-end web development and have created a couple of fairly professional looking websites.

Colleges I plan on applying to:

Stanford (would be my first choice)

Columbia

MIT

CalTech

NYU

UCs

I know most of these are reaches but I have now realized how cutthroat the competition is and am now willing to do almost anything for my remaining years in high school. Along with chances I was also hoping for tips, like what I could do that would increase my chances or make my ECs look better.

2

Oh yeah, my class size is about 200.

3

You have no test scores, 1 year of grades and you are asking for chances?. A lot can change in another 2 years so keep working hard and come back at the end if Junior and ask again.

Good luck

4

I agree - keep working hard. AP Physics is a good thing to be taking, assuming you’re doing fairly well in it. Keep taking advanced courses, as long as they don’t overwhelm you.

As far as extracurriculars go, do things that you enjoy. I expect that doing an internship would also be useful, particularly one related to what you think you want to study.

Regarding your chances of getting into your various schools: as you have only 1 year of grades, it is difficult to tell where you are in relation to everyone else. As a personal exercise, you can estimate what you’re hoping your GPA/class rank/test scores will be, given the classes you expect to take, statistics from previous years for your school, past standardized tests you’ve taken, etc.; you could then compare these values to the averages of various colleges on your list to get a rough idea of where you might be.

Another thing to consider is what factors each college takes into account in its admissions decisions. Do they look at ethnicity? Gender? Intended major? Sports? (etc.)

Best of luck!