<p>First of all, don't stress... you have quite some time to deal with all this. Here are a few suggestions I have, based on what you've written:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Keep doing what you're doing. Your grades sound great and hobby clubs can count for a lot, depending on what exactly they are and how involved you are. </p></li>
<li><p>Be sure that you're challenging yourself. If you have a 4.0 and you haven't been taking honors or APs, it really doesn't sound like you're being properly challenged. Talk to some of your high school teachers and see if there's any way you can get into some honors/AP courses next year. The best way to figure out which ones you should try to take (aside from talking with your teachers) is to think about what classes you've enjoyed most. If you've always loved reading, for example, AP English Literature could be a good choice. Also, if APs aren't an option, try to figure out if there's something "extra" you could do such as an independent project in a topic of interest to you or a class at a community college. </p></li>
<li><p>Consider whether or not there's anything else you'd like to do with your free time. Have you always wanted to be part of a sports team? Felt a desire to do some community service? Thought about writing for the school paper but could never bring yourself to attend that lunch meeting? Been writing poems for years but never considered yourself good enough to submit them to a poetry competition? Now is the time to go for it. Your grades show you can handle your current schedule, so try getting involved in something new either at school or in your community. I can't say what specifically you should do--that's really up to you to figure out--however, would suggest that you try talking to your friend and/or family about it. Maybe someone you know does something you could also consider trying. At the same time, however, be sure that you enjoy whatever you get involved in: the last thing you want to have happen is to feel like you're doing extracurriculars with the sole goal of getting into college.</p></li>
<li><p>Start thinking about what you'd like your college to have. There's such a diversity of options out there that it's easy to be overwhelmed. I found that the best way to deal with this mass of information is to determine what sort of features you're looking for and judge colleges based on this list. Location, surroundings (urban, suburban, rural), majors and activities (ie, clubs) offered, size, school type (liberal arts college, university, tech school), social scene (residential vs. commuter campus, Greek life or not), religious affiliation, and sports division (if you want a school with a huge sports scene, for example) are all things you can think about. </p></li>
<li><p>Start running some online searches to see what fits you based on your preferences (College Board has a good one you could start out with). Once you have a list go school by school and examine their College Board profile. Check out size, acceptance rate, SAT/ACT averages, location, clubs offered, majors, percentage of students who live on campus, the ethnic/racial make-up of the students on-campus, the different percentages of the campus who have a GPA above a 3.7, between a GPA of a 3.5 and 3.7, etc.. Basically, see if there's anything about the school that signals an immediate "red flag" based on what you want. Once you've done this and you have a list of schools you're interested in do more in-depth research... starting out at the school websites is a good idea. If everything looks good, I would also recommend you sign-up to receive mailings from the schools you're interested in. You could also go on the College Confidential pages for the schools you're interested in and see if you can find any current students or parents who can talk about their experiences with the school in question. </p></li>
<li><p>After you've done research, step back and look at your list. You'll probably have crossed out a good deal of the schools that had popped up on your initial College Board search and will hopefully having a manageable list (ie, 25 to 30 schools instead of 200). Starting thinking about how the schools fit you from an academic standpoint. You want to ideally have a list that's relatively balanced in terms of how tough the schools in question will be to get into. The way I did things was to classify schools as a "high reach," "reach," "semi-reach," "good fit," "likely," or "safety." To do this, you can look at the stats the schools post on their websites and College Board offers. I would also recommend you initiate a dialog with your college counselor: give him or her your list of possibilities and see what he/she thinks. A third thing you can look at is the stats profiles section of each school you're interested in on College Confidential. If you do this, keep in mind that a lot of the students on here have particularly high stats and extracurricular involvements (or at least, I found that when I started looking). You can also post a "Chances" thread; however, with this too, you'll need to remember that no one can really tell you how likely you are to get into a school... all of the feedback you get will be guesses.</p></li>
<li><p>As you begin to get a sense of how everything fits in terms of reaches, matches, and safeties, start trimming your list down further. For example, if you find you have eight safeties, you'll probably be able to get rid of most of them (unless you really love them). Also pay attention to how each school grabs you... if there are twelve or fifteen that really stand out, you might be able to crop the rest of the schools off your list. That being said, keep in mind that your list will always need to be balanced: it's unwise to set your hopes on twelve reach schools and ignore all the good fits and safeties because they're "less prestigious." </p></li>
<li><p>Once you've gotten your list cut down a bit more, start talking to your parents about going on some college visits. Be sure to do this well-ahead of time, particularly if you're going to need to travel long-distance, so that the trips actually happen. When going on your visits you'll want to take a tour of the school and attend the information session for all of the schools, at a minimum. If you go while the school in question is in-session, you can also consider visiting a class or, if the school is of particular interest to you, doing an overnight visit and staying in the dorms with a current student of the school. One tip with visits: before you go one them, find out how the schools you're interested in conduct interviews. Some offer on-site interviews only, so you might want to do that right when you visit instead of coming back a second time for the interview. Also, I wouldn't recommend that you visit more than two schools a day... if you do more than that, things can get a little crazy.</p></li>
<li><p>After you've done some visits, you'll hopefully have an even better sense of what you want your final list to look like: some schools will click and some will tank. If you end up crossing off too many, consider going back and looking at some of the schools you'd previously cut. You can also consider going back to the beginning and running another search on College Board. This could be a particularly good idea if you feel that your tastes have changed a lot since starting out on your search.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Hopefully that helps!</p>