<p>I'm a sophomore and I have an issue with time and picking ECs. I think I'm interested in too many things, so that if I do them all, I'll end up getting spread too thin, having way too many late nights and just stressing out on a daily basis.<br>
Basically I play a fall sport that's pretty time-consuming (3-4 hours/day plus weekend tournaments, and starts like a month before school does so it limits summer programs too), but I love it a lot even though my parents hate it. But I have absolutely no chance of playing this in college because I'm way way way too short. I also write for the school newspaper and I want to be an editor next year, but that's going to be an hour after school very often. I also want to do science competitions (my school has a LOT: sciOly, Oscibowl, Scibowl, JETS, wondercup, HOSA, etcetc) and I'll be taking a pretty heavy class load (for me, at least: AP Physics, Calc BC, English Honors, Finite/Discreet Math, CPUSH that might be lie APUSH depending on what teacher I get; other trivial stuff). I'm an officer of two clubs at my school.</p>
<p>So what should I pick; or better yet does anyone have tactics on saving time or getting things done faster?
My goal for college is UC berkeley/Stanford; aiming for a career in bio/med or engineering. Currently I have 4.0 unweighted, 5 in AP Bio and taking 4 more AP tests this year, 223 on PSAT, a few little awards but a decent amount of participation/volunteering.... what are my chances?</p>
<p>Very good chances at the moment; nice stats. Your PSAT score is great! Improve it by some more points for junior year and you can qualify for the PSAT scholarship (I forget what it’s called). Don’t worry about having few awards your sophomore year; you still have two years left (and two years, trust me, is a lot of time). Keep playing your fall sport, doesn’t matter if you won’t be picked to play in college. As long as you have dedicated yourself to it, colleges will see that you are well-rounded and pretty amazing (with a sport that consumes 3-4 hours/day). For the clubs that you are an officer of, please devote yourself to those two clubs. Weed out anything that you don’t play a significant role in. Will it be guarantee that you are going to be an editor for the school newspaper next year? If not, I don’t suggest continuing it unless you are going to major in writing or business. Seems like being an editor will conflict with your sport (if it’s after school).</p>
<p>Describe what you do in a typical school day and weekend. It’s hard to give advice on saving time when we don’t know what you’re doing wrong.</p>
<p>Thanks for the help!
Typical school day (in off-season) is wake up, go to school, get home, do homework, do some extra studying/club stuff or projects. No problem, really, I can easily sleep at 10 everyday. Weekends=credited language class on Saturday, group project meetings (there’s almost always one going on), homework, studying, and depending on the time of year, summer program apps, officer position apps, or a club event. I’m not a facebook addict so I check facebook maybe twice a day for five minutes purely if I need to ask what the homework was or for organizing club activities.
During season is what I’m more worried about. This year I survived mostly because I did all my math and science homework for the week over the weekend, and then I have two bs classes so I also did other homework during those (which now isn’t looking so good since I’m looking for recs…) and I didnt’ have very many club activities, so I could do homework during lunch too. Typical school day was get up, go to school, do hw in class+lunch, get home, do hw for an hour, practice for ~3-4 hours or go to the game, which could go up to 5 hours. Then get back and do homework and sleep. During season I was pretty much never on facebook; anytime I was at home I was doing homework or projects/studying.</p>
<p>Wow, you’re pretty darn responsible and efficient. So, what are your trouble areas, specifically? Are you struggling in a class or finding that you can’t keep up? It seems like you really got this down. I mean, your schedule is pretty spot-on for what you have to do.</p>
<p>Nothing much I guess… grades aren’t very hard for me except for the amount of time I have to put in to assignments so I guess I just need to work faster. I’m slow at writing essays. Strangely enough, articles for the paper are a lot easier.
Sleeping enough would be the biggest issue since if I don’t get enough rest, especially during season, I’m absolutely dead. I am amazed by the people who can operate on 5 hours of sleep.</p>