I would caution against getting hung up on prestige. It usually doesn’t end well. Those kinds of unreasonable expectations would challenge a full grown middle-aged emotionally mature adult. For a teenager, it’s a mental breakdown waiting to happen. Plus, the longer the laundry list of ECs, the more disingenuous it becomes. Think of it this way, would you REALLY be doing all of this stuff if you weren’t trying to get into Harvard?
My advice, take a deep breath. Don’t worry about things you have no control over. Hold on to your self-respect, because desperation never comes across well. Also, just because you get into a prestigious college, doesn’t mean it’s the right school for you. A full ride scholarship in an honors program with a debt free education is a real tangible accomplishment. A Duke University degree with $100,000 in debt is more a liability than an accomplishment.
Schedule an appointment NOW with your school guidance counselor. Be charming. Try to get her in your corner. Ask her, don’t tell her, whether the route that you’ve taken shows top rigor - while delicately pointing out that it was really the only route that you could have taken. The goal is for her to check the “highest rigor” box for you - which when you consider all you’ve done, I’d say you deserve. Honestly, in my humble opinion, not taking AP Lang was a big mistake on your part, unless you have a true language disability, which you sure don’t seem to. I would take an AP English in senior year. It would let the colleges know that college level literacy is in your toolkit, without them seeing a grade (or maybe only a mid-year grade) or AP score in it.
Your field of interest, the intersection between environmental science and psychology, is intriguing. After all, we need some psychology in order to get people on board for safeguarding our environment. I think that you could stand out, if you were to write about what you love in your essay, and that would pull together the AP classes, the online APs, and the dual enrollment classes.
You need to look more closely at schools, rather than just go on prestige. Might very well be that you would like to have proximity to outdoor recreation or wilderness, for research purposes. There are lots of flagship state U’s that might provide that for you, maybe also some smaller LACs that aren’t in big east coast cities.
Yeah, I agree. Not taking lang was a bad move. Part of the reason was that I took the community college equivalent sophomore year to get credit in UC Schools
It is also historically really hard at my school, and with actual hard ap classes like Calc BC, Bio and APUSH, it would be self suicide. A lot of kids in my school that take lang take stuff like APES, AP Stats
Thank you so much. I will for sure try and explain this to my counselor. To clarify, however, my counselor knows about my UC Scout stuff. Should I specifically mention how I am worried about my rigor, and frankly tell him that he should tick the higest rigor box?
What’s done is done with regard to AP language, and that one class will not likely matter to the vast majority of schools. I suppose if the top colleges you are interested have AOs that know your school curriculum and in fact there are more than a handful students who take AP language with those other hard APs, your rigor may not be “top” but it is still high rigor.
It sounds as though many in the top10% take 4APs offered by the school as juniors, and a chunk of them might just have the three you took plus language–but maybe most do not? You mentioned one reason you didn’t is worry over Bs, as Bs seem not uncommon, which is a valid concern. However, those feelings raise the question that a top15 school such as the ones you mention may not be a good fit: these schools are filled with students who love and thrive on a challenge and that tends to be something mentioned when you dig in to what these types of schools state they are looking for.
Please do not get overly focused on top schools–take time to explore lots of other options and be sure the fit is right.
EDIT: please do not TELL your counselor to check the highest rigor box! This should be an honest conversation with the counselor telling you how your rigor stacks up, not the other way around.
Did you take the course online, at a recognized school/institution, and do you have a grade for the course? If, as you wrote, you have a transcript for this, it is not the same as just learning for the AP test.
Colleges don’t care that you took AP tests, but I would guess that evidence of taking the class and being graded on the classwork would be different.
I would, therefore, look at colleges which offer this route. For example, VTech is considered a top college for Urban Studies, as is Rhodes College. I always say that fit is the most important thing. This is especially true for people like you who really have their own way of doing things, and tend to be the most successful when allowed to do so. In general, most of the so-called “T-20” colleges are less inclined to do so.
Do yourself a favor & got off the fixation of “T15” and shift to a focus on finding the best programs for what you want to do. Happily, HS does not last forever, and the need to ‘prove’ something by the name on your college sweatshirt will drop 99% the day after graduation.
On the other hand, figuring out who has the coolest program that gets you ready to do what you actually want to spend the next 40 years of your life doing is worthwhile.
You have taken a lot of psych, you have done some research- what have you learned about the approaches or elements that resonate for you?? Do places such as the Urban Realities Laboratory at the University of Waterloo get you excited? is the weight of your interest more on the psychology side or the planning side? Will it be more useful for you to have UG/Grad degrees in one / the other / both? Are you thinking a double major? etc. Find the schools that fit what you want to do, and your academic choices that you have made -that have followed your actual interests, not just building a resume for college apps! - will be a strength, not a weakness