<p>Before I explain, just a brief introduction.</p>
<p>My brother and sister were 3rd and 8th of their class respectively and went on to go to Harvard and Princeton. Our family is dirt poor and their success is something that is mentioned very frequently in our family. Now, I am 10 years younger them both and since their success there has been alot of family turmoil and divorces, fighting, etc.</p>
<p>I graduated this year as number 200 out of 485 people. My GPA was a 2.84 and compared to my siblings, I am trash more or less. Anyway, my SAT score was a 2380 so I know that my academic misfortune is not one that cannot be corrected. After applying to some colleges last minute I did receive a full ride to UTD. However, I turned it down because I have a 'plan'.</p>
<hr>
<p>As for the actual thread. As for my 'plan'. Before I did this I called Stanford, MIT, Harvard and UPenn and the general consensus was that considering my circumstances, it would actually look better to attempt to transfer from a community college than from a 4 year university as they are attempting to diversity their campuses. Because of these phone calls I turned down a full ride. Now I thought this through obviously and I could always transfer into UTD as their requirements are relatively low.</p>
<p>AS for the plan, the plan is to:</p>
<ul>
<li>go to a local community college and get a 4.0</li>
<li>be extremely active in two extracurriculars</li>
<li>get a local internship at a semi large business (this is already done).</li>
<li>use my minority status and high school situation to my advantage*</li>
<li>get very good professor recommendations.</li>
</ul>
<p>I am pretty set on doing this. But my real question is, at my local community college, what classes should I take? All difficult? Moderate? Mixture of difficult and moderate? Can anyone comment?</p>
<ul>
<li>To summarize my high school situation ended up with me having to work two jobs doing the four years of high school to pay the electric bill and having to walk 5 miles to school as there were no bus stops at our relatively obscure apartment.</li>
</ul>
<p>1) interest you and consequently can do well in
2) are likely to transfer to top schools
3) are small enough to allow you to cultivate solid relationships with professors who can then write well on your behalf
4) are rigorous, but not to such an extent that you cannot do well in them</p>
<p>This is just my intuition, so don’t take it as gospel. Good luck!</p>
<p>It seems like you have a solid plan. Just make sure you stick with it. I posted this on another thread which is similar to the question you asked about which courses to take.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Also try researching the schools and their requirements. Some have very specific requirements while others are more lenient. I’ll just give you the example of Business at USC. You’re required to take these courses before you can transfer into the Marshall School of Business:</p>
<p>[ul]
**
[<em>] WRIT 130/140 (English Composition 2, also a University requirement)
[</em>] MATH 118 or MATH 125 (Business Calculus)**
and they also recommend**
[li] Accounting 1 and Accounting 2 (will remove one required BUAD course. BUAD 280 and 281 are replaced by BUAD 305)[/li]**
[/ul]</p>
<p>As I mentioned before just make sure you research and come up with a schedule that will fulfill the requirements of your individual school. Besides GPA some people say completion of major requirements is crucial to your application. Just go over to the UC thread and read some of the stories of people who didn’t get in because they didn’t finish their prerequisites.</p>
<p>And another word of advice don’t listen to the community college counselors. I don’t know about your CC but at mine they’re just “there”. I went to register for classes and they tried putting me into Business Law I and Basic Computers. Neither class would of transferred. So just take control and I’m sure you’ll be fine. Good luck.</p>
[quote]
Stanford, MIT, Harvard and UPenn [/quote[</p>
<p>These schools accept a VERY VERY low number of transfer students. </p>
<p>Am I understanding this correctly…you turned down a free ride to UTD so you could pay to go to a CC and then transfer to an Ivy caliber school?</p>
<p>You need to do a top notch job at the CC…top…and even with that, you may not realize the dream of going to an Ivy or equivalent (due to their VERY low transfer acceptances). Does your CC have any articulation agreements with four year schools? If so…your plan C might be to complete your 2 year degree at the CC, then enroll at a four year school to finish your bachelors degree…and then apply to the dream schools for grad school.</p>
<p>Please add “Write excellent essays” to your list.</p>
<p>Essays make a huge difference for colleges like Penn, Brown etc. Even if you have ordinary EC’s and a good GPA, you stand a good chance if you have stellar essays. MIT, Stanford etc often require stellar EC’s/research and essays… Just my $.02</p>
<p>Wow, I actually just skimmed a couple of the threads, looks like you’re right. The jump in ‘difficult’ between getting accepted to a top 30 and HYPSM must be tremendous. Heck, I don’t think Princeton even takes transfers anymore to begin with.</p>
<p>Yeah. I’ve generally seen people from CC transfer to such top schools like NYU, USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Northwestern, and UChicago just to name a few. You’re correct about the “jump”. Though top 30 schools are by no means a cake walk they are still more realistic than Yale or Harvard which are single digit admission rates.</p>
<p>My advice to you is if you plan to apply to some Ivy schools take a look at UPenn and Columbia. They’re still very difficult to get into but out of all the Ivy schools they seem to have the greatest percent in admissions. Just a personal observation.</p>
<p>Anyway, I have my schedule for the fall more or less planned out except now I need one more class to take (to make a total of four).</p>
<p>I’m currently registered for Biology I (Non Science Major); Economics (micro); Calculus I with one class I still need to take. With the current classes I’m taking I should be a-go for meeting the UPenn (Wharton School of Business) and Cornell (Economics) requirements. But for Stanford, Yale and Harvard the requirements are not so obvious. Any help? Perhaps I should take a humanities class?</p>
<p>For Wharton they require you take a Calc Base Stats course. May I ask which class you chose? I emailed UPenn because my school didn’t seem to offer a calc based stats class but they never emailed back.</p>
<p>Argh. Seems like my SAT score doesn’t exempt me from taking some of the more basic math classes and I don’t really want to take the CLEP as you only get a CR on your transcript rather than an actual grade. So it looks like I will have to take College Alegebra, Trig and PreCalc because jumping into Calculus. </p>
<p>As long as I take CA during the Fall, Trig, Spring and PreCal/Calc during the summer I should be good for a junior transfer to Cornell right? (Though I would have to take an extra writing class as well I think)</p>
<p>Keep in mind that I have already taken English composition 1 and 2 as well as Macroeconomics during summer school for dual credit (which might not transfer). I don’t think my course load is rigorous enough. Any ideas? I plan on taking trig during the spring and pre calculus and calculus 1 during the summer 2011 if I can’t taken them during the fall.</p>