Hey guys, I was hoping I could get some early perspective on how my resume is looking for aiming for acceptances from the top tier schools (<15% acceptance rate). I am currently in 11th grade and still have a year left of school so am not rushing anything. I am pursuing the IB Dipolma with my courseload consisting of HL Maths, HL Physics, HL Econs, SL Eng Lang Lit, SL Mandarin B and SL Comp Sci. As for my academic record I completed my iGCSE’s last june, scoring 10 A*s and 1A, and am expecting a 43-45 for IB and a 33-36 for my ACT, which I will be sitting in Decemeber. The only segment I am unsure of and need your guys help on are my ec’s.
This year I’m part of 8 activities/clubs in my school (physics mag, buisness club, RE initiative, chess club/team, school yearbook, physics club, volunteering service at a NH, organization helping poor in Cambodia) and am yielding some sort of head/leadership positions in almost all. I am also planning to start 2 more clubs that I feel extremely passionate about (investors club (stock trading) and an RE online magazine) in a few months. Besides these I am also part of the U19 Soccer team for our school, am preparing for a grade 4 exam in trinity classical guitar (I have been playing electric and acoustic for 6 years already but have no real accolades to show for), and am country head for an organization for teaching seniors technology.
In terms of my awards and recognitions I have only recieved a few high school awards, but nothing from competitions :(. Because I don’t have much recognition, what competitions, named if possible, do you think I should compete if given what I’m interested in is economics, buisness, maths and physics?
I feel like I have too many activities on my plate right now and feel like I should be considering dropping some.
Do you guys think I have too many activities on my plate? Which ones are unrelated and you think I should drop?
Career paths I would like to pursue if not evident from my subjects and ec’s are finance or engineering. Right now I’m leaned towards developing a profession in investment banking, do you guys think this is the right decision?
In terms of internships/ summer programs, last summer I went to the Harvard 8 week SSP program and took a 4 college credit course on macroecons and a 4 credit course on theoretical physics, pulling off an A for both. This coming summer I’m expecting to take part in a more selective program for 4 weeks, and work at a firm/ internship for another 4. My internship will probably consist of working as an analyst or some research job in a fund, or possibly an engineering opportunity.
In addition to all of this, I want to demonstrate some of my special interests through starting up a physics blog about QFT with a friend, posting articles just for fun, and am planning to trade stocks with real money in January this year. Do you think I will be able to manage with all this?
Because I feel finance is an area I want to study I have collated a list of possible research topics in economics, what is the procedure for publishing papers? How great does your paper have to be? How original does it have to be? What’s the difference between an article and a research paper?
Any help would be appreciated as I am sooo confused as to what to do with all my ec’s and non academic work. What do I do??
Thanks for taking the time to read this!!!