How are your standardized test scores?
I think an area you might want to work on would be your GPA. I’m not exactly sure how the 100-point scale works, but I think the closer to 100, the better, especially if it’s weighted. Your independent research sounds interesting–will you be publishing/involved in a study? Also, what kind of volunteering are you doing in Thailand? That could definitely catch the attention of colleges.
It appears that you do a lot of volunteering. Although that’s definitely good (for the world as well as your college applications), you may want to branch out more and try to involve yourself in more competitive activities. Mock trial is a good place to start. I’m in mock trial and one thing that my school does is apply to quite a few local invitationals [which can be found through a quick Google search or a look at your state’s bar website’s mock trial section (or at least that works for my state)]. I also recommend Empire Mock Trial–it’s an international competition that has a longer case, which is argued at a 4-day competition in either New York City, San Francisco, or Atlanta. This program is actually rather prestigious and can be difficult to get into depending on your team’s track record. It’s also pretty pricey–upwards of $1600 depending on your team size–but in my opinion, it’s well worth it. The case was about 300-400 pages long, which is about 3-4 times the size of my average state case. Also, you argue in federal courthouses and have the two added roles of the pretrial evidentiary argument and guest witnesses. I’m going into wayyy too much detail on Empire but it really was an experience to remember (and one that looks wonderful on applications).
You might even want to join a sport to show that you seek competition and like to challenge yourself. I like to think of it this way: extracurriculars like volunteering and being a part of a noncompetitive club are similar to getting points for class participation, but competitive extracurriculars are similar to getting points for taking tests and writing papers. You could join 100 noncompetitive clubs and not appeal to most colleges, or you could do 2-3 competitive activities and attract more interest.
You could also try to seek leadership positions within your extracurriculars. I think it’s good to have some variety in your resume (SADD and Lyme disease research are vastly different), and leading different areas can show schools that you are a capable leader.
In the end, you want colleges to want you. Having grades and test scores and volunteering alone are not going to get you into a school like Johns Hopkins–they more or less qualify you to even be considered a potential student. You need to show schools why you should be the student they admit. You need to show them why you stand out from the crowd. I think that you definitely have the potential to do that–seek leadership positions and try to excel in the areas you’re interested in. Your ECs seem to be a little scattered (so are mine) so maybe try to find the one you care most about and really delve into what you want to get out of that activity. I personally did that with law–I joined mock trial and fell in love with it, so I tried (and am still trying) to surround myself with things related to it (I joined Youth in Government, ran for Student Government, joined every mock trial opportunity I was offered, memorized the Rules of Evidence over the summer… it was intense). But under rule 401, that’s irrelevant. I think you just really need to show schools why you’re different from the thousands of other highly qualified applicants.
As a fellow sophomore, I am going through the same process right now of figuring out which areas I need to improve upon. Sorry if I seem blunt–I really didn’t mean to be! I think you’re highly quailified–you just need something to give you that extra push. Also, be sure to take everything I said in here with a grain of salt–I’ve been researching schools like Harvard and Yale since like 7th grade, which hardly makes me an expert.
Hey, maybe we’ll be Harvard buddies one day (fingers crossed)? This was really, really long. Sorry about that.
Good luck in these next couple years!