What should I focus on right now and during the summer?

Hello, everyone! I am currently a Junior in high school and my first semester just ended. Just for some background information, I had a 3.4 and a 3.37 GPA during my freshman year. In my sophomore year, I received a 3.5 and 3.6 weighted taking 2 AP’s. This year, I have a 4.14 taking 4 AP’s and I’m trying my best to get all A’s this semester. I’ve been studying for ACT and I am planning to take one in June and one in senior year, which I’m confident I can score well on.

That being said, I have no idea how to make my college application look stronger. If I’m correct, UC’s (except LA and Berkeley) don’t count freshman year GPA and don’t count minuses and pluses, making my weighted GPA around 4.0 which is not too great compared to all the other students with 4.4+ GPA and such.

What I’m really worried about are my Extracurriculars and hours. I have absolutely no hours right now and don’t have much I can put for my extracurriculars. Other people are doing things such as cedar sinai (which I think you can get some volunteering hours) but I’m not really focusing in the medical field. I’m currently wanting to study in computer science, and I am currently working on some small projects, but don’t really know what volunteering things I can do that is related to computer science. What should I focus on right now and what should I do about community service hours and extracurriculars?

As a side note, if anyone has some spare time to help me out and answer some of my questions in private, please add me on skype (ID: andehhhshin). I’d really appreciate getting to talk through messaging or chat and would help me out a lot! Have a great day! :slight_smile:

Are there any STEM programs for little kids that you could volunteer for? I know my school has some things like that. However, your volunteer hours don’t have be related towards computer science. Helping out at a food pantry and assisting at a retirement home, for instance, are both easy to do and will rack up hours fairly quickly if you participate regularly.

For other EC’s, what clubs do you have at your school? Join one or two, and involve yourself as much as possible. Another possibility is tutoring kids in a subject you excel at, if that’s something you’re comfortable with.

I have a friend that is really interested in computer science. A few of his volunteering EC’s include:
-Programming a new book cataloging system for a local library
-Coaching the robotics team at a nearby school
-Tutoring kids in math/science

There are a lot of creative ways to volunteer using computer science, but they are often not advertised, so it will be up to you to create those opportunities. Good luck!