My List Of Colleges I Will Apply To

[dandymcgee]

Man it just hurts to just type this; I just had to vent it somewhere.

Sorry to hear about your coach, I wish his family and friends all the best.

[Arce]

While it is good that you are finding where your priorities lie, I really do hope you understand that no work done your senior year will have any affect at all on your college entrance decision.

The reason teachers stress about the senior year is because most students take advantage of this fact and let their grades fall. But the actual truth is this: Colleges begin accepting students around October and some already have their decisions by as early as November. So, when you apply, you will not even be half-way through your 1st semester your senior year--the courses, as well as the grades for the classes you will be in at this time will not even be sent to the colleges at all.

This does not mean, however, that you can fail your Senior year. You still need your highschool diploma...And, when college finally starts (Around August of the next year) you are required to send a "final transcript" with the sole purpose being to determine if you failed your senior year or not. Colleges do not take kindly to accepting students, then finding that their Final Transcript shows they miraculously became fucking morons the last year.

So, what I am saying is this: Whereas it is great you finally decided to get your stuff in gear academically...If you are looking to your Senior year to impress colleges, then you are too late. I hate this fact as much as you do, but it's entirely true. If your GPA at the end of your Junior year is a 3.1, that is all colleges are going to see, and I happen to know that there is no way a college like MIT would consider a student like that based only on the GPA. I think maybe you should be looking for alternate ways to impress colleges (join greek clubs, honors programs, SGA, science fairs, clubs, community services, competiitions and dress your academic resume to impress). It is great that you're stepping up in robotics...But I also happen to know a gentlemen who went to my school, had a 4.67 gpa, was head of the robotics team and was able to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars from local companies to support his international competitions. He was rejected from MIT for "not being well versed."

Spread wide. Schools like MIT are looking for minorities, and the most decorated academic resumes available in the United States. They usually accept about 350 a year, if I remember my numbers correctly...Most people who get in made a conscious effort since the day they became freshmen, knowing where they wanted to goto college.

As for football, I'm very glad you've found it in yourself to make that decision, if you feel it is the right one.

Best of luck to you, and if you ever need help be sure to let us know.

[Arce]

Also, what classes are you taking your senior year?

The easiest way to pad your GPA is AP courses.

[EccentricDuck]

Man, that is so much different than here. Here it's primarily on your gr. 12 (senior year) courses and somewhat on your gr.10/11. In the province where I was as well as where I am now they go by your top 3-4 gr. 12 classes (although programs like engineering make math + a couple sciences a mandatory part of this) + english. Back in Alberta, half of my final grade for my gr. 12 courses was based upon the test at the end of the year (which I thought was actually kind of ridiculous... although it worked well for me, and they do give you the ability to get it re-marked once as well as to re-test).

What you do after school is what you do after school. Rarely is it tied to your transcript (except for the odd extra-curricular like jazz band which I was involved in, but it's just treated as a regular course on top of your other courses). There are some scholarships based off of athletic merit, but for the most part it's not that huge. You do it for yourself because you like doing XXX (in my case I did jazz band, track and field, cross country running, and swimming simply because I enjoy them). Not only that, but applications aren't done in person at all (different with professional programs like Medicine/Law). You apply and send your transcripts (I think there's both strengths and faults to this - one of the obvious benefits being that you don't have to go through a bureaucratic process for every school that you apply to. Application dates for the major universities are usually in the spring for coming in for the fall. Initial admission is based upon

How do you get a GPA above 4.0? In high school we never used GPA, it was just a percentage with certain ranges representing particular grades (80-100 being an A and down from there). I don't see how you get above that though - in university we get 0.0-4.0 (sometimes with letter grades/percentages being assigned to a particular place on the GPA scale). An A or A+ is 4.0 - that's it. A 4.0 is a perfect average.


Going primarily off of gr.12 marks worked well for me since I had steadily improved for the past few years. Entering into high school I barely made a couple of the entrance requirements for some of my courses (high schools here use streaming for various courses with 2 streams for most subjects and 3 for math/english). I wasn't even looking at AP courses at the time. I only decided to do calculus and biology in my last year (and half of the AP stuff for bio was done on my own/with the teacher).

After that I decided to take a year off of school (one of the best decisions I ever made because I learned things about myself that I don't think I would have had I gone right back... and then I took time off again since I realized something else about myself and am now going back for the second time ).

[EccentricDuck]

Also, what classes are you taking your senior year?

The easiest way to pad your GPA is AP courses.

I also want to comment on this since I found this point kind of interesting. Taking AP courses doesn't boost your marks here - you may get AP credit that allows you to waive a course or two in university/college (depends upon the school and the class). I imagine they look at the fact that you took AP courses, but it doesn't improve your grades. If anything, you could probably get easier grades by not doing any AP courses since it'll mean less extra work.

[Arce]

The majority of school in the US give you a bunus sum equivalent to 10 points for taking AP classes. This means that your Final grade can be a 105-110, which will factor a 5 or 6 into your GPA. As avansc has mentioned, this is how people go crazy and get above 4.0's--they take many AP courses (which are incredibly more difficult) and do extremely well, getting an unweighted 100 and a weighted 110. So, doon't colleges see through this, scale it back to normal, then consider you just like everyone else? If that were the case, then why would anybody take AP classes...? Most high schools offering a wide array of AP classes, like mine, actually refuse to release their weighting system or show that a class is weighted. This way it can only help, not hurt.

So, to put it short, you may be right for some gay high schools...but most, you couldn't be more wrong. ;p

[avansc]

Myeah...

Well it's clear that david has high ambitions, and this is fine. However I don't think doing anything now is going to change his chances for getting into college. The truth of the matter is that he is some what detached from reality; talking about possible trying out for football in college, but probably wont get in.

The sad fact of places like MIT, cal tech and what not(and much of life), it's not so much of what you know, it's who you know. If you plan on getting into one of these schools based on what you know, you better be know more than 99 percent of the other people applying, and no offense, you probably just don't.

If you realllly wanna go to one of these schools. find a faculty member in a field of your interest, preferably a highly published. Study up on what they do. And do some work in that field and send it to them, indicating your interest in the school, but how you are this poor chink who is disadvantaged. Just maybe, a big maybe, they respond, and give you a modicum of their time. If you get a recommendation from a faculty member, especially a highly published one, you will be gold.

but again, thats just a long shot, it is however more of a shot that doing what you are now.

of course that just my opinion.

[davidthefat]

Also, what classes are you taking your senior year?

The easiest way to pad your GPA is AP courses.

AP Physics C (Magnetism/Electrical and Mechanical)
AP Calculus A
AP English
Gov and Econ (There might be an AP counterpart, never looked into it, but its required for graduation in my school)
Photography(I need art credit to graduate)
AP Comp Sci BC or Robotics (I know AP Comp Sci BC is not supported anymore but my teacher said he was will to teach the BC curriculum, but I think me being in robotics will benefit the team most, I have to train the new programmers and what not, there is a great chance that I might be the team captain)
If I did stay in football, no way I can pull it off

In all honesty, I was very hesitant to drop football; firstly because you don't know how much crap I will get from my friends. Second, its taking a giant extracurricular out of my life. I can be thought of as this way: it was taking too much of my time to let any other extra curricular. Now I only have 1 major extra curricular: Robotics. In freshman year, my biology teacher (was my Pre Algebra teacher during the summer between 6th and 7th grade) urged me to sign up for Science and Medicine Academy (its a program that focuses on Medicine and she was the one in charge) I could not do it because it conflicted with football. She like the fact that I was a brilliant kid, just I never showed the effort (that has became a very bad habit, shows through my piss poor grades) Its not like I was a dumb kid, I was smart. Whats worse than being dumb is being smart and lazy. I had straight C's and D's in her assignments in class, barely did the Homework. She had the right to be mad at me. I aced her final that year, over 100%. Man, I ended up with a C, but if I tried, I would have gotten an A no problem. I was a dumb kid back then not trying. That is what I regret the most, my piss poor effort.

Myeah...

Well it's clear that david has high ambitions, and this is fine. However I don't think doing anything now is going to change his chances for getting into college. The truth of the matter is that he is some what detached from reality; talking about possible trying out for football in college, but probably wont get in.

The sad fact of places like MIT, cal tech and what not(and much of life), it's not so much of what you know, it's who you know. If you plan on getting into one of these schools based on what you know, you better be know more than 99 percent of the other people applying, and no offense, you probably just don't.

If you realllly wanna go to one of these schools. find a faculty member in a field of your interest, preferably a highly published. Study up on what they do. And do some work in that field and send it to them, indicating your interest in the school, but how you are this poor chink who is disadvantaged. Just maybe, a big maybe, they respond, and give you a modicum of their time. If you get a recommendation from a faculty member, especially a highly published one, you will be gold.

but again, thats just a long shot, it is however more of a shot that doing what you are now.

of course that just my opinion.

My robotics teacher asked me that right after I told him where I wanted to go; "Do you know anyone from Caltech?". No I have no connections what so ever, how would I have any connections at all? (I could tell by his face that it was not good to not have connections)Personally, I was going to intern at JPL this summer, but I can't do it because I am not a citizen (being a permanent resident does not cut it). I can't become a citizen until I am 18, when the college stuff is over. I really bummed out right there. So I am trying to apply for the YESS program at Caltech http://www.yess.caltech.edu/ apparently me being Korean is not going to help. Cause Asians run the technology race like champs...

Honestly right now, I am so stoked to transfer into Robotics, I really want to get work done on my autonomous robot. I got the principles of the stereo vision down. Just need to work on object detection and logic. and transferring those concepts into actual robots.

[xiphirx]

Something that has been mentioned throughout this topic is your GPA. I have a friend who had a 5+ GPA, took every AP class offered at my HS, even took 17 credits at the local community college, won science fairs, is a regents scholar, but he didn't get into Stanford. You need to pull some crazy shit off if you want to get into a high profile school.


I always wanted to attend a UC school, and I figured that I probably wont be accepted, so I decided to spend a few years at a community college, then transfer. Some UC's have a program called TAG, which guarantees admission as long as your GPA is above 3.0 and you're enrolled in the TAG program. If you want to attend a UC that has TAG, you should definitely consider going to a community college then transferring.