Am I Doing Enough?Answered
Hello everyone! My dream school is Princeton University and would like to major in Journalism. I plan on applying early action for my other 9 schools as well. For activities that I have, I am in Journalism Club and have been since I was a sophomore, Junior Class Parliamentarian, Teen Advisory Board member in my town’s library, a member and Youth Council President of a nonprofit organization, and I have a blog online, a part-time job since June 2021, 3 poems published on a literary magazine, co-authoring a book, writing a book of poetry for next year to publish, over 1000 followers on Instagram from posting poems, and 70+ volunteer hours.
As for my GPA, I heard mine was on a 4.5 scale so it might be a 4.3 from what I saw but a 3.85 on a 4.0 scale. I also took the SATS and waiting for my score to come in a few days!
I'm currently an 11th-grade student who is picking out classes for next year. My school only offers 10 AP classes and I am taking APUSH and AP LANG. For senior year, I picked out classes such as AP LIT, Band, Statistics, Spanish 3 Honors, Sociology OR AP GOV, Web Page Design (2.5), Human Behavior/ Psychology (2.5), Financial Services Literacy (2.5 credits) along with Creative Writing (2.5). I need Financial Literacy as a graduation requirement and would love to do Creative Writing after. Are there any classes from the 2.5 credit zone that might not look challenging or necessary? I also plan on taking college classes in the summer. I'm also worried that if I didn't take more AP classes, I won't stand out. Then again, the other ones are either STEM-related, art, which I cannot draw, or would do AP Bio/Physics. I would love some advice on anything!
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2 answers
First of all, this looks amazing!! You def have plenty of background on writing and poetry, and that alone will make you look interesting to colleges. I've heard a lot that colleges want a narrative about you, what your specific interests are, and you absolutely have that!
But on the other hand, course rigor is very important to those kinda schools. I'm applying to Yale and Barnard and I'm like overloading myself with APs. I think that as long as you take some more demanding courses, which it looks like you are, then you will be fine! You have the motivation, and that's always the first step towards doing. Plus, if your school only offers 10 APs, colleges will see that and recognize that you even tried.
Your GPA looks awesome, and everything else looks fantastic. You're on a really good track, and I can't wait to hear more! Good luck, you're great :)
From what I read, everything looks pretty good except you don't have a lot of course rigor. If you only took 2 APs this junior year, you really need to show that you can do higher level work and take 4+ APS senior year. That will still put you on the low side of APs with 6. Most Princeton admits have 8-11 would be my best guess. Some of your 12th grade course list doesn't sound very compelling, especially, WebPage Design, and a 2nd creative writing class or Band. Unfortunately course rigor is more important to Ivys than electives. You can alway practice your instrument after school and take a web design class on one of those portals.
I recommend AP Lit (which will kick your @ss so you don't need 2 English classes), AP Gov, AP Psych (if your school has it), AP Stats or AP Calculus. You didn't mention your math classes but figure that most Princeton admits have taken AP Calc AB or AP Calc BC. Also, you didn't mention your Science classes, but it's expected that you have at least 3-4 sciences like Bio, Chem, Env. Science Physics. okay.
If you are week on Math, then I highly recommend that you focus on math over the summer and catch up. You can take online AP Math courses or a college level math course. If you do that AP Stats will be a less difficult. If you need a science you can take that over the summer as well.
If you can bring up your UWGPA to 3.90+ that would be most helpful.
One thing Princeton requires is a graded paper, so I would be thinking about that earlier than later.
https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/application-checklist/graded-written-paper
The other thing is that Princeton is a Single Choice Early Action school so you can not apply to other top Journalism Schools Early Action, just Princeton. So if you don't get in SCREA, then you can apply RD to Northwestern, NYU, Boston U, USC etc.
https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/application-dates-deadlines/single-choice-early-action
This is lot to download, so choose your courses wisely. You have less than 11 months before you SCREA app is due.
Good Luck.
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Aw, thank you so much, and I will be sure to keep that in mind. Best of luck to you as well!