College applications: Part 2

Senior Anum Khan, who attends Whitney High School in Cerritos, writes:

GPAs and SATs: how much do these count in the admissions process? And what about those extracurriculars? I used to think it was a third each. But our counselors at Whitney have basically told us that UCs generally take the highest GPAs and SATs from those applying from our school, with a few exceptions thrown in (such as a high SAT but a relatively lower GPA).

One could spend hours poring over sites like College Confidential and Princeton Review (or more like: one has…) trying to see a clear correlation, but it really does seem to be more and more of a crap shoot (side note: I learned what the meaning of “crap shoot” was after seeing it mentioned on more than one occasion on College Confidential).

Another question that nearly everyone applying to college has asked is: how much does the difficulty of classes matter? We used to hear (at my school anyway) that taking harder AP and honors-level courses, with the risk of getting a worse grade, still looks better than taking the “easier” classes and coasting through with A's. But UCLA students (and alumni of Whitney) who visited our school this past spring  told us the opposite: It’s better to get the A in the easier class than the B in the harder one.

But what I think this is all boiling down to is the fact that there are simply too many people who have the best of both worlds. They’re taking the hard classes, and getting those A's. For those of us (like myself) who think challenging one's self at the expense of a B is better, I think we really need to realize that the “B in the harder class” simply isn’t the standard anymore.

All this talk about numbers can only go so far.

It seems that every senior in high school (like myself) has now jumped onto the “applying to college” bandwagon. I see more and more Facebook updates about writing those dreaded “essays” and having “no idea what I want to do.”  I think I have talked to someone about college every day since school has started this year. And going to a self-proclaimed “college prep school,” this should hardly come as a surprise.

It seems that every day I hear of some new person who is applying early  to some school, or someone else who has discovered a “small liberal arts college” nestled in the middle of the woods that is simply beckoning their name (though those people conveniently don’t divulge the name of those colleges themselves).

But what we really need to wait for is to see where people are actually going to end up applying, especially after they’ve gone through their senior panels.

At Whitney, each senior goes to and discusses their college plans with  a group of teachers and administrators who have similar backgrounds to the area that the students want to go into.
People have been known to leave crying from these senior panels because they don’t know what exactly to say. Nearly everyone says they’re applying to UCLA/UC Berkeley/UC San Diego/USC, but not everyone seems to know why.

And guess what?

Mine's tomorrow.