I know that there are a lot of really accomplished students at these schools, but how many students are just the above-average student with no crazy awards, Olympiads, or published research? Are T20s students all really super super accomplished or is there still a lot of them that differentiated themselves without having an insane profile?

My daughter is struggling in HS. She is a senior. She is smart but not an organized kid and misses a lot of homework hence grades are not great.
I don’t think she is a good 4-year college candidate right now (she can’t even get up for school and always late).
If you were that kid or if you are parents of such kid, is there a degree that you/ your child pursued (maybe like a certificate) that worked out great for you?
I am looking for general advice and guidance on how to help my daughter. I do t want her end up with no direction post high school.

I'm not a bad student. I have a 4.91/5.0 GPA and 1510 SAT. I will have taken 10 APs and I've already gotten all four 4s and one 5. My extracurriculars aren't great but I've rowed for 4 years (fall, winter, spring) and have some small leadership positions in other things.

Despite my okay stats, I am 100% done for. I mean, no one I know hasn't started their application process besides me. I don't know what to do. I haven't even put in my extracurriculars in common app yet, haven't started my essay, haven't done any supplementals.

I really wanted to apply early action to schools because I know it helps your chances but at this point I don't know if it's possible.

Every time I try to start my college essay, I delete everything. I don't see why any schools should accept me because I genuinely see no value in myself. I have no direction in life.

I was going to apply for engineering because I used to think I was good at math and science but honestly I don't think I'm good at anything anymore. So the whole "why this major" thing is also going to be hard to write.

I guess my question is how do I write a college essay that convinces admission officers that I'm worthy if I hate myself and will probably end up useless in society?

title

Looking for real advice and not judgement. My process for writing my personal statement and my supplemental essays have been as follows:

1. write the essay in my own words

2. plug my essay with the prompt into gemini and ask for advice on what to improve

3. use the advice to improve my essay WITH MY OWN WORDS, not gemini’s

I have been using AI to support me with my writing but I have not been using it to actually write any sentences for me. I feel like that’s reasonable? Or is it not? My concern is more that when I enter my essays into an AI detector, they usually come out as anywhere from 25-70% AI. I know I am not including AI-generated content in my writing, but should I be concerned that admissions officers will think that I am? Also how accurate even are these AI detectors anyway?

I have always been a pretty advanced writer so it’s possible that my writing technique (vocabulary, grammar, etc) may just be flagging as AI. Will this be an issue (should I rewrite my essays from scratch) or should I not be worried? Again, if I am genuinely doing something wrong then I will 100% fix my mistakes, but if it’s harmless then I probably won’t change much because I am pretty happy with how my essays are looking right now.

All throughout HS I had a plan. Focus on building my coding skills, building personal projects of all manner, then apply to some sort of tech program whether it be Computer Science or Software Engineering, but every, single, time I bring that up, I'm met with people shutting me down immediately, telling me to quote on quote, "just go into the trades."

Have we seriously hit such a point in the world where that's the only route for the youth? I am 19 years old, I feel like I'm sitting here, wasting my life away doing absolutely nothing. I want to go to school, I want to build a life, but why does it seem like the only pathway to do that now is some sort of trade? If anybody is currently in, or recently graduated from a tech program, is it really that bad?

I honestly think this is like the one thing that I'm actually kind of passionate and kind of decent at, so if I'm not able to do it, I'm lost, I don't know where to go from here and I'm just wasting time trying to find my way. If anybody has literally ANY advice for me, I would be go grateful and happy to read through it.

I am currently applying to colleges right now. I’m wanting to major in aerospace engineering but I know it’s a really hard major and it might screw up my gpa and not make it as competitive. Now I could go something easier like biology or finance, but if I weren’t to be accepted into med school I was wanting to do engineering instead. Is it worth the risk of not getting into med school for a major I’d want to pursue as a backup, or should I just go the easy path and do an easier major?

So my report card for my first marking pierod came out (im a freshman) and I got a 91 avg with 95+ in almost all my classes BESIDES chemistry (honors) which I got a d in and I genuinely feel so saddened because I never did this bad in science before and now Im frightned as to weather this will affect my application to stanford. So will this affect my application and am I cooked?

im a junior at a fairly competitive highschool. i would have a perfect gpa if it wasn't for french in my lowerclassmen years. i know colleges like to see languages so i decided to take ap french this year (worst decision ever). i currently am getting cooked and have an 84 and i don't understand anything. i'm really scared i'm going to fail the exam and its going to destroy my gpa. i've already gotten an a- in it previous years, and my counselor told me i'm not allowed to drop it. my teacher sucks terribly and will not give me any extra help. is getting a B in this class going to destroy my chances of getting into a good college? my parents are telling me its french so they shouldnt care and its not as if im majoring in linguistics but i think they're saying that to get me to chill. but everyone else in my school is going to have their perfect 4.0. anyways pls lmk and if u took ap french and got a 4 and 5 pls let me dm u and get some advice this is genuinely taking over my life and i think abt this 24/7. also if i lock in rlly hard it might be an a- by the end of the year. besides this i have great grades in classes like apush, ap calc bc, ap chem, and ap lang

On the UC application for freshman where they ask for Dual Enrollment courses, so I am enrolled in 2 institutions and I was listing the courses but stopped at Spring classes. Registration haven’t opened yet and by the time that the application is due I would still not be able to figure out what class I am taking at 1 of the institution (they assign the class from the top 4 choices I picked), same situation on common app. Should I leave it blank or fill out the classes I want to take?

I don’t know what class I’m taking for the Spring semester so what should I put?

I have around 40 hours of community service hours (currently in senior year and I'm doing EA, which is due in like 15 days...). It's going to be put on my transcript and so will colleges care that I only did the 40 hours required to graduate my high school?

I mean, I did other stuff like corporate volunteer work (volunteering at a store and working for a director for a tv show) and I'm going to internship at a bank during my fall break. In total, I have 9 pretty solid activities to put on my Common App (with 4 of them being my hobbies/interests) so will they penalise me for not doing more community service?

I'm trying to fill out the Cornell CALS supplemental essays but I obviously only have around 2 weeks left, and I haven't started but I have an idea of what I want to write about. How long does it typically take you to write a supplemental essay from start to finish?

I’ve just been accepted into a local grad school.

The school asked me to complete identity verification through a third party company that uses biometric facial scanning to verify.

I told them I didn’t want to upload my biometric data to a third party company and asked if I could verify my identity via video call, or by coming to the school in person.

They said that there is no other option, and if I don’t want to do the third party verification, I can only attend there by self paying (like most folks, self pay is not an option for me).

Has anyone else run into this? Surely this school admitted students and dispersed student loans prior to this technology coming on the market.

Is there anything else I could try that might help the situation, or do I have to decide between attending this school and protecting my biometric data?

Hi, I'm a senior in high school who's been struggling with deciding what colleges I want to apply to, or go to for a while now. Please recommend some colleges for me.

I'm in NYC, I don't think I mind going anywhere for college, upstate or in the city would be most ideal due to dorming costs and commuting though. But I would definitely love to go out of state for schools in California, Oregon, PA, or Chicago if my financial needs allowed. So, if there's any colleges with low costs, tuitions or I can get scholarships to that are out of state, I would love that the most.

I'm a pretty average student, didn't try too hard in school which I do regret.
GPA: around 90 currently, had upward trend starting from Junior Year, with all 90s
Activities: No formal leadership, some personal projects, long commitments to clubs, and about two-three programs, there's a clear trend in my activities--it shows my passions and interests which are art, conservation, and criminology/criminal justice
SAT: Currently only 1200, have only taken it once, will retake in Nov hoping for 1350-1400.
Rigorous Courses: Have taken 3 APs--Earned 3 on AP LANG and AP CALC AB, 1 on Ap Comp Sci A, currently taking 3 this year: AP STATS, AP LIT and AP GOV
Have taken College Now course at John Jay Intro to Criminal Justice, taking another at John jay: Psychology currently, plan to take another course next semester as well.
Financial Need: 100% demonstrated need, low income

Interests: Fashion Design, Neuroscience, Biology, Marketing, used to be interested in pursuing law, or criminology/criminal justice as well as environmental studies and conservation but I only like learning about it, don't really see myself having a career relating to law. I mostly only see myself having a career in Marketing or Fashion Design.

Some things I value in colleges:
- A campus
- Good balance with social and academic life, don't need or want "party" schools necessarily, just somewhere I can make friends and have fun while also being successful in my studies.
- Diversity; it would be nice if there were people with similar backgrounds to me, Asian.
- Internships and research opportunities
- Low costs/good financial aid

Some colleges I've been keeping eye on/interested in,
- FIT (my top choice currently)

- Baruch College
- Binghamton
- University of San Diego
- Lehigh (might be a reach for me)
-University of San Francisco
- Fordham University
- University of Conneticut
- University of Oregon
- Penn State
- John Jay (least fav currently just because there's not much diversity of majors and I'm not entirely sure if I really want to go into criminology or law related majors/careers.)

Please either deinfluence me from these or tell me more about them as I don't really know much. And please help me make a list thank you so much!

TL;DR: Asking for college recs for student with 90 GPA, no notable activites, and overall an average student.

Hi, I’m sorry if this is the wrong place, but I thought I would ask here as I was just accepted to a college (in a big city in a blue state, if it matters).

Due to financial reasons, I wasn’t able to go to college straight after high school, and took two gap years. I just turned 21, and I’ll be starting next fall when I’ll be 22 since my birthday falls right at the beginning of the school year. I’m used to being about a year-ish older than my classmates for my entire academic career for that reason, but I’m wondering if anyone here was older when they started college and if that was weird at all with the 18/19 year olds? I’m not much of a partier but I would like to make friends and all that, I’d just like to avoid the “what’s up, fellow kids” vibe… or am I just overthinking this?

Edit: for clarification, I mean navigating it socially haha

How challenging is it to be a Barnard student compared to other school e.g., state schools or Boston University? I am talking about academic rigor.

I'm currently a sophomore in Honors French 3. I was planning to take AP French next year, but after looking at the course for a bit I realized I might be kinda cooked for that class (I'm not a native speaker).

Right now I have a really good GPA (97+ in every class) and I'm ranked top 3 out of 500, so I don't want AP French to be the reason my GPA and rank is a lower number on my college application.

So I was thinking maybe I should take AP French senior year so that it doesn't really affect the numbers on my college application. Yes, I'm aware that the first quarter grades of senior year do count, but usually the first quarter is easier than the other quarters at our school, and I won't have to worry as much about the AP exam as well.

However, my concern is if having a gap year between French 3 and 4 might look bad, and if it signals I was too "scared" to take it junior year.

I took French 2 in 8th grade, if that helps.

Im trying to find any good colleges on the East Coast, kinda specifically in D.C., NJ, or New York for poly sci apart from the ones im applying to rn. I got Rutgers, George Washington, American, and Georgetown nothing crazy like Princeton just respectable schools if anyones got suggestions lmk.

So if i get in ed1 in the uni im applying to and lets say i get the financial aid etc but i dont wanna go there so what can i do to reject the offer?

Ive heard that you cant apply to any other uni (through common app) if you are accepted in ed1. Like now you're in contract with the uni. Is there a way i can reject them?

Im only applying cause of some personal reasons but i have some other uni in my mind (this uni is my country. Just diff city). I really dont wanna go but at the same time i wanna get accepted atleast lol (i wouldnt mind rejection too though ngl)

Also lets say i get in. When do i have to accept the offer? How much time do i have?

My counselor is gonna kick me out of their office if i ask such questions...

Hence, help a girl out. Thanks

im looking through my university’s class of 2031 pages (my class) and im seeing ZERO fem or masc lesbians, neither in the actual posts or the following lists. my university is supposed to be in the gayest town in my state with the largest population of queer students.

i just want somewhere i can connect with my own community and experience an active dating life. since im from a very rural area ive been deprived of that literally my entire 18 years of living

idk what to do.. any advice or words of affirmation?😭

I have a dilemma right now-- I am trying to decide weather to drop AP calc BC.

I've always been good at math, never got less than an A. However, I haven't got higher than a B+ in BC so far. I know the fall isn't over yet, but if I don't drop soon, it will go on my transcript. Also, I study for at least 5 hr before every test and I know the material is only going to get harder. After a test my teacher said was "easy," I don't feel confident at all. I think that my grade right now is at best a B...

Here is the problem: I am applying for engineering. So what's better; having an A in calc AB or a B in calc BC? All the time, I've seen people say things along the lines of, "Calc BC is essential for a good engineering school" but...would AB be better if I have a B?

Please give me some advice. TT

EDIT: Sadly, my HS uses trimesters, so my fall grades will be seen by any college I apply to.

My friends and I are all pretty competitive students and we all score high, have high GPAs, and qualify for all sorts of in state scholarships. Most of my friends have been receiving hundreds of direct admissions in common app, but I have received none. My scores are better than theirs, why am I getting nothing? I'm not complaining, I don't plan on going to a school that does direct admissions, but I'm curious.

Hi! I’m applying to Cal Poly Maritime as an upper level transfer, with 60+ college courses.

I’m working on the high school course list, and am wondering if I need to add every single high school class I took or just the ones with passing grades that satisfy the A-G requirement? I have a couple D’s and F’s for both high school and college and am wondering if I need to put them down even though I wouldn’t get credit for the A-G classes.

Thanks!

If anyone has the time, could you give me a quick review?