If you take on increasing responsibility and achieve success, your extracurricular involvement will not only help you get into college—it could even help you pay for college! There’s no magic formula for getting into a selective college, but here are some lessons from a longtime observer to help you navigate the process. Ultimately, high school clubs are as important as you make them. If you are hoping to attend one of the Ivy League schools, you're going to need more than good grades. Some alternative schools are great with guidance and will make sure you have this background if they know you’re college bound, but other schools don’t even offer all the classes you would need, much less insist that you take them. Something quirky like being an expert at Rubik's Cube can turn into a meaningful extracurricular activity that will be attractive to college admissions offices. High schools nowadays don’t prepare you for college; they prepare you for getting into college, or at least, they try to. Whatever you do, do it well. Boshoven points out that you’ll probably get a better grade in a class you enjoy. But if you are determined to go to grad school directly from undergraduate college—and in fact, there are some fields in which this is encouraged—we will explore some tips for helping you improve your chances of acceptance. Living in the Silicon Forest of Seattle I can also tell you that I know a number of people making incredible $$$ at software companies here in Redmond (guess which one) who have no college at all. Some teachers in your high school are probably a better match for you than others. Many people believe that college admissions is a game that can be won. A state school and Harvard mean the same thing in 80% of the jobs college graduates will get when they go out into the big world. In most cases, if you earn a high passing score—for example, a 7 on IB or a 5 on AP—you will get course credit. Ask your school counselor to help you pick classes that make you happy and fulfill your requirements for high school graduation and college applications. However, if you do take AP exams, another potential advantage is that you can sometimes earn college credit and/or skip prerequisite courses with your scores. It may be ideal to attend graduate school after you’ve become a junior expert in your field through work experience. If a college you're interested in seems to favor one program over the other, this could help you decide which program to pursue. Students are told that high school prepares them for the type of studying they will have to do in college, but in reality, most high school classes don’t even come close. Not only do students who study a foreign language score higher than their counterparts who have not learned a second language, their SAT scores improved with each year of … You will increase your chances of getting into the colleges of your choice by following these twelve tips: Get the best possible grades you can during ALL four years of high school. Apply to many schools, write good essays, hit deadlines, and hopefully you get into one of your "reach" schools. According to data collected by the College Board, there is a positive correlation between the study of foreign languages and SAT scores. For the past six years at Synocate, we have been saying the exact opposite - the way to win the "game of college … Public schools almost always offer college credit for high scores for at least some exams. The requirements to earn a high school diploma are lower than the requirements to get into college. 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