Background:
Current grade: 10
Graduating high school: 2027
Graduating college: 2031
Race: Asian American (2nd generation)
Gender: Male
School in Bay Area, CA. Moderately competitive but somewhat lacking for the area.
Coursework:
UW GPA: Currently 4.0, expecting it to stay above 3.85
Planning to take 7-9 AP courses (school offers 18) and 2 honors.
Currently taking AP Calc BC, going to take the test for Calc BC and Stats this year. AP Lang, APUSH, AP Physics C, and AP Spanish Lang next year. AP Econ, AP Lit, APCS, and APES as a senior. Took a stats course at a community college this past summer, and I'm intending to take advanced Python and R courses there in the future, as well as Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, and Multivariable Calculus. I'm also considering a general education class at community college, such as sociology or psychology, as well as something related to US government and/or politics or an economics course. In terms of standardized testing, I received a 1480/1520 on the PSAT and will take my first official SAT soon.
Extracurriculars:
I've done cross country and track and field at my school both years so far. I am a cross country captain and hopefully will also be a track captain. I am unsure whether or not I intend on doing both sports for the following years based on my workload.
Currently an editor for the school newspaper, intending on becoming editor-in-chief by the end of high school.
Lots of volunteer work. Volunteered for environmental causes, as well as in a classroom assisting my former teacher. Won the Gold Medal PVSA (President's Volunteer Service Award).
Starting to write a blog about things I'm passionate about, from why we should abolish the electoral college in America to the fantasy cross country league I started at my school.
The only club I'm part of at school is Mock Trial, which I joined this year
I have a job as a the scoreboard operator for football and basketball games at my school
Starting an internship in the coming months. I was accepted to a program which connects high schoolers to internships, and I will be interviewing with companies shortly and finding out my role. Not expecting a large role, and many who are part of this program are given a social media or data entry job.
There is evidently not much cohesion or theme in my activities. I am keenly interested in them though, so I wouldn't like to give the impression that these are things I'm only doing for college applications.
My future
I'm very interested in topics related to applied math and statistics. I have little coding experience so far, but I intend on building it to work on projects. I am a huge fan of sports statistics and I loved the work FiveThirtyEight did with their sports models and metrics. I am still very fond of prediction models and their use, which is what fascinates me about Manifold as well. I am very curious about how I can expand my own experience with projects or research. I intend on entering the field of statistics or economics, but am not entirely certain what I want to do. I am extremely interested in programs like Wharton Moneyball and different ways to apply math and statistics to sports. I am an avid spreadsheet user, and my new year's resolution is pivoting from the thousands of cells on Google Sheets to a language like R.
What I need help with
The title of this post was mainly joking, as I feel fairly confident about my journey so far, and I like where I am at. I came to Manifold knowing that many people have expertise in the fields I am interested in, in case anyone is able to assist in finding good ways to hone my interest in the fields of applied math or statistics. Any advice on college admissions in general is appreciated, especially because I am still unaware of where I would like to apply. My biggest hope is to find a good way to intern or research topics I find engaging, or begin a project. In general, I am excited to hear anything Manifold users have to say about what I might enjoy, as well as what could aid my college admissions (more so the former). All advice is welcome! Thank you!
P.S. I'm writing this very late at night and got very self conscious about how I'm coming across to anyone reading this. If anyone has any tips on writing clarity to make me sound more likable, those would be appreciated as well!
1,000
3.00I find that a great way to learn new topics, especially wrt programming, is to build projects. Given your interest in applying maths/stats to sports and 538’s sports models and metrics, perhaps building a model or a dashboard for a league or division of a sport you’re interested in could be a good way both to validate your practical interest in the subject, learn useful skills related to your intended field of study, and as a bonus, act as an impressive capstone that ties your interests together in your college application. If you build it in public (e.g. on Github and/or a series of posts on your blog), you can receive external input and potentially network with other people working on projects that are interesting to you, while providing substantial material both for your college application and e.g. future coworkers/employers.
They seem to have significantly changed the website layout, courses, and pricing since I last used it back in 2022, but I found the Sololearn courses on Python and machine learning to be super useful
https://www.sololearn.com/en/learn
I also found 80,000 Hours to be invaluable for helping me plan my career direction
"P.S. I'm writing this very late at night and got very self conscious about how I'm coming across to anyone reading this. If anyone has any tips on writing clarity to make me sound more likable, those would be appreciated as well!"
I'm going to be honest, I would suggest maybe changing the title. It feels like clickbait, and results in the following interaction:
Reader wants to help
Reader sees OP is already guaranteed to go to college, with a (maybe?) good shot at Ivy League
Reader feels like he got clickbaited to watch someone brag after resolving themselves to help
As long as the title doesn't look like you're asking for help getting into a college at all, the later issues should be resolved. I would suggest changing the title to "How should I plan which college to go to?" because it will set the reader's expectations properly (i.e. OP is someone who will definitely go to college, but needs help finding which college to go to and what project to do and other related details)