Stats as a rising sophomore (Very mid ECs, how do I make my app better?)

Stats

Most of my app isn't fulfilled yet, most of these are just things that I think I'll be able to do by college app season.

Demographics: Asian Male at big Virginia high school (sends ~10 kids to t20s each year). No hooks.

Intended major(s): Physics + CS (Will prob apply as a different major and then switch after going to college)

Academics:

  • SAT: Goal of 1570+
  • Class rank: Idk but idt its that good
  • GPA: 3.93 UW / 4.12 W (Shitty freshman yr)
  • Coursework: 
    • 9th: All honors
    • 10th: AP Calc BC, AP World, AP CSA
    • 11th: Multivar Calc DE, Data Structures DE, APUSH, AP Lang, AP Chem
    • 12th: AP Stats, Linear Algebra thru Community College, AP Physics C Mech, AP French, AP Lit, A Gov, AP Cyber, AP Micro/Macro

Awards:

  1. AIME Qual
  2. USACO Gold/Silver (Hopefully)
  3. AP Scholar with Distinction

Extracurriculars (vague for dox reasons; lmk if reordering anywhere could help )

  1. TSA Competition Winner (State Level): Participated in a coding event with peers and moved ahead to the state level (Hopefully get up to national level)
  2. Teaching Assistant at Religious Class: Collaborated with the main teacher to teach kids about religion, high time commitment (7th-12th Grade)
  3. Summer Program: Governor's School at Virginia for STEM (Hopefully 10th Summer), already went to a summer program at UVA (9th Summer)
  4. Math Tutor: Top 5% on schoolhouse.world (will probably send schoolhouse portfolio to colleges if it is good) and also teach privately outside of school from math levels spanning Pre-Algebra - Calculus BC
  5. President, AI & Machine Learning Club : Hopefully able to grow size and teach club members basics about AI and also make them do projects
  6. Passion Project, (Utilized Machine Learning): Not sure what I want to do yet but I'll start thinking of some ideas as school starts
  7. 100+ Hours of Volunteering
  8. (Some leadership role), Mu Alpha Theta Honors Society
  9. Member, (hopefully get some leadership role), Computer Science Honors Society

Other Materials:

Essays: Idk much yet, will start researching on writing essays in sophomore yr

LORs: will try to get closer to some teachers this yr for potential LORs in the future

Schools:

  • Cornell (ED)
  • Virginia Tech
  • University of Virginia (UVA)
  • Georgia Tech
  • MIT
  • Princeton
  • Duke
  • CMU
  • University of Maryland
  • UIUC

Any suggestions for improving my app? What other ecs should I do? Also what are some other potential schools as I feel like 10 schools is too low?

Posted Aug 4, 2025, 4:38 PM UTC

713
Loading comments…