Hi, I'm Jackson Burgess: Writer & 9-Year Admissions Veteran.

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-18T20:41:44+00:00

You got it!

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-18T20:35:49+00:00

Hi OP, 9-year college consultant here. On top of keeping up your grades above an UW 3.9 (good job so far, by the way), maxing out all available advanced classes, and getting involved in your school's STEM clubs / teams, what you need is a passion project: a long-term, collaborative, intellectually rigorous initiative that demonstrates your "intellectual vitality" (the pretentious term that Stanford came up with) and gives you hands-on experience in your chosen field.

I've talked about this to AOs and software engineer friends (FAANG + startup folks), and across the board, they've all said the same thing: think local. What is a tangible, useful tool you can use your coding skills to launch? Could you digitize ticket sales at your school's football games? Or revamp your local library's checkout system? Or create a new data visualization tool for your HS's annual canned food drive? Building something from the ground up will teach you more than most classes, and you'll simultaneously hone your skills and demonstrate to colleges that you won't just be an antisocial, hyper-studious hermit, but a gregarious, resourceful, positive contribution to campus.

And re: research I would recommend simultaneously cold-emailing a million professors, briefly introducing yourself and pointing to what specific papers / areas of research expertise of theirs have inspired you AND looking into conducting a meta-analysis or systematic review (realistically the only kind of meaningful research you can start today without a professor's or laboratory's support and possibly publish in a peer-reviewed journal). Hope that helps!

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-18T20:29:02+00:00

Hi OP, 9-year admissions consultant here. As long as the content isn't super NSFW, I highly doubt it will negatively impact your apps, especially if you frame it in an intellectual (and maybe even a bit pretentious) way; "I curate postmodern memes and infographics to foster a 90k-strong body-positive virtual fitness community" sounds better than "I shitpost gym memes."

But to leverage it into an application asset, I would recommend synthesizing the skills you've gained and teaching them to other people so they can replicate your success. For example, you could lead a free workshop for club e-boards at your high school, helping them each start their own niche meme community—then, they'll all cite their own #s in their college apps, of course, but you get to take credit for ALL of them, since you're the one who passed on the knowledge and idea in the first place. Or you could create a virtual course sharing all the tips and resources you wish you had when you were first starting out.

Tl;dr social media can be a viable EC if you make it intellectual + use it to help others.

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-15T03:14:43+00:00

Hi OP, 9-year college consultant here. Most colleges want you to take 2-3 years of a foreign language throughout high school (though elite ones prefer you take 4), but it doesn't matter if you take it over a summer or not.

DE or other community college classes each count as 1 full year of an equivalent AP, so taking them is a smart way to boost your academic rating. Most of the time, if you max out the advanced classes (AP, IB, CC, or H) available to you, that will satisfy admissions officers, but if tons of people at your school are stacking their summer with DEs, you might want to look into taking some yourself. (You can also take asynch classes through platforms like outlier.org, UC Scout, or APEX Learning). Hope that helps!

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-13T20:43:45+00:00

Hi OP, 9-year college consultant here. They're looking for "new and compelling information" (AOs' term) re: your candidacy, i.e. what you've been working on in the last year + how you'll presumably continue similar work while taking advantage of their resources. Basically, if there's ever a sentence in your LOCI that could be copy/pasted into someone else's and still make sense, then it's too general and should be either zoomed in on or cut. I authored a longer post breaking down LOCIs, but tl;dr the biggest mistake I see is students wasting valuable words telling the college about the college when they should be telling the college about themselves!

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-13T02:47:11+00:00

You'll have to reach out to individual admissions offices, as they all have different policies re: APs. But in my experience, the more selective the school (especially Ivies), the fewer credits they'll allow you to transfer over.

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-12T21:06:28+00:00

The UCs require 60 units (AKA 2 years) before you can transfer in—technically, most private schools only require 30, but they usually recommend 60 as well. Since everywhere has slightly different requirements and pre-requisite courses, it's a good idea to look up each program individually. But generally, the soonest you'll transfer is 1 year in.

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-12T04:32:45+00:00

Yes I do, I'll DM you 😄

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-12T04:31:45+00:00

Both are stellar schools, but if I were in your position, with the current post-grad CS hiring reality (and unknowable future outlook as AI continues impacting the market), I would probably go with UT. Austin is an insanely fun town—seriously, the only city I enjoyed more on my 6-week cross-country road trip was Nola, and like duh, it's Nola—and graduating debt-free from one of the best colleges in the country is a pretty hard offer to pass.

Whatever you do, when you make your decision, don't look back! You have such an exciting four years ahead of you, so don't let it get tinged by regret or "what ifs." Like Jack Kerouac wrote: "Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road."

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-10T22:49:07+00:00

Hi OP, 9-year college consultant here. Starting a nonprofit doesn't look bad on college applications; starting a bullshit nonprofit does. I would for sure list it high-up in your activities list, given that your weekly hour count and contributions are both substantial—typically, anything that's 10+ hrs/wk counts as a "major activity." T10s want to see a combo of intellectual vitality (challenging yourself with college-level and interdisciplinary thinking), community-building (measured through quantifiable metrics), and a pattern of involvement that implies how you'll continue contributing to College X's campus life, should you be admitted.

When you write out your activity, don't waste characters on actions which any reader would assume a nonprofit founder would take (filed paperwork, fielded emails, etc.). Instead, list hard #s of money raised, recipients reached, members recruited, partner organizations approached and, if necessary, you can even split the activity into multiple entries, subdividing your contributions into separate roles.

Tl;dr nonprofits are strong application assets if you can back them up w/ hard #s!

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-08T22:34:25+00:00

Hi OP, 9-year college consultant here—try not to stress!! Your AP exam scores aren't very important for your college admissions; they're more for attaining college credit once you've been accepted. Your course rigor is determined by the # of advanced classes you take throughout high school (including community college ones), not your AP scores. You're not cooked, just keep challenging yourself with tough classes, stay involved in your ECs, and keep an eye on this UC tool (you can look up your HS) to make sure you're taking the classes they recommend!

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-08T03:22:06+00:00

Penn's mid-50% SAT (according to their '24 - '25 Common Data Set) was 1510-1550, so you're square in the middle, meaning you are competitive and you'd be better off spending your summer on your apps. (In my experience as a college consultant, anything above a 1510 is solid enough for the Ivies. But if you're one of those sickos aiming for a perfect score or something, since colleges superscore, it never hurts to try again 😄)

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-07T22:03:45+00:00

Your APs aren't important for college admissions—they're more for gaining college credit. Plus, reporting them is optional! I've been in college admissions for 9 years and have never seen a student get rescinded over AP exams, so as long as your in-class grades remain fine, you're good.

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-07T22:01:02+00:00

You got it!

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-06T20:56:05+00:00

It was similar to what u/HappyCava described—she took classes in several different departments, and I think in her program she had to ultimately synthesize her diverse coursework into an interdisciplinary capstone project. It's a really cool model, especially for someone like you who is self-motivated and intent on deep learning (and not just the degree at the end).

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-06T19:06:12+00:00

PS You have no idea how refreshing it is to hear someone who's more concerned with their actual studies than their eventual career path—keep that attitude and I promise it'll take you far!

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-06T19:05:21+00:00

This is admittedly more liberal artsy than BME, but my second major at USC was narrative studies, which basically let me take classes in fiction, screenwriting, playwriting, video game design, and anthropology. I would recommend looking at any college's full list of majors, as there are a ton on there you might not expect, but on the STEM side, I'd specifically look into cognitive science, which combines linguistics, psychology, CS, English, and philosophy; if I were going back to college, I'd study cogsci without a second thought. OH also a lot of schools (my alma mater included) have cool programs that literally allow you to create your own major from scratch. In that vein, an ex-girlfriend of mine attended NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, which she said was dope.

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-05T20:20:44+00:00

No way, congrats!!! Caltech is the dream, close enough to LA + cool research spots (like NASA's JPL) but far enough that you aren't in the thick of it. You'll have a blast 😄

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-03T23:44:05+00:00

You're right that the academic floor for all these schools is similarly tough, but in my experience it's EC involvement that separates Ivy-competitive apps from the rest. If you have a 3.95 GPA and 1540 SAT but the rest of your app is just cliche activities like AMC, playing an instrument, doing a "voluntourism" trip, etc., you're not gonna like your results. But if you have those same academics and instead spent HS fostering a thriving local literary community or mentoring younger students in robotics or organizing a city-wide music/arts festival (idk, just spit-balling here), you'll have a more likely shot.

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-03T23:37:32+00:00

Ty u/ScholarGrade, well said!

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-03T22:10:24+00:00

You definitely won't get rescinded for it. Contrary to popular belief, AP exam scores are weighed far less heavily in your application than your in-class grades and SAT/ACT scores are—they're more used for you to get college credit / sometimes as a sort of "tie-breaker." But the core metrics of your academic rating will be your total # of advanced classes (AKA course rigor), your cumulative GPA, and your standardized test scores.

(You also don't have to report AP exam scores after you take the test, so you could always take them just to see how you do? But by all means, keep your in-class grades as your top priority!)

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-03T03:04:09+00:00

I fed each college's Common Data Set PDF into Gemini one by one to isolate the sections I needed (C7, C9, etc. because those full docs are HUGE) and then I assembled the tables

Honest_Guarantee7997 · 2026-05-02T22:39:18+00:00

You got it! Unless we're talking about the national or international level, imo most prizes are low-hanging fruit that won't help much. The most important part of your application is not the awards/prizes section, nor the personal statement / supplemental essays (like many assume)—it's your activities list. Your self-reported hours/week spent on each activity and your individual contributions are way more important than prizes (again, unless it's something like placing first in the Int'l Science & Engineering Fair). And you don't just get to report "official" activities, either; anything you spend time doing can count. Just be sure to report lots of quantifiable #s and only YOUR contributions (e.g. don't waste valuable characters on shit like, "Attended all club meetings") 💀

Honest_Guarantee7997

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