The requirements to earn a high school diploma are lower than the requirements to get into college. 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! Ask your school counselor to help you pick classes that make you happy and fulfill your requirements for high school graduation and college applications. Ultimately, high school clubs are as important as you make them. Boshoven points out that you’ll probably get a better grade in a class you enjoy. According to data collected by the College Board, there is a positive correlation between the study of foreign languages and SAT scores. College admission officers carefully assess your high school grades, courses, test scores, essays, activities, recommendations, and interviews, if required. High schools nowadays don’t prepare you for college; they prepare you for getting into college, or at least, they try to. 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. Selective private schools are less likely to offer credit for individual exams. Some teachers in your high school are probably a better match for you than others. It may be ideal to attend graduate school after you’ve become a junior expert in your field through work experience. 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. Stay with teachers you like. 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. 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. For the past six years at Synocate, we have been saying the exact opposite - the way to win the "game of college … If a college you're interested in seems to favor one program over the other, this could help you decide which program to pursue. Many people believe that college admissions is a game that can be won. 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. Apply to many schools, write good essays, hit deadlines, and hopefully you get into one of your "reach" schools. Public schools almost always offer college credit for high scores for at least some exams. 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. Whatever you do, do it well. 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. 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. 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. 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. If you are doing what you love to do, doing it well and taking the lead in the activity, you have found the perfect extracurricular activity. 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