You have passed class 10 with flying colours it was a
piece of cake and all of your family friends and relatives probably told you
10th board you don't have to study you're going to just be all set for life but
now you're in class 11 and it's time to choose what stream you want to do whether
you need to take PCM, PCB, PCMB or Commerce now with all of this stress and
that is my one advice to everyone who's probably entering class 11 especially
in India. I know that you guys may think that I want to be a doctor and math is
probably going to be the most useless subject for me but in this age where
literally everything is done on your computer and it's all online in the cloud
just deal with it complete your math at least until grade 12 and if possible
even computer science, even if you don't see a long-term career who knows you
may just end up liking the subject or even better you may be able to use some
of those fundamentals later on in your degree, irrespective of what that degree
is that was a long intro.
We are back in our short Series in which we have
covered everything you need to do all the way from class 9, 10, 11, 12 to Gap
year one by one in each article on how you can make your profile stronger
especially if you are an international student who is aiming to study in the US
for their undergraduate degree in my opinion this is one of the most important
years in your high school career you are taking your academics to the next
level.
After
Completion of Intermediate level
You're almost in class 12 so don't just take a seat
back and you know think that it's time to relax you've just given your board
exams and it's okay for you to go a little down with your academics no remember
if your goal is to apply to the US they look at all four years so we need to
maintain that upward trajectory and after your 10th boards you need to do
equally well and put in if not more and equal effort in making sure your 11th
grade marks are also up to you. They want to know how much you score in class
11 and using an excuse like 10th board exam and 12th board exams are important
so that's why I kind of like 11th go is not going to work so make sure you're
doing this well.
SAT Score
The other two things that you're going to focus on
academically is going to be your SAT score or your act if you're giving that
exam but the goal is you need to finish writing either one of these tests in
class 11 do not hold this off until Class 12 take as many attempts as you want
class 11 is for you to finish your standardized testing so you can take your
first attempt second attempt the goal is finish writing the test.
AP Exams
The second thing is you need to write more AP tests
now we covered this in the class 10 article that you'll be writing a few AP
exams but it doesn't end over there you need to aim at writing anywhere between
5 to 15 more AP exams this year so that in total by the time you're actually
applying next year in your class 12 you have a good number to be in also if you
didn't perform well last year when you were writing your first set of AP exams.
Now it is a good time to retake those tests to try to get a better score just
for reference a score of four or five is something you should be aiming at now
I know that all of these standardized tests and even AP exams cost money but
think of it this way that all of this investment that you're doing at this
stage in class 11 is ultimately for your future and it's going to help you or
maximize your chance of reaching your goal of a top 10 or top 50 College.
Many
Students go to Non-attending School
Now another point I want to address here is a lot of
students decide to go to like a non-attending school after class 10 because
they want to prep for iitj or the neat exam which are very common entrance
exams in India now in my personal opinion it's very difficult for you as a
student to try to excel in both these Indian entrance exams plus US college
applications. So now you need to make your mindset as to which one you want to
choose I've often seen when students try to do both they end up not doing well
in either they won't get a good Rank and even if they get into a US College.
It's not going to be the best it'll probably be mid
here at best so my advice is pick one but if you are in the dilemma and you end
up choosing both routes where you still want to hold on to your hopes and
dreams of studying in the US but you ultimately land in a non-attending school.
Make sure you maintain your connections with at least the teachers in that
place because ultimately you will need to go back to them to request for
letters of recommendation.
Exploring
Activities
Now we're going to talk about activities so by this
point in the series we've kind of covered exploring activities shortlisting
them in class 11. Your activities and your involvement is going to be at its
peak what I mean by that is not in terms of quantity I don't want you to go out
there and do 20 30 different activities what I mean is quality but you spending
time in those activities so you can very well just choose maybe three to six
activities or even less like two to four even the point is you need to really
show that you've put in the hours maybe like work there full-time in the summer
or academically been involved in some way or another with some sort of
validation and a good example of this is maybe a research based activity. The
validation of that research based activity could be a publication that you held
this is completely doable in one summer and class 11 is the perfect place to do
this.
ISRP
Program
Now if you're still looking for a research based
activity the ISRP program is going to be perfect for you and honestly this is
your last chance to actually do something like this applications are still open
and it's a very aggressive and competitive program to get into you go through
like an interview process and if you're selected, you are matched with a mentor
that will then you know work with you for 12 weeks on a research project that
will then lead to a publication so this is something that looks extremely well
if you're interested in.
College
Shortlisting
Lastly we're going to talk about college shortlisting
I feel like in this whole college application process this is probably the most
fun part of it all in class 11.Take a breath in and just go all out this is
your time to explore colleges go through their websites watch YouTube videos
look for people on LinkedIn try to talk to them and see do they like a
particular College if they don't why don't they like it see what college stats
are how many students graduate successfully get a job what do they do all of
this stuff so basically your goal is to start researching colleges by the time
you're in class 11. You should have a pretty good idea of what you actually
want to major in which means that based on your priorities which can kind of be
anything from scholarships to physical location to career opportunities to
maybe weather even start making a list of colleges that you want or potentially
see yourself applying to this list can first start off with maybe like 40, 50
colleges short list it.
Further into a concise 10 to college 10 to 20 College
list and that is what you'll be taking forward so this work of researching
colleges is something you're doing ahead of time and you're ahead of the game
already Us world ranking and Niche are two good and reliable resources that you
can use to see what are the top colleges in the major and just a pretty.
General
Google search’s Idea
General Google search also gives you a good idea and
there's just so many colleges out there each one has something different to
offer, so don't get overwhelmed and just excited and be like. I'm just going to
apply to all eight IV leagues not a smart move try to have a concise list that
has dream Within Reach and safety colleges as well all right so for those of
you that are reading till this point I have a fun little question for you as a
student in class 11.If you had the opportunity to take one subject in your
entire list and throw that out what would that subject be for me I can just
straight up say that would have been chemistry
