Croven
certified genius
GatoDelFuego
first, just want to thank all of you for replying. since you asked for it, i'll give you what i know on class rank / school etc. our school doesn't do class ranks so i'm not exactly sure where i am, but from talking to friends and my general knowledge, i'm in the top 5% of my school, 2% if a bit lucky (probably not 1%). my class has around 500 students. the reason i say i have few EC's is because most of the students at my level in the school have been doing clubs like science olympiad since middle school and some already have leadership positions in their clubs. granted, none that i've talked to has a varsity sport, let alone 3 years, so hopefully that'll balance out somewhat. again not sure about school competitiveness, but we typically have 1 student a year get accepted into each ivy / top school (barring stanford, which has only accepted swimming recruits from our school). for example, 3 seniors i know this year have been accepted into CMU, princeton, and harvard. they don't accept more than one student from our school, from what i know. I live in New Jersey (side note: i can get in-state tuition at UT austin due to a parent living there, so that's at the top of my safety schools)
regarding why i want to do physics/comp sci: i've always been interested in science, so i was trending towards that general area for as long as i can remember (also knew i didnt want to do med or law). messed around with a lot as a kid (paleontology, geology, lord knows what else) but settled on astronomy since i was 8. helps that my cousin is an astrophysics professor, that probably influenced me. high school physics courses made me realize i like physics as a whole, and yes im somewhat aware of what the degree entails. ap physics 2, which im doing now, starts to move away from general newtonian mechanics and to pressure, thermo, and modern physics. also reading what i can find on my own, so interest in physics is pretty set in stone.
not gonna lie, i just picked up programming this school year; our school has 3 courses, compprog 1, 2, and ap comp sci, most of which focus on java with a little python. (i did html css and a little javascript maybe 4ish years ago, but html and css aren't really coding languages and didnt much with them either way) i'm doing fairly well in the classes, and really enjoy programming, especially the logic and thinking that comes with difficult projects - i do side projects at home whenever i'm bored and get an idea - but ur right, i know just about nothing of what the degree has. mostly i was considering it due to recent interest and knowing it has a lot of career options. also comp sci has a lot of use in physics, but its more likely similar to how you use programming in engineering, or at least it's not necessary to do a double major. still unsure.
lastly, yeah i wasn't going to go by the ranking of colleges, i've read this thread enough to do away with that idea. i just didnt really know where to start looking based on my stats; prior to this, i only knew the names of ivies and other top rated colleges (stanford, mit). very grateful for Electrolyte , boltsandbombers , Omicron and especially eaglehawk for showing me colleges i hadn't heard of and giving me a basis to start from, so thank you all for that! hope this post illuminates some things that were unclear before for you, gato.
first, just want to thank all of you for replying. since you asked for it, i'll give you what i know on class rank / school etc. our school doesn't do class ranks so i'm not exactly sure where i am, but from talking to friends and my general knowledge, i'm in the top 5% of my school, 2% if a bit lucky (probably not 1%). my class has around 500 students. the reason i say i have few EC's is because most of the students at my level in the school have been doing clubs like science olympiad since middle school and some already have leadership positions in their clubs. granted, none that i've talked to has a varsity sport, let alone 3 years, so hopefully that'll balance out somewhat. again not sure about school competitiveness, but we typically have 1 student a year get accepted into each ivy / top school (barring stanford, which has only accepted swimming recruits from our school). for example, 3 seniors i know this year have been accepted into CMU, princeton, and harvard. they don't accept more than one student from our school, from what i know. I live in New Jersey (side note: i can get in-state tuition at UT austin due to a parent living there, so that's at the top of my safety schools)
regarding why i want to do physics/comp sci: i've always been interested in science, so i was trending towards that general area for as long as i can remember (also knew i didnt want to do med or law). messed around with a lot as a kid (paleontology, geology, lord knows what else) but settled on astronomy since i was 8. helps that my cousin is an astrophysics professor, that probably influenced me. high school physics courses made me realize i like physics as a whole, and yes im somewhat aware of what the degree entails. ap physics 2, which im doing now, starts to move away from general newtonian mechanics and to pressure, thermo, and modern physics. also reading what i can find on my own, so interest in physics is pretty set in stone.
not gonna lie, i just picked up programming this school year; our school has 3 courses, compprog 1, 2, and ap comp sci, most of which focus on java with a little python. (i did html css and a little javascript maybe 4ish years ago, but html and css aren't really coding languages and didnt much with them either way) i'm doing fairly well in the classes, and really enjoy programming, especially the logic and thinking that comes with difficult projects - i do side projects at home whenever i'm bored and get an idea - but ur right, i know just about nothing of what the degree has. mostly i was considering it due to recent interest and knowing it has a lot of career options. also comp sci has a lot of use in physics, but its more likely similar to how you use programming in engineering, or at least it's not necessary to do a double major. still unsure.
lastly, yeah i wasn't going to go by the ranking of colleges, i've read this thread enough to do away with that idea. i just didnt really know where to start looking based on my stats; prior to this, i only knew the names of ivies and other top rated colleges (stanford, mit). very grateful for Electrolyte , boltsandbombers , Omicron and especially eaglehawk for showing me colleges i hadn't heard of and giving me a basis to start from, so thank you all for that! hope this post illuminates some things that were unclear before for you, gato.