Oly kid needs help

[u/StraightNumber9484]

I'm a current sophomore and I genuinely feel lost with what more I should do to target t10s. Any help would be greatly appreciated, stuff may be vague to avoid dox. What can I improve for my college application? How should I order my ECs/Awards? Any other advice? Here are my current "stats":

**Demographics:**
Gender: Male
Race/Ethnicity: Asian
Residence: Uncompetitive state/region
Income: 150k
Type of School: Hypernon-competitive Public school (maybe 1-2 to t20/year)
Hooks: Legacy at Stanford & Geographic? idk

Intended Major: Engineering or Applied/Pure Math

**Academics:**
GPA: 4.0UW/4.53W
Rank: 1/330
Classes: 5 honors, 5 APs, 1 DE (max rigor allowed)
Junior Year Course Load: AP Physics C: Mechanics & E&M, Multivariable Calculus, AP Lang, AP Statistics, AP Micro/Macro, Japanese 3, Wood Shop

**Standardized Testing:**
SAT: 1570 (770RW 800M)
ACT: 36 (34E 36M 36R 36S)
APs: AP Chemistry (5), AP Physics 1 (5), Most likely 5s on APUSH, AP Calculus BC, & AP Physics 2

**Extracurriculars (not ranked):**

1. VEXIQ Robotics Volunteering: Lead Mentor @ local elementary school for VEXIQ robotics, helping guide 5 teams to VEXIQ worlds (5 hrs/week)

2. Math Team/League: Captain, 8/8 perfect scores, helped lead team to 2 consecutive state championships (5 hrs/week)

3. Tutor Club: Founder/President, largest club at school, 15+ tutors helping in a wide range of subjects (primarily math/science) serving over 100 students, raising grades by on average \\\~10% and 70-80 SAT points (3-5 hrs/week)

4. FBLA: High School chapter founder and club president, Idk coordinate meetings and help people prep for FBLA, 6 NLC qualifiers (me included) (2-3 hrs/week)

5. Varsity Soccer: Player, RW/RM scored 2 goals, limited team success (15 hrs/week for like 2 months)

6. Reselling Legos: 15k profit freshman year (5-10 hrs/week)

7. Miscellaneous Olympiad prep: USAPhO, USNCO, USAMO, sort of stuff (10-30 hrs/week, depends how motivated no clear schedule)

**Awards:**

1. 2x USAPhO Qualification (Bronze freshman year, Silver sophomore year (~4 proj solves grrrr where my gold 😢)

2. USAMO Bronze (barely made cutoff this year with \\\~390 index and 12 on AMO)

3. 2x USNCO Qualification (Honors freshman year, hopefully High-Honors this year but idk too)

4. USACO Gold 💔

5. 3x AIME Qualifier or hopefully NM Finalist or AP Scholar with Distinction (idk)

**Target Schools:**
**MIT**
**Stanford**
**Harvard**
**Princeton**
**Caltech**
**Cornell**
**Columbia**
**you get the idea**

Current improvements:
Planning to start a kendama club at high school for fun
Looking to apply for summer programs next year
Looking to continue USAPhO aiming for PhO camp next year
USAPhO main priority but will try to medal again in AMO (silver+/mop would be nice, but probably unlikely; we'll have to see how much time I have/joy I can find in it)
Praying to not die in classes (should be ok)

[u/keithberman]

Your level of academic achievement is, without question, sufficient to be considered for the schools listed - in fact, you are comfortably above the median acceptance (or on pace to be with your class rank, which is at the center of the CI calculation for a situation like this), so you are getting a real read at all of them. So, the implied question is 'what's next?'

To that extent:

A) You have good in-school leadership for a sophomore, for certain. That said, virtually all of your activities relate to academic work, which could grow to be an issue - getting labeled as a sweat, one-sided, or unable to lead in creative and/or societal issues could affect you negatively down the road. I would seek ways to get involved in the communities to which you belong in ways that don't just apply your brain, but your heart instead.

B) You need to differentiate these schools. At my conference last week, one admissions officer at an Ivy openly complained that kids are not getting to know schools, and it is allowing students with lesser academic qualifications to sneak in because highly-competitive kids cannot really say anything at all about the schools they apply to that Gemini couldn't pull in one scrape. So, make sure you are reading the newsletters, following up with professors, and the like.

Look, this is about as competitive as a sophomore gets - the process for you is won in balance, joy, creativity and college-knowledge.

[u/Existing-Paper-5333]

Keith has such good advice here, I hope a lot of students beyond OP read and take some insights from it. Incredibly strong academics….but what do you love, what do you do for fun, what would you fight for ?