Good evening everyone, I've poked around the website and I can say I already like the community so here I am asking about my future application to the United States Air Force Academy.
This is more of a seeking advice post rather than a chance me post considering the answer is always going to be, "No one can say you'll get in, but do your best", and I fully support that but it wouldn't hurt to seek some advice from experienced others for what I have planned for my future.
I will be starting my sophomore year as of August and I have a pretty busy schedule planned. Freshman year I achieved a 3.95 GPA unweighted and 11/323 class rank, but I had lack of extracurricular activities. Sophomore year I plan to change that and stick with it. I joined Civil Air Patrol a couple of months ago and its great, I love it. Also I found that if I rank up every 2 months then I will receive my Billy Mitchell award before I apply which is good. Now here are my classes for this upcoming year just so you can get an idea of what i'm working with.
Sophomore year classes:
CATCOM (A video production class for the schools daily news broadcast, if I become a producer I feel as if this can provide good leadership building skills)
Robotics 1
Pre-Calculus Honors
Biology 1 Honors (I took Physics 1 Honors 9th grade year, so i'm doubled up on science this year)
Chemistry 1 Honors
Programming
English 2 Honors
Research 2
Clubs/ Extracurricular Activities Planned:
CATCOM (We meet after school to discuss packages and such)
Civil Air Patrol
National Honors Society
Extra activities if I can manage my current plan:
Robotics
FBLA
Cross-Country/Track
My school program, (Center of Advanced Technologies), chooses my main academic classes to fit their needs so that's why I took Physics 1 early on.
Also since I am becoming a sophomore and it's still early on, I can't predict a future GPA or SAT and ACT scores (I plan to take both), but obviously I plan to do well along with the PSAT i'm going to take this year.
Now, my main concern is the lack of athletics, obviously it would help to have a sport on my back but with my current schedule planned, i'd rather manage what I have, than struggle with too much.
And I know its possible, but very competitive to make it in without a sport but I was wondering if I couldn't manage, that I wouldn't be at too much of a disadvantage considering in order to rank up in Civil Air Patrol, you have to pass the CFA (Cadet Fitness Assessment), and that progressively gets tougher and tougher as you rank up, so that's why I'm here, any advice regarding the athletics would be nice but I will take anything I can get. I also plan on contacting my ALO soon and asking them the same thing, he shouldn't mind right? Even if I still have a ways to go? I figured it would be great to build a good relationship with him early on so the interview and just general contacting would be easier in the future.
I don't see that many people with Civil Air Patrol on their application so I feel like that weighs out the late interaction with clubs and possibly not enough of them, but i'm definitely confident in my ability to achieve what I have planned and send in a decently competitive application when the time comes. If you made it this far, thanks for reading this incredibly long post (it's my first one, sorry if its bad haha) and taking this into consideration, I appreciate it.
This is more of a seeking advice post rather than a chance me post considering the answer is always going to be, "No one can say you'll get in, but do your best", and I fully support that but it wouldn't hurt to seek some advice from experienced others for what I have planned for my future.
I will be starting my sophomore year as of August and I have a pretty busy schedule planned. Freshman year I achieved a 3.95 GPA unweighted and 11/323 class rank, but I had lack of extracurricular activities. Sophomore year I plan to change that and stick with it. I joined Civil Air Patrol a couple of months ago and its great, I love it. Also I found that if I rank up every 2 months then I will receive my Billy Mitchell award before I apply which is good. Now here are my classes for this upcoming year just so you can get an idea of what i'm working with.
Sophomore year classes:
CATCOM (A video production class for the schools daily news broadcast, if I become a producer I feel as if this can provide good leadership building skills)
Robotics 1
Pre-Calculus Honors
Biology 1 Honors (I took Physics 1 Honors 9th grade year, so i'm doubled up on science this year)
Chemistry 1 Honors
Programming
English 2 Honors
Research 2
Clubs/ Extracurricular Activities Planned:
CATCOM (We meet after school to discuss packages and such)
Civil Air Patrol
National Honors Society
Extra activities if I can manage my current plan:
Robotics
FBLA
Cross-Country/Track
My school program, (Center of Advanced Technologies), chooses my main academic classes to fit their needs so that's why I took Physics 1 early on.
Also since I am becoming a sophomore and it's still early on, I can't predict a future GPA or SAT and ACT scores (I plan to take both), but obviously I plan to do well along with the PSAT i'm going to take this year.
Now, my main concern is the lack of athletics, obviously it would help to have a sport on my back but with my current schedule planned, i'd rather manage what I have, than struggle with too much.
And I know its possible, but very competitive to make it in without a sport but I was wondering if I couldn't manage, that I wouldn't be at too much of a disadvantage considering in order to rank up in Civil Air Patrol, you have to pass the CFA (Cadet Fitness Assessment), and that progressively gets tougher and tougher as you rank up, so that's why I'm here, any advice regarding the athletics would be nice but I will take anything I can get. I also plan on contacting my ALO soon and asking them the same thing, he shouldn't mind right? Even if I still have a ways to go? I figured it would be great to build a good relationship with him early on so the interview and just general contacting would be easier in the future.
I don't see that many people with Civil Air Patrol on their application so I feel like that weighs out the late interaction with clubs and possibly not enough of them, but i'm definitely confident in my ability to achieve what I have planned and send in a decently competitive application when the time comes. If you made it this far, thanks for reading this incredibly long post (it's my first one, sorry if its bad haha) and taking this into consideration, I appreciate it.