Hey guys, rising senior here.
I’m really, really interested in Pomona, Williams, Bowdoin, Colby, and Carleton, but I’m worried about my GPA.
I go to a private school where our GPA’s are weighted strictly out of 4.0. After a 3.95 and 4.0 for freshman and sophomore year respectively, my grades kinda tanked this year (I’m anticipating a B, B+, 2 A-s, 2 As). I expect my overall gpa for all three years to be about 3.75-3.85. My school offers no AP’s or IB’s, and I’ve taken just about the hardest courseload available. The two B’s were in honors precalc and honors bio, but I’m a total humanities gal, which’ll come through in my application.
Should I be worried? I’m pretty confident about getting 1500+ on the SAT (got a 1470 in October, taking it again in August), I’m extremely proud of my extracurriculars, and I think I can write a great essay. Any advice on how else to compensate? Thanks!
Your counselor there can likely tell you where you stand with those schools. Some private schools do very well with their grads getting accepted to certain colleges. Those LACs you mention are often such colleges.
I have kids who went to a private school that had no AP classes. But AP prep and tests were offered. Certain classes covered AP material especially after the extra prep course. If kids from your school simply do not take AP exams, then it won’t stabd out that you did not. If your school is not one to send a lot of kids to top private, you would stand out and show academic initiative taking a couple of AP exams to show that you are in that playing field. Or have some SAT2s. If your high school has a good proven record with these highly selective schools, it wouldnt be as important to do so.
For the schools that I am familiar with in your list, admissions seems to be very difficult to predict, and for the students that I am familiar with did not seem to be highly correlated with GPA and SAT scores.
Don’t worry. However, you should consider these schools to be reaches (although I am not familiar with Carleton).
I would suggest that you continue to do as well as you can in school and apply to these schools. However, you need to also pay attention to safeties, and possibly some match schools. Also, you need to consider finances unless your family is fine with your being full pay (perhaps slightly more than $300,000 for four years – obviously this does not include the cost of graduate school).
Thanks for your feedback! My school is really well known for sending a lot of kids to Ivies and T20’s. Nobody really takes AP tests (at least not during junior year), but I’m hoping to maybe take subject tests in October if I’m not too overwhelmed. Again, I appecriate your response!
A B and a B+ are not “tanking.”
They’re just not a perfect A record. You might be ok with these in stem, as a humanities kid.
Note that pride in your ECs isn’t an indication to us. And you’d benefit from understanding more if what those colleges look for, not just why you want them. It’s not all about stats.
Thanks for the honesty. I tried to keep this post short (hence the lack of EC description), but you’re absolutely right about about understanding what colleges are looking for and not just focusing on the numbers. Again, I really appreciate the feedback.
Your grades will not keep you from getting a serious look at those schools. It sounds like you go to the kind of private school where your CC should be able to give you good input on this, so definitely ask.
My biggest piece of advice at this point is to work very hard senior year. If these these were your first Bs, schools will want to see that you didn’t start trending down as the material became more difficult (as it will in college.) And if you end up on a WL, one of the things that can differentiate you from others on the WL is a very strong senior year. Lots of kids succumb to senior slump.
Your list is, as so many others’ very top heavy. Your concern should not be so much in whether you get accepted to these schools as finding schools that provide much what you want and need that will surely take you. That’s where thecsttention and care in choosing should go because the likelihood is that you end up in one of those schools. Am also assuming you can afford to go to these schools with no aid or merit concerns.
Think about applying ED - it will give you an advantage at these schools.
3.8 is fine. If you don’t get in, it won’t be due to your GPA.
Make sure that you have affordable safeties that you like in your list.
@divebomb Aside from prestige and selectivity, what attracts you about these particular LACs? The reason that I ask is that they are reaches for all (lower than 20% acceptance rate and small size = unpredictability). There are many, many LACs beyond the top 20 that would be more likely for acceptance. If you could say a bit more about possible major(s), preferred location, climate, campus vibe, etc. you might get some good suggestions for match schools to complement these reaches.