@MommaJ I have a few responses:
“Who ever said GPA was everything?”
RESPONSE: I go to a notorious pressure-cooker school, where kids complain about how their 4.0 GPA isn’t good enough for UVA or even JMU. I understand that this isn’t the case at every school and in every household, but it does seem to be the mob mentality of today’s society, and especially here on CC.
“We’ll never know whether OP’s grades would have been adequate to admit OP to a non-arts degree program in the schools that accepted him, so while I’m happy for the satisfying outcome, I’m not sure what lesson OP hopes to be conveying here.”
RESPONSE: This is a very interesting comment you brought up! At Penn State, the academic requirements for the School of Theatre follows the same requirements of the satellite campuses. The director of undergrad admissions said that the minimum GPA is a 2.7 UW for the School of Theatre. If I wasn’t going into theatre, I probably would not have gotten into PSU UP. That being said, there are plenty of schools out there that will accept students with a 2.8 GPA. The lesson I am trying to convey here, is that low GPAs do not equal working at McDonald’s for the rest of your life. I wanted to share a success story to help alleviate parents’ anxiety about their child’s grades, especially those parents who complain about how their child’s 3.7 isn’t good enough. But, perhaps I am not seeing the whole story. I only know about what it takes to get into an arts major. I never experienced the application process for applying to an arts major, so in some ways, the letter I wrote is one-sided.
Thanks for your response and thanks for reading!