A VERY sad story.

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>There's someone I've been close friends with since the 4th grade. Right now me and her are juniors and so we're getting ready for college applications this fall. My friend, let's call her Jane, has a horrible problem. She failed the 9th grade miserably. Like, she failed 3/4 of the semesters of every class that year. Basically, Jane snapped out of it and (BETWEEN SOPHMORE AND JUNIOR YEAR) will pull off about a 3.5 UW and 4.3 W by the end of Junior year. So here's the rundown so far:</p>

<p>Freshman Year GPA: 1.14 UW, 1.7 W</p>

<p>Sophomore + Junior Year GPA: 3.5 UW, 4.3 W</p>

<p>Her test scores look like this:</p>

<p>SAT I: 2320 (800 CR, 760 W, 760 M) (I know!)</p>

<p>SAT II: Literature: 800
SAT II: Math IIC: 750</p>

<p>No AP scores yet, but she's taking 3 AP's this year.</p>

<p>PLUS, she's an under-represented minority.</p>

<p>As you can tell by her weighted GPA, she's been in all honors/AP classes throughout high school, and her ec's are steller (founded an organization that raised 10,000 for hurricane relief last year). Her counselor is prepared to write a letter explaining her growth, but do you think that with her terrible freshman year and mediocre soph./jun. gpa she has a chance at top schools that don't count freshman years such as USC or Carnegie Mellon?</p>

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<p>Oh, and she made up all of the classes she failed.</p>

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<p>Yes, they will love the personal growth, fact she is URM, and the SAT scores obviously help. I would highly recommend Stanford for her, since they love URMs and ignore freshman marks.</p>

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<p>This is such an accomplishment story and not sad at all! She has a wonderful chance at many schools in my opinion!</p>

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<p>Even with a 3.5? I mean this girl has still gotten a few C's even after freshman year. But still, she has vast majority A's.</p>

6

<p>what a success story. sounds like Jane is you though.</p>

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<p>Excellent chances due to amazing growth. When you posted that this was a sad story, I was basically expecting the opposite of what you posted!</p>

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<p>I think most schools will overlook her freshman year, they tend to see it as a period of adjustment anyway and it is a major outlier from the rest of her profile. Stanford is a great number one for her, they do love URMs and do completely ignore freshman year, but she should shoot for a lot of the top schools. I'd have mostly middle of the road schools though.</p>

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<p>i'd say your "friend" has pretty high chances, as freshman year is not as important neways</p>

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<p>Never underestimate the power of an upward trend accompanied by an inspiring story of the comeback. Perhaps they figure that since she already had a meltdown in HS that she may not fall apart he freshman year of college. My son had a not-so-good sophomore year and still got into some great schools, not IVY of course, but still top tier, with similar test scores and grades. No one expects kids to be perfect when they are 14 or 15 years old.</p>