I’ve been looking for colleges and have been having a really hard time. All of the colleges I want to go to are extremely selective: MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, etc. My school has this program that shows how many people from my high school applied to certain colleges and whether they were accepted, denied, deferrred, or put on a waitlist. Well, it also shows their GPAs and their ACT scores. Although I have a high ACT (35), my GPA is only 4.82, which is much lower than other people who were accepted into the schools I’m looking at (and a lot of people who weren’t). This is my junior year and there’s not all that much I can do to raise my GPA since I already have all A’s. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on ways that I could increase my chances of getting into really good schools. Thanks in advance.
The best way is to persuade yourself that there are many more than 10 or 15 very good schools in the USA. Apply to a balanced mix of reach, match, and safety schools with net prices your family can afford.
For 2016-17 first-year students who reported a GPA, Stanford’s average was 3.94 on a 4.0 (unweighted) scale. MIT’s was 3.77. If your GPA on a 4.0 scale is close to those numbers, and your courses have been rigorous, I doubt it will be a deciding factor one way or the other for admission to the most selective schools.
There are quite a few very good skills in the US. Considering the number of postsecondary institutions, you will have lots of options. Think about what you want to, where you want to in a really large,country, what kind of opportunities such as skiing or sports, opportunity for financial aid, …Your primary goal of college is learning, but what do you seekpersonally and socially.