<p>Unfortunately, I have not performed as well as I would have liked to during my freshman and sophmore years. I have about a 3.5 weighted GPA thus far. If I get something like a 4.2 or a 4.3 for my junior and senior years, do I have a shot at getting into a good college? I'm interested in Computer Science, and am taking the AP Computer Science A exam in 2 days. I have a pretty decent extracurricular profile, being in 2 clubs, the orchestra, building an online radio station for and volunteering for a nonprofit teen center(spending about 5 hours a week there), as well as owning two businesses.</p>
<p>Will colleges look at my application and see improvement, or will they just toss it in the garbage because I got a b- in honors english freshman year?</p>
<p>I'm interested in some of these universities/colleges:</p>
<p>I think you have a shot at all of those schools. Showing improvement is always a good thing..and frankly, I don't think MIT and Caltech will care about your B- in freshman english. MIT didn't care about my B+ in english junior year (only B in HS-ARGH!! Then again, I will be an engineering major...so who cares about english???? :)). But they definitely won't toss your application in the garbage--especially if you own two businesses. When MIT and other schools initially look at applications to throw out ones that have no chance--they're looking for D's and stuff like that, not random B's in high school english.</p>
<p>j/k...they won't care about your B in english. write really good essays that play up your ecs and make sure you have really good recs. more importantly, have you taken SATs yet? b/c, in case you didn't know, those are kind of a big deal.</p>
<p>I agree with Jpod, if you're only at 3.5 weighted--meaning about 3.0 to 3.2 UW and you're two years in, it's not going to happen.</p>
<p>The good news is there are lots of great schools besides the ones you've listed. Just set your sights a little lower for a match school (and your safety school) and let these be your reach schools. And work on those SAT practice tests before the real thing rolls around.</p>
<p>P.S. Of the ones you did list, the easiest to hardest to get into would be:
1. GWU (slight reach)
2. CMU (big reach)
3. Columbia (no shot)
4. MIT/Caltech (no shot)</p>
<p>After looking at my message above, mikesown, I realize the order of difficulty listed above is correct for most students, but for you (and only you) it should probably be:</p>
<ol>
<li>CMU (slight reach)</li>
<li>GWU (big reach)
and no shot for the other schools.</li>
</ol>
<p>The reason for the change is that CMU is focused more on high SATs than GPA and vice-versa for GWU. Since the grades are the problem--and you may still be able to get a high SAT score, there might be a slight chance at CMU if you can average a SAT score above 1400 (for two parts). (GMU's average SAT score is around 1240, but their selectivity ranking on the Princeton Review is just slightly lower than Carnegie Mellon's).</p>
<p>CMU = big reach
Columbia = no shot
GWU = reach
MIT = no shot
Caltech = no shot</p>
<p>for the ones where i answered "probably not", i dont mean to be negative but from the info u provided about urself, i dont think theyd be interested. extra cirriculars are well and good but theyre really iceing on the cake...wont really make u or break u in terms of admissions...ur sat scores and gpa work the magic. anyway, good luck.</p>
<p>Other great schools for business majors with your stats are Illinois, Texas, Colorado, Purdue, Minnesota, Oregon, Penn State, Georgia, Ohio State, Brigham Young, Florida, Pitt, Bentley College, Fordham, Michigan State and Indiana Univ Bloomington--where my son starts in Business this Fall.</p>
<p>Oh, and as a reach school choose from Michigan, Wisconsin, Maryland, and Boston College.</p>
<p>Other good CS schools to consider with your stats would be Purdue, Michigan State, Univ of Washington, Vanderbilt, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Florida State, UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz, Illinois and Penn State.</p>
<p>And as reach schools with CS, Michigan and Maryland are still good choices.</p>