Hi,
I’m a sophomore in high school right now and my grades aren’t the best, and the school year is about to end. Last year, I got straight A’s but now I’m just not doing as good. In the beginning of the year I was doing fine, till one night. One night, my mom woke up and she kept complaining about how her stomach was hurting and we had to take her to the emergency room. In the morning, I went to school, but my mom was still in the hospital, and none of the doctors knew what was wrong with her, and I just couldn’t concentrate. After the school day ended, I went back to the hospital and the doctors knew exactly what was wrong with her. That night, my dad sat me down, and told me that my mom has endometrioid ovarian cancer. From then on, I just felt angry but empty. 3 years ago, my grandmother passed away from lung cancer and I was hardly over that, and I found out that my mom has cancer. I’ve been going through this all my life. My grandmother got cancer a year before I was born. I grew up going to the hospital to visit my grandmother. Watching her go through all sorts of surgeries and chemotherapy was terrible. I even had to move to India to take care of her. 3 years ago, when my grandmother passed away, she died right in front of my eyes. She was laying on the bed of my guest room, and she died. And now 3 years later, I live in the USA, my mom has cancer and I have to go through everything again. This school year has been a terrible year and I haven’t been able to focus on school since then. And now the school year is about to end and I have straight B’s, and I don’t know if I can recover from a whole school year of bad grades. Do I still have a shot at an Ivy league? And if I can recover, how can I recover strong and what can I do to make up for my sophomore year grades?!?!
I’m not saying it is impossible, but it’ll definitely be harder with a lower GPA. That being said, your GPA is only one aspect of your application.
Try to get the highest GPA possible for Junior year, and try to get a standardized score that is in the 75% or higher percentile of accepted students for Penn. Also make sure your extracurricular activities are solid. By the sound of it, it seems like you should have a good essay if you write about your problems.
Also just want to say that getting into an Ivy League school isn’t everything.