i am a junior so once i graduate my gpa will be higher. i want to major in bussiness and im looking into their tennis team. what are my chances of getting in?
Since the average high school student enrolling in the UO has a GPA of 3.6, it’s going to be tough for you to compete with other applicants. If you can show tremendous improvement (I mean nearly straight A’s) during your senior year, you may be able to make a case for yourself and turn it into a great story of underdog victory.
If this seems daunting, don’t lose hope. One of the local community colleges (Lane Community College) has a 2-year program that transfers directly into the business school. Think joining the UO business school, but doing your first two years on a slightly smaller campus. If you can get a 3.0 GPA at Lane and take the necessary coursework, you will essentially get automatically accepted into the UO business school for about $10,000 less than you would have spent if you did all 4 years of your undergrad at UO.
UO looks at 9-11 grades so the answer is no, not as a freshman. You CAN however get into UO if you attend a community college first - do very well, going to office hours, getting a tutor to ensure straight As right off the bat, and keep playing tennis so as to be recruitable.
I agree here that a transfer is your most likely option.
How about a student with exactly a 3.0? He probably doesn’t have access to Naviance’s scattergrams – even if someone from his school has applied. 3.5-3.6 is just the average GPA UO lists, and College Data lists something lower than 3.0 as having been admitted. His test scores are very good.
If anyone knows any self-reported 3.0’s who got into U of O, please reply here or PM me. Thanks.
How about Oregon State?
@epiphany I’m looking on our high school’s Naviance scatter plots and I do see a few that are just under 3.0UW that got in to U of O. Not sure how many years back this goes… I think the data points are between 1 and 3 years ago but I’m not sure about that. The ones I see are: (UW GPA/SAT) - (2.97/1020), (2.98/1090), (2.77, 1110), (2.85, 1130), (3.0, 1160), (2.94, 1210), (2.97, 1270).
No idea if these kids were athletes or other special hook.
Transfer might be your best bet or take ap classes over the summer to raise your gpa
Good luck however
@Legitimatelyrich
I’m a parent; wasn’t sure what you meant by the direct address; you might have just been giving remote advice. Thank you very much for your addition. He’s a student of mine; I’m a counselor and he’s – what can I say – in “recovery” over the summer is the best way to put it – not from alcohol or drugs but because of severe depression.
@washugrad
Thank you as well. His test scores are high. Reason grades are low is lack of organization due to ADHD, combined with --until recently – untreated and “hidden” depression. Not very hidden to those of us who work with him; denied by parents until he started the suicide ideation stuff.
U of O is a large campus but surprisingly small, it seems, in class size and faculty to student ratio. We’re looking for a nurturing place for him.
@intparent I am thinking of Oregon State as well, but I don’t know the size and atmosphere. There are certain things I like about U of O. Heavy duty on the alertness to mental health issues of students, which would be very important in his case.
Respectfully, but strongly, disagree with other poster who suggested op ensure he/she get straight A’s in cc in order to get into Oregon as a transfer student. Even straight B’s would probably do the trick. In fact I’ve yet to hear of a cc transfer student being rejected by Oregon, though that is NOT to suggest such rejections never happen…
Needless to say op should shoot for straight A’s regardless. No downside to straight A’s 
Remember that college applications go in fall of junior year, unless the student takes a gap year. So there is less time to raise the GP tthan you would think. And high school gets harder, not easier, so a rising junior might not have a better GPA.
@epiphany You may want to start your own thread instead of reviving one from two years ago (I was responding to the OP, didn’t realize it was that old). But in general, larger colleges are less nuturing in my opinion. So neither college discussed on this thread seems like a good idea to me.
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@alexoval The first question is: Why is your GPA a 2.5? Is it that you didn’t focus in high school, or have you been working hard and struggling in high school?
I know a few people who are exceptionally smart and academically capable, but who for some reason struggled in high school and had bad GPAs (no better than 2.5 in a few cases). Some of these excelled once they went to university. However, getting into a top university with a 2.5 high school GPA is not likely to happen. As such, these students needed to start at either community college or a low ranked university, start to do well (mostly A’s in the cases that I know of), and then transfer to an academically more demanding university.
However, the majority of Americans, and the majority in almost every other country in the world, never graduate from a four year university. Many, many people do very well with a different choice for career. Some go to community college or trade school and learn a trade. Plumbers, carpenters, electricians, and many other make a very good living. This is possible without taking on the expense of university, which might not be relevant at all for many students. I often talk to small business owners and most of them never graduated from university.
I think that you need to think hard about what you want to do with your life and why you have a 2.5 GPA. Whether or not university is appropriate for you is something that you need to think about and may depend upon where you want to end up.
@intparent
Since all the replies on this page are from June 2018, I didn’t think that I was the only one joining an “old” thread, but I think the salient point is that admitted stats of 2 years ago might differ from this year’s results.
No… adding post #4 to an existing thread that is 2 years old isn’t the best approach, A new thread with your student’s details makes more sense.
Oregon State is actually a larger campus population than U of Oregon, by about 3K.