I am a rising senior in the NoVa area (FFX County) and needed some advice on my current situation. I am applying to colleges this fall and have a decent transcript. I have all grades in between A and B- except 2 classes. In my sophomore year, I got a C in AP Physics 1, and in my Junior year, I got a C+ in AP Lang. I just wanted to see how that would affect my chances. I am planning to apply for an ED.
@ShenVal18 @cbl1 If you could give your input that would be great!
I would ask your guidance councilor the average GPA range that gets into Virginia Tech. She may not have broken down by major but at least gives you a range.
Lets say the minimum GPA getting into VT this year from your high school is 3.8 or better. Pamplin is going to be a bit harder - say 4.0-4.1. If you GPA is a decent amount above the the mininimum people are getting in then you may be good going in with Pamplin. A good SAT over 1300 probably is as good as having a .1 or .2 extra on your GPA.
You guidance councilor may have the average GPA going to Tech this year and your at the average then your most likely to get into Pamplin.
Alternative - if your afraid your borderline then is apply to a less popular major and transfer in. As long as you get good grades to start out at Tech your first year shouldn’t have trouble transfering into Pamplin (it is restricted so you need to do well to get the transfer).
@Klm882 As mentioned above, your HS guidance office is going to be your best and most reliable source of info. Does your school use Naviance? If so you should have been provided access after you took your 1st SAT. Check the scattergram and see where you plot.
I would think that a lower performance outlier or two won’t have a huge impact when it’s the grade for the most rigorous course offering. That said, if you have a couple A’s and the remainder of your grades are closer to the B- range things could be viewed differently.
If your transcript includes EC’s with leadership that will be a bonus for you.
Just so you know My son had a 3.95 GPA W and 1330 SAT with great EC and honors etc. Her was waitlisted to Pamplin and still dont know if he will get in. He never got anything lower than a B and mostly A, A- and B+. I think you will have a challenging time so if you want to go to VT pick another major and then try to transfer. I know many kids who got in with lower stats than my son for different majors. Luckily VT wasnt his dream school and he is going to South Carolina at a lower cost than VT
@Klm882 I’ll reiterate - the statistics for your high school are going to be the most reliable data points. Once you leave that data set, any input you receive on any forum is guesswork by the poster - no matter the post count or number of threads started. There’s simply no provable commonality betweeen yourself (and your stats) and those posted on the many “chance me” and results-oriented threads on CC. And the total combined number of unique “results” posts is a fraction of 1% of the total results data… it’s statistically insignificant.
Once you see how you stack up based on prior results from your school, then branch out your options so that you have a reasonable mix of reach/match/safe schools. Gather all the info you can, visit as many as you can, etc. You might find that what you thought was your #1 in April 2020 isn’t the same when you start your applications.
I’ll also add, a lot of people post about weighted GPAs, which mean nothing. Some of these high schools heavily pad GPAs, so you really can’t compare the weighted ones. A decent unweighted GPA (3.7 or above?) plus rigorous classes should mean more to admissions than a higher GPA in easy regular classes. Being from Nova does make it harder, unfortunately. They’ve also said that they are looking for applicants from under-represented groups, so I don’t know if that would apply to you.
It’s all a guessing game though, because there are plenty of examples of high-stat kids getting waitlisted recently.