Chance a low GPA high SAT senior for top schools!

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Demographic: Male, Asian-American, Household: $200K+

Intended Major(s): Political Science and/or Business

Schools (Applying to the business schools): Northwestern ED, Boston University, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, UIUC, Georgia Tech, NYU, Northeastern, U Michigan, UNC-CH, Rutgers, USC, UVA, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wash U in St. Louis, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC Berkeley, UCI

SAT/SAT II: 1500

SAT USH: 750

SAT LIT: 740

UW/W GPA: 3.40/3.67

8 AP’s: AP LANG, APUSH, AP CSP, APES, AP PSYCH, AP LIT, AP STATS, AP ART HISTORY

Community College GPA: 3.8 UW (14 classes): (American Political Institutions, Comparative Government, Political Theory, International Relations, Micro/Macro Economics, Fundamentals of Business, Business Law, Organizational Leadership, Mass Communication and Society, Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, Philosophy of Cultural Diversity, Intro to Ethics, US History 1870- present)

Extracurriculars:

FBLA (9-12): Director of Outreach (10), Treasurer (11), President (12): Was the president of one of the biggest clubs on campus where I oversaw all activities, coordinated competition logistics, and managed cabinet.

Qualified for nationals in Banking and Financial Systems as well as Organizational Leadership

ASB/Student Government for two years

Published Research Assistant - Examined the effect of taking political science courses on the political behavior of undergraduates at a University of California Campus. Organized/summarized data for research, conducted data input and cross-validation of previously entered data, as well as analysis with an original academic dataset

Congressional Intern at the office of an immensely known Congresswoman- Assisted with district administrative duties, shadowed staffers, and organized district events

Strategic Fellow at a highly competitive congressional race- Worked with the Finance and Field Directors through organizing fundraising events, preparing call sheets, logging activity onto the software system, and compiling press clips. Helped recruit and train volunteers as well.

Board Director at a successful community leadership organization- Organized and created a system of structures for both programs, formulated/executed lesson plans for events, and collaborated with community leaders

Political Position at a County Youth political party- Organize debates, assist local candidates, and register voters. (Most of the board are college students too)

TEDx Finance Intern - responsible for oversight of financials, accounts receivables, and expenditure payments to contractors and vendors

Interned for a domestic violence shelter

Ecology Club Treasurer

Key Club Cabinet for over three years

Honors:

2nd Degree Black Belt- Taekwondo (have won over a dozen medals)

Boys State Delegate (was elected to a state-level position)

National Merit Commendation

MUN Conference Awards

Qualified for nationals twice for FBLA

Won a regional community service award

Honors:

Strong Letters of Recs

BE HONEST PLEASE

2

Is your home state NJ? Inferring that from appearance of Rutgers among all the reach schools you listed. Colleges look at your high school transcript - grades and rigor. For all the schools you listed, I believe your GPA is at the lower end. If you go to a competitive high school in NJ(or anywhere else) , the CC courses were probably easier than the high school courses.

Interesting EC’s . However, you are in a competitive demographic. Best of luck with your applications.

3

Are you a transfer student or were the CC courses taken as DE in HS? CA resident?

Generally speaking if you are OOS for the flagships on your list, that will be a tougher admit.

Use the weakest part of your application to determine which schools are safeties and matches, not the strongest.

I think the reach schools on your list are very reachy with your GPA but I’m confused as to how you have a 3.4 GPA with a 3.8 in CC with 14 courses. If you are a transfer student, you may want to move this question to the transfer sub-forum.

I’m sure some of the CA experts will ask you for your recalculated UC GPA.

4

You have a great list of EC’s and your scores are within a reasonable range for most of these schools, but the fact that you want to go into business is going to make it a lot harder for you. Business and Political Science kids at this caliber of schools are all doing amazing things, so make sure you really sell yourself in your application. Basically, once you get to the level of UMich and above, it’s less about what you’ve done and more about how you demonstrate how much effort you’ve put and and how you’ve grown.

5

I am a high school student and those courses are all dual enrollment

6

UC’s are very GPA focused so below a 4.0 capped weighted UC GPA will not make the UC’s an easy admit. Here is the UC GPA calculator and the UC’s do look at all three GPA’s.

https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

Your SAT and CC GPA will definitely help your chances but nothing in regards to the UC’s are guaranteed. Best of luck.

7

You have to realize that students with 1500 and 4.0 uw do not always make it into gtown nwu. Neu top UCs etc. bu is a reach too. Michigan a big reach oos as well.

That being said you certainly will receive acceptances at many schools and perhaps a surprise or two.

Best of luck and keep up the good work.

8

Forget the UCs because they’re gpa-heavy. You might have a shot at UCSC but even there your GPA is going to be low. Drop the others from your list.
Out of the others, choose 4-5 you really like and forget the rest, perhaps increase your odds by applying for Political Science.

In addition, you’re applying to business without calculus (your math background is going to be a determining factor at most of these reaches for business). That alone is likely to make UVA, CMU, GTech, NYU out of reach if you applied for business there and will be a problem at several others.

Your ec’s are fantastic and will likely help you more at private schools. Consider colleges where you’d get a URM bump and excellent business/finance connections such as Colby and Colgate (both reaches, but you can apply for political science and add economics or switch at will if you get in).

You could add Babson and Bentley (great chances), Case Western, Pitt, UMDCP (political science is a limited entrance major through and business is competitive), Penn State SODA (it’s a mix between data science and political science, but because it’s in the CLA you don’t need more than precalculus and statistics to have a shot + it seems to fit your EC strengths - that being said they’re very GPA focused so it’ll all depend on how they recalculate your GPA), Fordham Lincoln center.

Run the NPCs and make sure your parents can afford costs from income and savings.

9

Your list is reach heavy. Why is your high school GPA so low? Is there some mitigating circumstance? The problem I’m seeing is that you put a lot of effort into everything except your high school work. You did well in your DE classes, but my understanding is that colleges care about grades in high school classes above all else. Is the problem that you took too many APs and didn’t do well in them?

I’m sorry to say that I think you have almost no chance at NYU, GTech, USC, most of the UCs, Gtown, NWU, CMU, WUSTL, Michigan, UVA or UNCCH. Do as suggested in post #7. Try some of the LACs, where Asians are not necessarily ORM. They might be willing to be more lenient with your grades given your other factors and your CC GPA.

Clearly you’re intelligent and dedicated, but it’s a shame that your priorities weren’t on your high school grades.