Chance an extremely variable applicant with strange ECs. Also help find a better list of unis to apply to [CA resident, 3.42 GPA (3.76/4.03/4.52 for UC); math + ? major]

Chance Me / Match Me!
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I 100% agree with this. My daughter took Calc BC as a junior and then Multivariable Calculus as a DE class the first semester senior year. Calc BC was WAY harder. Then when she got to college she decided that since it has been a year since she’d taken math and she was an engineering major who would need a lot of math, she retook Multi thinking it would be good to refresh herself and it wouldn’t be too challenging. About 1/2 way through she said she felt like she was taking an entirely different class the material was SO much harder. It ended up being one of her worst grades in her 4 years there. I guess what I am saying is she was very challenged by her AP math classes and not really at all challenged by her DE math class - and the DE class did not at all prepare her for math at a rigorous school. But, as painful as the Multi class was the second time around it did better prepare her for her higher level classes.

OP: Like others have said I would definitely be careful about making assumptions about what classes will transfer, especially to rigorous out-of-state colleges. Schools like Brown (which you mentioned as a dream school) want to give Brown degrees to students who completed the vast majority of their education at Brown. My D had a couple of friends who transferred into her school after freshmen year elsewhere, and they both ended up staying at her school 4 years. I have no doubt the you will be able to get some of your DE coursework to be accepted but in MANY (probably most) cases not 2 years worth. If it was that easy to game the system, everyone would do it.

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I would be willing to apply to more international unis if they have an English math program, however, it’s so far proven to be a very rare occurrence. Even in countries with very high English speaking populations (nordics, Germany, Netherlands, Korea, etc) most schools just don’t offer a major in Mathematics in English. I would be fine with applying to more international universities if they offered a math degree in English.

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Thats strange, I’ve never heard of a DE course that’s significantly easier than a regular course. CCs are still colleges but their #1 goal is to prepare students to transfer so I was expecting CC courses to only be slightly easier to regular college courses

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Although this example does not apply to you directly, as you are not pre-med, students who take their science requirements at a community college are then expected to take more advanced classes in those same fields once they get to a four-year university, otherwise they are generally not considered to have adequate depth in those classes. Apparently, the same may be true in some other fields.

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AFAIK, NYU will only give DE credit for classes that do NOT satisfy HS graduation requirements. DE students apply as first-years at NYU and likely a majority of other schools. DE is NOT the same as transfer credits (a transfer is someone who has taken college classes after HS). You need to talk with admissions people at each school to understand how they will treat DE credits.

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Another poster suggesting you slow your roll.

Again, your UNWEIGHTED GPA is what matters, core courses only on a 4.0 scale. What is your cumulative unweighted GPA for 9-10 core courses?

Then, what is the max unweighted cumulative GPA you could have by the end of 11th (because those are the grades you will likely be applying with for many schools) if you received all As in 11th?

Posters can better suggest schools or help you categorize schools if we know this info.

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Yup.

https://www.nyu.edu/admissions/undergraduate-admissions/how-to-apply/transfer-applicants/transfer-credits.html

College Courses Taken While in High School

Credit may be awarded if:

  • You received a grade of “B” or better
  • NYU offers corresponding courses
  • In most cases, courses were taken at a college/university, with college/university students, and taught by college/university faculty.
  • Courses were not used to satisfy high school graduation requirements
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Additionally, community college credits are the least likely to transfer. Google it, tons of disappointed students out there.

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I was discussing my unweighted GPA. Without these DE courses my Unweighted maxes out to a 3.56 and with it maxes out to a 3.79. This is all using only end of Junior year information. I had assumed that people assumed I automatically did this so I didn’t specify lol. All of the information is true for the potential at the end of Junior year. For the schools I RD to I get a 3.83 UW I believe but once again I’m too lazy to actually do the math

Weighted idk I’m too lazy to do the calculations for and I don’t particularly care because as you’ve said they don’t matter lol

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My kids have taken AP’s, DE through the HS, and summer CC classes when in college. They would say college/AP/CC in that order of difficulty. My daughter just took calc 3 this summer, said it was an easy A (that’s not why she took it at CC, she needed it as a prerequisite for this fall semester, but many college students will take hard college classes at CC just to get the P. ETA, when taking CC classes over breaks, it’s very important the student checks the transfer matrix and gets permission so it transfers.

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If you are doing unweighted, there would be no difference in max GPA with or without DE classes.

So max unweighted GPA at the end of 11th grade is 3.56? 3.79? if you get all As this year? If that’s the case, your 9 and 10 grades aren’t as low as you say in your OP. What is this 3.42 from your OP referring to?

Unweighted HS GPA: 4 Different ones that appear on my transcripts. Acad 9-12 = 3.42

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Wait I’m confused, do you mean my unweighted GPA including the DE classes or not including them? Because they definitely contribute to my GPA both weighted and unweighted, they are weighted as +1 but if you were to not include that +1 boost then it’s still unweighted.

If you mean completely excluding DE classes and not including the +1 benefit for my AP and IB classes it’s 3.56
If you mean just not including the +1 benefit for all of my classes but also including DEs then it’s a 3.79.

The 3.42 refers to my Academic GPA (basically GPA of all classes excluding PE). 9-12 of course refers to the 9th grade-12th grade.

My grades aren’t really that low, I say they are because comparatively for most of the schools I’m applying to they are low. It was actually a 3.12 GPA freshman year and a 3.6(?) GPA Sophomore year (both unweighted). So I was mostly a B student with a couple of As during these 2 periods of my life. I still got high grades but not as high as they could’ve been had it not been for those earlier issues

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I think colleges just vary at times in how difficult their classes are. In the Multivaribable Calculus example I gave before my daughter took it DE at a local university. I assume the basic content was the same but the level at which they had to apply the concepts were very different. She had to be able to understand and apply the material at a much higher level at her current university than where she took it at the first time.

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I can understand why you think that as a CA resident since CA has excellent public CCs. You’re very lucky that way.

But it is not the case in all states hence many schools (privates or publics in other states) do not consider DE to have the same rigor as AP/IB (with a standardized curriculum and test).

Hope that helps explain some of the comments here. :smiley:

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I agree with the posters on this site. You are basing a LOT of your future education on assumptions.
I worked at a high school. The student, who was supposed to be valedictorian, didn’t receive a diploma in the Spring. His parents were livid and blamed it on the school. They didn’t listen to the advice of the counselor, and petitioned to do their own schedule-heavily focused on STEM CS.

This news bumped up the next 5 students, vying for the Valedictorian, our son included, to Salutatorian. The student was rescinded from top schools where he had already been accepted. The Midterm course packets went to the colleges, in the Spring, from the counselors. He was missing a biology course and a humanities course. He couldn’t make those up, and struggled to find a CC or online course, that would meet the diploma requirement before the graduation date.

Why? He and his parents were doing what you are describing: jumping through hurdles and focusing on STEM college requirements and DE credits, instead of focusing on meeting the requirements for the basic high school diploma.

I’ve noticed that your English skills need some work. Your spelling and grammar skills are basic. Granted, this is a public web site, and we all make mistakes, but these repetitive errors will show up on your applications; some schools are sticklers for consistency in the essays.

Also, I’ve noticed that your responses, to many of the posts, have been internalized in a manner different from what the poster intended as noted by your responses. That tells me that you are misinterpreting the information.

too = also

In the US, (SAE=Standard American English) it’s “counselor”.

What Language other than English have you been tested to meet the foreign language diploma requirement as well as the UC requirements?

FWIW: Our son was accepted at Caltech. One of the huge things that they strongly review are the essays. They need to be perfect in every way: content, grammar, development, creativity, and flow. They have a lot of researchers on campus and they expect their students, as well as faculty researchers to have exceptional written language skills based on developed experiences in classic and contemporary literature.

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I want to first state it’s very inappropriate to judge a person’s grammatical skills off of what they’re saying in a public internet forum. I’m more than aware that I’m making a ton of grammatical mistakes because I’m mostly just writing words as they come to my mind without bothering to edit them. Some of the mistakes I make are ones that are really silly (I.e councilor instead of counselor) but these aren’t really the kinds of mistakes that I’m too worried about. If I’m going to get rejected from a university it’s sure as hell not going to be because my grammar was too bad, at least until I get my GPA up

Also the story you’re telling I feel as if is also making an assumption about me. Remember: I’m taking an IB Diploma so I at the very least don’t have an extremely STEM heavy curriculum (IB is more focused on humanities than STEM imo). While my DEs all seem to be STEM heavy I’m taking 15 of them and of all of these classes about half of them are not related to STEM.

I feel as if the story you’re telling me is that I may get blindsided by something, that’s fair but I think one needs to understand it’s not as if I’m blind. I’m looking at these posts, I understand the risks. Maybe I’m a dumb teenager who doesn’t have the ability to properly weigh out risks but I know that there indeed risks and I know what they are. This thread has given me insight that I will actively look at and will research.

If you’re worried about my graduation, there is indeed a hurdle right now but it’s one that’s not should be worried about. Since my old school didn’t do phys ed the way my current school does I’m missing a semester of phys ed or a semester of health (my health class counts as either or). If it’s too big of a problem for me then it’s very reasonable to just… take some Kinesiology course and call it a day. It definitely would suck to not be able to take something like witchcraft but it’s not as if I can’t graduate. + this assumes I can’t even enroll in Cyber High which isn’t true as I’ve already registered a spot for the summer lol.

For foreign languages I’m set. I’m taking 4 years of Spanish as we speak with me taking IB Spanish SL which is an integrated course with AP Spanish Lang.

I have all basic UC requirements met and I have all basic high school graduation requirements met (besides the health/phys ed class but that’s something that is very easy to clear up without needing me to drop a course). This was actually one of the things I was extremely paranoid of starting this year so I checked with my councilor early on and that’s what he said

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I think what people are trying to tell you is, “Don’t add any more reaches.”

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Yeah I’m not particularly interested in adding any more reaches. I think I said that somewhere but I could be wrong. I was mostly just asking for people to add more unis that I could look into and so far I’ve only received 2 unis and 1 person recommending me a uni I already have on my list lol

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We call those matches. You want more matches. I think I said that somewhere (but I could be wrong.) :wink:

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Oh I know they’re matches/targets, I was more just asking for more unis overall rather than “match” level.

Safeties and matches in particular, I’d much rather safeties so I don’t expend all that much brain energy but tbh I’m not all that worried. As I’ve stated for my reaches I’m pretty much set (outside of deciding whether or not I’ll apply to MIT which I’m considering not applying to and which other international uni I want to apply to). I’m just trying to cram myself with easier unis to get into when I inevitably get rejected everywhere