Chance of admission with extenuating circumstances?? [ SUPER LONG POST ]

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hello all,

I’m a 17 yr old senior from northern virginia hoping to go to a 4 year college/university next fall. I’ve been told by many of my teachers that I have great potential and have always been the anomaly in class due to my extreme passion for learning. I think in concepts, I’m more analytical than logical, and I believe my strengths lie mostly in the humanities. I would love to study philosophy or cognitive science since I am interested in ethics.

Lately, I have been feeling pretty incompetent due to prior circumstances. Junior year was the first year I openly came out as a trans guy to everyone in my school, and as the president of my GSA, I knew I had pressure on me to serve as an LGBT role model for other kids who had not come out yet (my school was small, about 1000 kids). I’m not gonna go into too much, but it resulted in a suicide attempt and overall drop in grades. Other factors played a part, like the complete lack of acceptance from my parents, etc.

I transferred schools for my senior year, and so far, the change has been really great. In my main essay, I talk about these problems and how I’ve grown immensely from them, especially with the drastic change in environment. HOWEVER I am very concerned with my chances at admission to some of my reach schools.

Freshman year gpa was 4.0 uw with all pre-ap/pre-AICE (cambridge programme), sophomore year was 3.9 uw 1 AICE class with the rest pre-AICE, and my junior year was probably around a 2.2 uw (but i took 5 APs, so realistically a 3.2 weighted :frowning: )
and for my senior year I am taking AP Environmental, AP Chem, Journalism, Advanced Math, AP Psychology, AP Human Geo, and AP English Literature. Currently, I love these classes, and I know I will do well in them.
Clearly, there is a big hole in my transcript. Keep in mind that I missed about a month and a half of school due to hospitalization and in-patient therapy, etc etc

TO GET TO THE POINT: My reach schools are NYU, UVA, Boston University, and U of Michigan. Neither of my parents went to college and are both immigrants from El Salvador (i am full hispanic, just first gen american, but my first language is spanish). My last SAT was a 1200 (which i plan to retake, obv) and my extra curriculars include Model UN, GSA, Art Club, and Social Studies honor society. I have been working on an independent research paper about the politics and poetics of camp style in the queer community for the MIT inspire competition as well. I’m sorry this was so long, I just really want to see if there is a chance for me.

Thanks!

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Definitely try to do well in your classes this year, and try to improve on the SAT. Some form of SAT preparation can be very useful. I am guessing that your retake of the SAT will be relatively soon, is this true?

Your first two years of high school sort of scream that you do have the potential to do well. One bad year is something that happens to a lot of students (both in high school and university), often for one of a wide variety of personal issues of which you have overcome one. I find it hard to predict what this will do for your reach schools, but you should apply to some solid match schools and you should be able to get into a good university. If you do well senior year, then one other option is to take a gap year and apply to university with your senior year grades available, and another option is community college and a transfer to university with your full senior year grades plus CC grades. However, my guess is that you probably won’t need to use these options.

I have seen some cases with students who had mostly a good record but one bad year or one bad semester, where the school waited to see the students mid-year senior year grades before making a decision. Some schools will do this, and some will not. This does however provide at least one more reason for you to strive to do well during the current year of high school.

“I just really want to see if there is a chance for me.”

There is. I have not seen anyone deal with the same personal issue that you have dealt with, but I have seen students overcome a longer stretch of bad grades and still end up doing very well in university and very well in life.