Chance please? Unsure :)

<p>I'm a white male from Virginia. </p>

<p>My GPA is low and my math SAT scores are awful (I’ve taken it three times, and face it, they’re not getting any higher), so it’s hard for me to really gauge what a “good match” school really is for me.</p>

<p>Also, my list is virtually absent of safe schools. If y’all could throw out some possible options for me based on my scores and interests, that’d be great. </p>

<p>Schools I'm interested in (no real order): </p>

<ol>
<li>UChicago</li>
<li>College of William and Mary (ED'd here, FWIW)</li>
<li>URichmond </li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>UVirginia</li>
<li>UMaryland, College Park (legacy)</li>
<li>Syracuse</li>
<li>Cornell </li>
<li>GWU
Gpa : The school told me I have a 3.5, but I go to a school district that is notorious for its lack of grade inflation: you have to get a 94 to get an A here.<br></li>
</ol>

<p>Rank: 46/500something .</p>

<p>Sat score : 740CR 640M 750W; 1380 Composite then?</p>

<p>Sat II: About to take English and US History next month, both of them are my strongest subjects.</p>

<p>APs : World History 4, Psych 5, EngLang 5, APUSH 5</p>

<p>Current Classes. Ap Calc, AP EngLang, APGov, Photography , APGerman, Arabic II (this might help?), AP Environmental. </p>

<p>ECs:
Captain of the quizbowl team since Freshman year, which is kind of a big deal on the high school level. Led us to the semi-finals a couple of time, had a few TV appearances on this local competition.</p>

<p>Extremely active in my Church; several mission trips, put a lot of hours into “faith-in-action” type volunteering each month, etc.</p>

<p>Very politically active; founded the young (would rather not say what party)s at my school, have been president for two years, in addition to a lot of volunteering for local and national elections.</p>

<p>Attended an NYLF Conference, but someone told me this actually might hurt me on many applications</p>

<p>Attended one of the STARTALK Language programs for Arabic in my state this summer. Basically, it crammed a year of Arabic language and culture into 3 weeks.</p>

<p>Extra Comments: I attend the high school I do because I was accepted into an “academy” program (idk if any of y’all are familiar with this) that allowed me to study on a curriculum with emphasis on foreign languages and international relations type material. </p>

<p>I’ve written some very good essays, apparently, and I’m hoping that will help me out somewhere. </p>

<p>Thanks everyone. I’d say I’d chance back, but as you can see from this post I’m kind of a n00b to this and unlikely to give any decent advice!</p>

<p>Dam, your district is mean lol. Is the 3.5 your unweighted GPA? Because it’s definitely on the low side but still workable for some of the places you want to apply to.</p>

<ol>
<li>UChicago - Reach</li>
<li>College of William and Mary (ED’d here, FWIW) - You’ll probably get in imo</li>
<li>URichmond - I don’t know</li>
<li>Georgetown - Reach</li>
<li>UVirginia - Match/Low Reach</li>
<li>UMaryland, College Park (legacy) - You’ll get in</li>
<li>Syracuse - You’ll get in</li>
<li>Cornell - Reach</li>
</ol>

<p>It embarrasses me to say it, but I don’t understand this weighted business. I looked on the transcripts, and it says 3.5 on there?</p>

<p>No worries, some schools like private schools don’t even have a weighted. But, most schools will give you 5 points for an AP/honors class and 4 points for a regular class. Therefore, weighted means that you could get GPAs like 4.5/5.0 and stuff like that because it’s out of a 5.0 scale. I don’t exactly know how they calculate unweighted GPA, but I think they just look at classes at face value (whether you got an A or B) and then make it out of a 4.0 scale.</p>

<p>So yeah, if your UNWEIGHTED gpa is a 3.5 then I mean yeah it’s low, but definitely workable for many places. But a WEIGHTED gpa of 3.5 might be a little too weak for many of the places you want to apply.</p>

<p>Oh awesome. Bump for more opinions, please :)</p>

<p>bumpity bump</p>

<p>UVA, Georgetown, UChicago, Cornell will be a reach to impossible, in order from most to least likely. WM is a pretty good shot, URichmond, same thing. Likewise GW! I don’t know about the others. But I had a 4.0 and 2130 SAT and was waitlisted at WM and rejected at UVA, so… ED will definitely help. Good luck!</p>

<p>Is that because of the gpa or the math sat?</p>

<p>I think it’s more about GPA. I had a 630 on my math SAT and got into 8/10 of the colleges I applied to, 5 of which are top 25 schools. So don’t freak out about it too much.</p>