<p>-3.43 GPA
-No AP, Honor Courses etc - all regular. I'm Canadian and my school does not offer them
-Got a 78 in Math in Freshman Year
-Made up for it by getting a 90 in Grade.10, 93 in Grade 11, and 97 Gr.12, 97 in Data Management and 98 in Calculus
-2390 on SATs
-800 in SAT Math II
-800 in SAT Physics
-ECs:
-President of Model UN
-President of Computer Science
-President of Robotics
-Mensa
-Published app in Mac App Store with over 1000 downloads
-Won a regional computer science contest
-Published a research paper regarding computer vision
-Gov. IT Job
-Over 200 hours of volunteer work</p>
<p>My SAT scores, my ECs, my recommendation letters and my essay are all acceptable for Top Tier Universities. However, I did not try in school till second semester of junior year, so my GPA is ridiculously low and puts my out of the league of top tier universities.</p>
<p>Would I have a chance at Carnegie Mellon, Cornell or WPI?
I am applying for Robotics at WPI, but Electronics or CS at Carnegie and Cornell.</p>
<p>I think you have a good chance at WPI. I don’t know how difficult it is to get into Carnegie Mellon if you apply with electronics, but I know it’s very challenging with computer science. If you go with the latter, CMU will be a reach. Cornell is a reach as well. They’re not completely impossible - you have very nice ECs - but definitely reaches.</p>
<p>wow, your SAT’s are near perfect. I definitely think they make up for your GPA. I say this because the disparity between your great SAT’s and not so great GPA would make those schools assume your school is just really hard, especially in grading. However, this would be counteracted if someone else in your school applied to the same schools you are applying and have much better GPA’s than you, then that would look bad.</p>
<p>I don’t know if your school is really hard than I perceive it to be, but based on the assumption that your GPA is good considering the level of difficulty within your school, I would say that Carnegie Mellon and Cornell are low reaches for you. If I am wrong with my assumption and that you are just a great test taker but average student with many classmates having better GPA’s than you, I would say Carnegie Mellon and Cornell are pretty high reaches for you, especially Cornell.</p>
<p>Thanks for replying! Unfortunately, I was just a bad student, however I can guarantee no one else applied from my school. Also, if you disregard my freshman marks, as CMU does, my GPA increases to a 3.67.</p>
<p>wow! how in the world did you get a 2390 on your SAT?? Your test grades are absolutely amazing and your ECs are good as well. Yes, your GPA is on the low side, but anything can happen because it shows that you know what your doing and your improving your math grades. Colleges love improvement =) good luck.</p>
<p>To add on to my original post, how much your GPA hurts you also depends on rank. Even if your school does not rank, it supplies enough information to colleges about grade distribution to give a general idea. If you’re still top 10%, your chances go up a lot. In general a high SAT and low GPA makes colleges think a student is smart but lazy. If your GPA had a very significant upward trend in all your classes, not just math, then that does help your chances as well.</p>
<p>Your standardized testing scores and your ECs are solid… just that GPA might hurt you a bit… what’s your ethnicity? I’m sure that you’ll get into CM and WCI, Cornell might be a slight reach for you though! That GPA would’ve been nice to raise… it would’ve been a shoe-in if you had the GPA</p>
