<p>I asked this before a few months ago, but I am super nervous as April 1st is closing in (only less than a month away!). Plus, the more input the better, right?</p>
<p>Background: raised by a single mom, middle-upper class, private school from K-12th. caucasian male, in state.</p>
<p>Academics: 2 APs (have to be eligible for honors/APs), 3.51 GPA (W, I believe), 1710 superscore SAT, 630 & 2 550's SAT II's, 24 ACT</p>
<p>EC: radio (once a week, two hours), camp (on leadership team, 8 weeks out of my summer for 3 years), water polo (2 years), swimming (1 year), football (1 year), guitar (5 years)</p>
<p>That's all I have. Not much at all to some people.
In terms of 1 being "dont even think about getting in"
to 10 "you're in, easily"
I think I am a 3.
Definite reach school. Reach-reach.
Agreed? </p>
<p>well it’s true JJ. He had so many opportunities to do well in a private school hands-on environment and he gets a 3.5 GPA and a 60th percentile SAT Score. Those are average in 60% of PUBLIC schools…</p>
<p>Thanks Indianjatt.
Do you think somewhere around 10-20%? ;/</p>
<p>MattNC; just because I go to a private school doesnt mean I have a lot of opportunities. I could have easily had a 4.0 or above at a public school right? I talk to friends near local public schools, I’m sure its not hard to do 15 minutes of homework each night compared to the 2-3 I do. I’m not justifying anything, I wish I worked a lot harder. It would have been easier to do better if I just went to a public school.</p>
<p>Honestly, seeing as how private schools tend to not have as many students as public schools do, you should be able to do better because there would be a better student-teacher connection.</p>
<p>I’d say you would have to be really lucky if you were accepted to usc. Last year’s acceptd applicants had a 3.8 gpa and 2030 (~ish) sat score.</p>
<p>Yeah Jay, I agree with you. I had a 1470 on my first SAT prep test, then it bumped up to a 1710 superscore after taking a prep class, and taking the actual SAT test 4 times.
Interesting how I did worse on the exam I actually studied for?</p>
<p>@JLee, I do have a great student teacher connection. Our school has about 550 kids, and I know a lot of them tend to go to really big brand name schools (a couple take a gap year or go to CSU’s). I am already accepted into Purdue, so I dont know how much that helps with the USC decision in terms of comparison. </p>
<p>How much would an appeal help? It’s my dream school after all but lately I’ve just been wanting to take a step back and not care if I get in or not, I guess I’m cushioning myself for the biggg fall haha.</p>
<p>An appeal would not increase your chances of going to usc in any significant way</p>
<p>With a light workload like yours, colleges would most likely expect you to have a higher gpa, in the 3.9 range or so.</p>
<p>Since you do agree that your school, being a private school, has a close student-teacher relationship, then colleges would expect you to do better than students in schools that do not have excellent student-teacher ratios.</p>
<p>I didn’t mention this in the other post, but on a scale of 1~10, i’d say that you’d be looking at a 1, a 2 if you’re somehow lucky. </p>
<p>Also, how did you do on the AP tests and the SATII tests? those scores also affect your chances.</p>
<p>I screwed up my application for USC (I didn’t even submit a supplement because my computer never worked with USConnect)… so basically we’re both looking at a 4-5%. Haha.</p>
<p>Then that’s going to hurt you when you apply to USC. What are you going to say? “Oh, I could have easily obtained a 4.0 gpa at a public school.” </p>
<p>Colleges will not believe that.</p>
<p>If it was honestly that difficult, then you should have just went to a public school to salvage your gpa.</p>
<p>Knowing people with a 3.0 gpa does not help you in any way; you’re only lowering your standards. For all the colleges know, there could be students with a 4.0 gpa at your school.</p>