Hey guys,
A friend recommended me to post on this site due to my circumstances, insisting that there are actual answers amid the trolls and condescending replies. I consider my high school to be unique for the following reason: I fucked up real bad my freshman year and pulled it back the rest of my high school career. My freshman year I got a 2.8 unweighted GPA, getting Cs in precalc, my English, and my history course and several Bs. Come sophomore year, with harder classes, i manage a 4.0 UW, and junior year with even harder classes, 6 As and 1B (Spanish 4 honors). Freshman year was a tough transitional phrase for me, an angsty teenager who was cocky with his own intelligence. My overall UW is a 3.5 and W is 4.38, by no means impressive.
I have no doubt that colleges will recognize my intelligence due to how I improved, and also my ACT score 35, and SAT 1550/1600. However I don’t know how they feel about lowering their statistics with a low GPA student, and whether they’ll even look deeper into my app after seeing it. Furthermore, my class rank is shit, considering I go to a competitive school with top 5% having above a 4.7 UW. My question is, what do you think colleges will think of me? Will they be willing to look past a low GPA and class rank? How much worse does this affect me than say, getting a 4.0 freshman year.
I know a few schools recalculate GPA without freshman year grades like UC schools and Princeton, but I’m wondering about colleges that so consider it. My ECs are average I believe, with a mix of a couple of activities, and my commonapp essay will attempt to explain my thoughts freshman year. I just have a fear colleges won’t even read my essay after seeing my GPA.
I was originally planning to ED to uPenn (I would consider myself an average uPenn student had I got a 4.0 my freshman year), but now I’m planning to RD because I can send in my midyear reports with (hopefully) a 4.0 my senior year. What are examples of reach schools and those in my range? If you need anymore info, like what classes I took , or ECs, etc, ask away.