I began my high school career with a 2.17 my freshman year due to the fact that I was the first generation of my family to go to high school and I had no one to guide me. I was a complete idiot who only did extracurriculars and partied. Since then I’ve gotten my GPA to a 4.3 and my ACT to a 31(no direct studying) while becoming a leader of 3 active clubs at school. I’ve worked my butt off but do colleges even care? I’d like to go to a school like Case Western Reserve or Oberlin College with a full ride.
An upward trend is very helpful, especially if they are rigorous classes. With those stats it’s certainly worth applying to CW and Oberlin. Make sure to stress that you are first generation high school. Make sure to have some safeties as a free ride will be hard to come by at these schools. Frankly, even admittance isn’t assured but you do seem to doing well despite being first generation high school could be a compelling story.
Those schools do not give full rides.
Do you qualify for need based aid?
My parents make around $30k and we have 4 members in our family total. Would this qualify?
What’s your overall weighted GPA from 9th-11th grades? I would think it’s mathematically impossible to raise a 2.17 to a 4.3 overall.
Colleges care about an upward trend but only relative to the actual GPA. In other words, a 4.0 weighted GPA that started out with regular B’s (3.0) and ended with honors/AP A’s (5.0) would certainly trump one that was just regular A’s throughput. But depending on how low your weighted GPA is, you have to accept the fact that it will be too low for many schools.
goldenbear2020, I don’t think an upward trend would trump A’s throughout but it would trump the same GPA without the trend. So if two students had a 3.0 but one started with a 1.0 and ended with with 4.0 and a second had 3.0 throughout, the first would probably be viewed as stronger. but a student with a 4.0 from the get-go would trump both.
If your GPA is on the lower side, then yes an upward trend will help. They care about your unweighted GPA though, because that is less likely to differ from school to school.