Do graduate schools actually look at your transcript?

<p>So I am applying to Food Science graduate school in a few months and was just wondering if graduate school actually look at your transcript year by year or just the overall. Long story short, I screwed up my sophomore year due to some serious personal reason. I got 2.98 first semester and 2.8 second semester (after my advisor dropped 3 of my F's, since i pretty much withdrew from classes, thank God). Anyways, I got 3.65 my Freshman year and 3.6 Junior year. I am expect to do just as well next year since it will be in major classes (my in major GPA is 4.0 btw). </p>

<p>My overall GPA right now is 3.4, I want to apply to some good graduate school, but don't want to waste money if I don't even have a chance. (The only top school i will be applying to is Cornell). I have an almost full-time job (35-40 hrs/week), 2 field related internships, and 1 semester of research. I tend to do pretty well on Standardize test so hopefully GRE would be okay. What do you guys think? Sorry for the long post. </p>

<p>Yes, usually the entire transcript is inspected. That being said, it is a good thing if your grades have improved after the bad semester. It won’t hurt to mention that you had some personal issues in your essay.</p>