I am a high school student who has attended the Summer Residential Governor’s School for Humanities. Would this help me get into places like UVA or William and Mary even if my GPA is only 3.57.
My low GPA is due to the fact that my district doesn’t differentiate weight between honors and AP classes. (We’ve had valedictorians who never took honors or AP courses before. As you’d expect this really screws up our class rankings)
Just some facts about me: Intended major commerce/business IT
I had an abysmal freshman year due to a lack of focus on academics.
Had a 4.0 sophomore year with only two courses not being AP or duel enrollment (one of the two were honors)
Had a 3.7 junior year with two courses not being duel or AP.
1300 sat
Cisco Certified Network Engineer
Jr. Network Engineer at Regional IT company
As said before, I really want to get into a place like UVA Vatech or William and Mary but I feel like even Governor’s School wouldn’t help me even have a chance
I would think it would help some. I think both UVA and W&M know the high schools in the state quite well and can break down and evaluate GPAs, which are not standard like the SAT. If your grades are trending up, that is also a plus (your freshman year was evidently the worst).
You need to try to get your SAT up as well for UVA and W&M. If this is the new SAT, I think W&M’s middle 50% was something like 1300 to 1480 or so for class of 2021, so you would be at the 25th percentile. I didn’t see UVA publish the middle 50% for 2021, but I think the average was 1388.
If your own *unweighted * gpa is 3.57, that’s what you’ll have to deal with. Not someone else’s. It means you got less than A grades somewhere. It matters which classes. Adcoms will see the transcript.
If the mid 50% is (from their web site, 2016-17)
660-740 Evidence-Based R/W
660-760 Math
the usual advice is to be at the top of that range or better. You’re looking for closer to 1500.
Gov Academy can’t change that. Yours may be rigorous (not all are,) but think of those kids at TJ. They need the solid record, too, despite a tough hs.
And VA is trying to serve the whole state. Where are you?
lookingforward used 2016 admitted (not enrolled) SAT range for UVA, which is typically higher than enrolled since top scorers often go somewhere else. But 2017 numbers with the new SAT are likely to be higher than 2016. You should work to bring up both SAT and GPA.
From the SCHEV (Virginia higher ed) web site, UVA median SAT for entering students in 2016 was 1350 and median weighted GPA was 4.26. William and Mary median SAT was 1360 and median weighted GPA was 4.19. Median SATs will be higher in 2017. You need to work to bring up both SAT and GPA, targeting well above median for SAT.
Right, can’t enroll if you aren’t admitted.
Bottom line, OP has some work to do, well beyond median.