<p>I'm looking at some of the best schools (Ivy league, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, etc...), and I have only a 3.5 GPA unweighted, and a 2300 SAT.</p>
<p>Ignoring my other credentials in sat subject tests and extracurricular which are rather strong, what would you say my chances are? Does the GPA affect the college process more than, or equal to, or even less than the SAT, because I would think that colleges would like to set people on equal footing, since GPA depends on the school and ability of the teachers to teach.</p>
<p>If your GPA is less that stratospheric, they will place more emphasis on your class ranking. If you have a 3.5 GPA but are in the top 2-4% of your class, perhaps “poor teaching” or “grade deflation” exists. But if your 3.5GPA makes you in the 25th percentile, then your “excuse” doesn’t fly and lack of academic chops or motivation are probably more the truth.</p>
<p>What’s your class ranking, numerically or percentile?</p>
<p>A 3.5 gpa could be ok, if your pushing youself and taking lots of ap classes, or it could be poor and hurt you. Your SAT score is not inline with the 3.5, be prepared to explain it to the admissions people.</p>
<p>Your combination of gpa and test scores sometimes raises a red flag: intellectually capable, but maybe a slacker in class. Remember, your gpa is from 3.5 years of coursework, testing is a few hours.</p>
<p>Thank you for all of your comments, and in response to T26E4 and joszacem, I have taken all Honors and AP’s, aside from Spanish, which is AP senior year. I took AP US history and Comp Science sophomore, and BC Calc and Chemistry in Junior. For Senior year, I’m taking AP English, Spanish, Psychology, Physics C, and Advanced Calculus (which isn’t an AP, but above it). Do you think that colleges will still think that I’m lazy, or will they “respect” the dedication. And my school doesn’t have a class rank.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but a 3.5 GPA, even with a 2300 SAT is likely not going to make the cut. GPA is given much more weight than SAT scores. If you are planning on applying to these schools, I strongly suggest that you add more schools to your list that are not as competitive as these.</p>
<p>I agree with entomom. While a strong transcript can–to some extent–make up for weak SAT/ACT scores, it doesn’t work as well the other way because of the greater span of time covered by your transcript and because those who do well on the SAT/ACT are generally seen to have the academic potential to earn a high GPA.</p>
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<p>Schools that don’t rank usually give some indication of the GPA distribution. Many will provide a 90th percentile GPA. You should try to find out what information your school does disclose about GPA in its school profile.</p>
<p>Do you have an idea of what percentile you fall in i.e top 5%, 10% etc?</p>
<p>Better yet, does your school have naviance? You can answer your question better than we can by seeing where students with ~3.5 GPA and ~2300 sat have gotten in.</p>
<p>Depends on why your GPA is 3.5. If you had a poorer freshman year and an upward trend thereafter, and especially if you are male, many schools will discount that year. The UCs and Stanford don’t even include freshman year in your GPA. If there are other circumstances which caused a poor semester in an otherwise outstanding academic transcript, you can explain that. If you are an ‘angular’ student (outstanding in sciences, but have trouble with, say, English), some schools will consider that as well. As others have pointed out, it may also be that grade deflation is typical at your school and a 3.5 puts you at the top of the class.</p>
<p>In short, a 3.5 doesn’t necessarily mean anything without more information.</p>
<p>Yeah, I had a few really bad teachers who messed my GPA up completely. And it wasn’t just for me, but for a bunch of my friends as well. And cortana431, for a lot of these colleges, my naviance profile has people from my school applying and getting accepted with a weighted GPA just slightly above mine. My SAT is vastly ahead of their’s though. And I believe that I am at least in the top 10th, if not higher. And to my2sunz, I thought that the SAT would be slightly more important, since GPA depends on your teachers and classes. Doesn’t the GPA mainly compare students in a school, and the SAT compare them in the country?</p>
<p>The problem with the “best schools” is they receive a lot of applicants with high test scores AND high GPA, and you will be competing against them.</p>
<p>Your counselor will submit data that indicates how competitive your school is, which could help you out. That Naviance data should be reassuring.</p>
<p>First of all, GPA depends on the ability to students to understand how the teachers teach and adjust learning and studying style to the teachers. Even though I know what you are talking about, and you are mostly right, it comes off as deferential. You don’t want to blame other people. If some kids make A’s and you don’t, it’s not the teacher. It’s you.</p>
<p>Now to being helpful:</p>
<p>When you talk about admissions, “one cannot simply ignore subject tests, essays, and extra curricular activities”. If you had a 4.0 and 2400 SAT we couldn’t say your chances for acceptance to Berk and the Ivy. If your whole is better than each part, then you can get in. </p>
<p>Things are competitive, and numbers are just the price of admission, but the real win is your person, your essays, and your character.</p>
<p>You have a great SAT score and I’m sure your GPA will improve. Focus on the other stuff and you should be fine.</p>
<p>^^ Thank you Craiggonzales, and that’s what keeps me going. The rest of my credentials are very strong, i.e. founder and president of 2 clubs, strong sat II’s, and my essays will be great…etc. The only thing that kept bugging me was that my GPA would overshadow everything else, and I wouldn’t even have a chance.</p>
<p>According to 2011 college board stats there are only 7218 students out of 1.6 million who did better than Parthivnaresh. Whereas there are atleast 360,000 students with 4.0 GPA(36,000 schools with atleast 10 kids with 4.0 GPA, actually this number could be much higher). If you are an ADCOM at any school, obviously you are looking at too many 4.0s than 2300s. I think his 2300 SAT score is very good and I think it will get him into a decent school. That particular school need not be an IVY, as one of the posters pointed out there are many other scools which are equally good. For my daughter with 2380, we would be quite happy with U VA where she is instate. Good school and great price.</p>
fatherofm, I think you are right that the OP will get into a good school but not one of the most prestigious. You are right that there are ~7K students with the OP’s scores and >36K students with 4.0s. The question adcoms will have to ask themselves is - why isn’t the OP one of those 36K students. If it’s because of depressed grades across the school it will be evident from the school profile. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes due to lack of interest in school. That tells colleges quite a bit.</p>
<p>If you are indeed in the Top 10% of your HS, with a rigorous curriculum, you will have a decent shot at some top schools, but probably not at the Ivies and other Top 10 schools. With mismatched GPA/SAT, it is hard to assign reach/match/safety classifications to schools, so it is important to apply to schools with a wide range of selectivity levels. </p>
<p>Applying ED or EA may be helpful in your situation. Also, study scattergrams available on Naviance, and some college websites that CC doesn’t let me link to, in order to see if you can get a sense of which schools values SAT scores more strongly than GPA. Look at schools that offer National Merit scholarships, as one method of finding schools that value high SAT scores.</p>
<p>Don’t get hung up on the Ivies. Sure, no problem to apply to some reaches, as long as you don’t neglect matches and safeties. The good news is that your stats should be able to get you into some really excellent schools, as long as you are smart about selecting which schools to apply to. “Love thy safety” is a big CC phrase for a reason. Every year on CC there are postings of students with strong stats who apply only to reach schools, maybe with a poorly chosen safety thrown in, who end up either getting in nowhere, or only getting accepted to a safety they don’t like.</p>
<p>Yeah, I studied the scattergrams, and I’m in the normally accepted area for Carnegie Mellon, UPENN, UCAL Berkeley, Tufts, Cornell, Duke, Dartmouth and Northwestern. The rest are a bit tricky, because above my circle, I’ll see a number of people who got in with a slightly higher GPA, and then I’ll look to the left and see people who got in with a slightly lower SAT score. My dream school is Columbia University, or more specifically, the SEAS. It has a higher acceptance rate, and since I’m applying ED there, it will ameliorate my chances even more. Not to mention that I’m taking the session II course there this summer, which I’ve heard helps a lot.</p>
<p>Erin’sdad, the number of 4.0 is not 36k it is 360k. There is one 2300 for every 5,000 students with 4.0. Could I turn your qestion around and say why only one out of 5000+ is getting 2300. Why can’t these hard working students break the SAT barrier at so many levels? If it is lack of interest on the part of OP, what is happening on the other side.You will say lack of test taking abilities, as if that can be excused but not low GPA.
Saachi, I aggree that the thread you alluded to is very informative. I disagree with naviance in these type of cases where there is discrepancy between SAT and GPA. Moreover what helped me so far are results threads and following several interesting posts in college admissions forum, much more saner than “chance me”.</p>