Hello!
I know this topic has been thoroughly discussed, but I have read some conflicting viewpoints and wanted to see what the crowd thinks at present. For some background, I had mostly As in high school but had a semester where i fell in with the wrong crowd, to the point where I was nearly arrested when my friend was caught shoplifting. So I have a withdraw fail on my report card, but my overall GPA was maybe a 3.7. In college, I was sexually assaulted my first semester and only managed a 3.65. I worked my ass off to achieve a 3.80 cumulative then dropped out after completing my sophomore year bstudent abuse the stress of being near my attacker was overwhelming. At the moment, I’m working with female empowerment groups in SE Asia.
I didn’t mean for this to turn into a chance me thread, I was more hoping for past accepted students to post their GPAs so that I may take some hope. I have browsed through this thread and saw a lot of “You won’t be accepted without a 3.9 gpa” and whatnot. Also, I attended one of the federal service academies (trying to be somewhat anonymous).
I just got accepted as a transfer student to GS.
My GPA is as follows:
High School: 3.83 (Unweighted); 4.12 (Weighted
—>College<—
Freshman year: 2.9
Two year break
Sophomore Fall: 3.7
Sophomore Winter: 4.0
Summer Class: 4.0
Overall: 3.48 (I think)
It sounds like you have a very unique story to tell. Be sure to hit on what you have to offer Columbia. What difference will you make in Columbia’s classrooms?
If you don’t get in, I suspect they simply want to see one year of consistently high grades after your traumatic experiences.
It is not unheard of for people to flunk out of college, work for a bit, come back and kill college then get accepted to Columbia GS. 
GS admission is different than “traditional” college admission. First, its applicants tend to have an untraditional path, and more life experience. Second, in most cases they are transferring from a two or four year school, freshman is very rare. These make the overall GPA, kind of doesn’t matter.
I was accepted in Spring 2017 term, and I believe there is no cut-off GPA for GS admission. This being said, GS is an official undergraduate school at Columbia, and you need to convince admissions that you can compete and succeed at an Ivy school. When You saw some people with 3.4 or 3.5 GPA getting accepted, it was overall GPA and to be honest, it is very misleading. “All the accepted students have 4.0 GPA, or write exceptional essays” is more the reality: If s/he had a “bad” academic history for college and took a break, s/he need to have stellar gpa AFTER enrolling at another school, to be considered competitive in GS admission.
High school GPA almost doesn’t matter in transfer admission. Your college GPA isn’t bad at all, considering what’ve happened unfortunately. But I would recommend you go back to college, work hard and achieve 3.9+ GPA. If your current work experience is outstanding, you can go ahead and apply.