GPA Improvement Question

<p>During Freshman year, I had a GPA of about 3.0 and Sophomore year I was planning to improve it, but everything went terribly wrong, and I got a 3.1. I'm currently in Junior Year right now, and I was wondering if I got a 4.0+ both Junior year and Senior Year with 4 APs and a couple of honors, would that GPA be good enough for Ivy League?</p>

<p>Probably not.</p>

<p>It would be on the lower side of the scale, and you’d still need to get straight A+'s in everything. If your GPA for the last two years was 3.1, it’s highly unlikely that your GPA for the next two years will be at least a 3.5.</p>

<p>depends on your school, sure if you go to exeter or harvard-westlake, but -atleast in my case- that sort of gpa at an average and even above average school is not good enough for ivy league</p>

<p>To be fair if you do well Junior year (often looked upon the most highly out of all your time in highschool) and first semester senior year, then you are not out of the running for great colleges. This is especially true if you have excellent test scores and other parts of your application (EC’s, essays, etc) are on the “expected” level for Ivies. Plus, GPA/grades may of course mean different things in different schools. For some schools getting a 4.0 is practically impossible (Valedictorians graduate with 3.8s) while at others, the top 10% of the class are all 4.0s. It really just depends. This is where class rank comes in to consideration against your final GPA.</p>

<p>In addition some schools (like Stanford) do not even directly consider freshman year grades. At all. They only look at 10-12 grades. I say “directly” because Stanford still considers rank and most schools include freshman year GPA in when calculating class rank (if those high schools rank at all - yours might not).</p>

<p>So, NO. You are not dead in the water but bringing your GPA up should be a definite priority. Showing improvement in high school (3.0 —> 4.0) is much nicer looking than falling (4.0 ----> 3.0). And if your test scores are awesome you never know, they might look at you and think “troubled genius”.</p>

<p>That will depend largely on your rank, but unless you go to a very competitive, grade-deflated school, then likely not.</p>

<p>Even if you get a 4.0 from here on out (easier said than done) you’ll still be below 3.4 when applications are due and below 3.5 when your midyear report goes to colleges prior to their final decisions.

Everything else being equal, no. If your father is a US Senator and you are a high D1 football prospect, maybe.</p>

<p>There are dozens of schools as good as, but not as famous as, the Ivies. There may be dozens of schools that are better <em>for you</em> anyway. You don’t have to limit yourself to just the Ivies! [/rant]</p>

<p>Thanks everybody, and moodragon, thanks, I will try my best from now on to get my GPA up.</p>