<p>I lived in a post-war middle eastern country for the entirety of my middle school years that barely had a proper school system in place - as a result, my adaptation period during freshman year was horrible yet I managed to pull a 3.0 GPA by the end of it. Considering the fact that I am currently in a very competitive high school in a country outside of the US (As are hardly given, the valedictorian of our graduating class had a 3.7 GPA), will this hinder my chances for acceptance into elite colleges in the US? Would I have to explain this in my essay and would it be beneficial for me or do I have absolutely no chance for the colleges I plan on applying to in a years' time (HY, Penn, UChicago)?</p>
<p>I'm multi-racial (three citizenships, very diverse background) and have moved around from country to country my entire life - I'm currently an IB student as well.</p>
<p>SAT: 2300 (my school doesn’t offer the subject tests).</p>
<p>Payment is not an issue, and I have over two dozen writing awards from a fairly prestigious institution - my extracurrics are mostly writing based (school newspaper, etc). I also have four years of varsity basketball and have a pretty good shot at student council president.</p>
<p>I don’t see how there’s no way of regulating GPA, however. Our school’s course load is extremely rigorous (two separate curricula, bilingual IB diploma, etc) and it’s incomprehensible that getting an 88% here is seen on the same scale as an 88% on a far easier course that would have been available to anyone else. Like I said, the highest GPA we experienced in the valedictorian of last year was a 3.7 overall.</p>
<p>I have a few relatives who are professors at some of these schools, if that does anything in my favor.</p>
<p>I am not a US citizen, btw - my citizenships are Canadian along with citizenships of two third world (middle eastern) countries. I’m anything but white yet I can’t exactly pinpoint my ethnicity.</p>
<p>Perhaps I should add that my low GPA could be attributed to the fact that we are required to learn the local country’s language and that specific course is as weighted as all of the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) combined. Without that class, I’m pretty sure my GPA would be up at 3.4 or something of those lines.</p>
<p>Your Ecs and SAT are totally fine.
Explaining that your GPA would have been higher if it hadn’t been this class or that class, no matter how you word it, will be read as excuses by the admission officers. So don’t do that. And…high school rigor is taken into consideration but no way as important as your GPA, essays, and SAT score(your is very good)</p>
<p>Also, your current cumulative GPA, while has significant uptrend, is still very, very low for Ivy league or any other school in same tiers like Uchicago: almost all of the, including internationals, qualified applicants have at the lowest 3.8 unweighted +, and all of them have taken the most rigorous classes in their schools, have pretty good extracurricular activities as you do.
Also, while your GPA is the highest GPA that has ever been in your high school(as you said), there is still one thing to know; even if you would have had 4.0 unweighted GPA and higher weighted GPA in other schools, the schools you mentioned are totally fine with students who have real 4.0 UW GPA and higher W GPA, which means there is no particular reason to accept you(NO offense, okay? That’s just how it is. This is applied to everyone who’s in similar situation). After all, what appears in your transcript is the most important. Your legacy benefit will give some significant boosts, though.</p>
<p>Lastly, even if your school doesn’t offer subject tests, you have to take it anyway if required by schools(although U chiago doesn’t)…or is it that your country doesn’t have them?</p>
<p>Don’t worry about the gpa, in some country 85/100 is the highest grade a student can ever achieve. So if you get 80/100 you probably is in the top 2% of the student from that country and the international adcoms will know about it.</p>
<p>When I first arrived in USA, I was at around 50/100 and I did just fine in college that is not very selective.</p>
<p>@artloversplus how come 85 is the highest that cam be achieved? I m just curious. Is it just that particular country’s education that makes it impossible to get 90?</p>
<p>Right, in some culture, if you get a 100 on a test, it is an insult to the teacher. Therefore, the teacher made the test so hard that very few can even get passing grade of 60. If the whole class got 90+, the school will immediately call in the teacher and question his practice.</p>
<p>In addition, the college entrance exam was so hard, some of the student got single digit on their math and still went to HYP the equivalent. This is a common place in Asian culture. Grade inflation may take a hold in recent years, but that was when I went to HS.</p>
<p>Another reason why the grade is low is that they have negative points system on multiple choice questions. So if there were 50 multiple choice questions in a test, each correct answer got 1 point, but each wrong answer got -2 points. Therefore, if you got half the answer wrong the grade from that section is 0. Obviously, you try not to answer any questions that you are not sure of, thus the low grade.</p>