GPA / senior schedule questions - really concerned

Applying to College
1

<p>Hi. I'd appreciate any opinions from you.</p>

<p>I'm a highschool senior preparing for college. My major concern is my terrible GPA. Here are my grades (unweighted)
Freshman
semester 1: 2B's 4A's
semester 2: 6A's</p>

<p>Sophomore
semester 1: 1C 4B's 1A
semester 2: 3B's 3A's</p>

<p>Junior
semester 1: 1C 5A's
semester 2: 1B 5A's</p>

<p>So far the unweighted gpa is 3.61 and most of the classes I didn't get A in are AP/Honors classes so I think the weighted gpa would be a bit better. My ranking is probably low as well- somewhere around 50%</p>

<p>I'm (hopefully) applying to: Cornell, JHU, Duke, UPenn (match?)// Rice, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, GTech (reach?)</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Is it completely out of my ability to get accepted to these schools with my bad GPA? (looking at GPA alone)</p></li>
<li><p>I'm also thinking of getting out of foreign language this year. I have 3 credits(of the same language) so far and my school offers 6 different levels of the language. Is this a stupid idea?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Thanks again for your time</p>

2

<p>I am a senior this year as well and also plan on applying to Georgia Tech. I live just north of Atlanta, so many of the brighter students at my school either GT or rarely, Emory. Last year 4 of my friends were accepted, all early action. You didn’t list what AP classes you took, but if you have 4+ AP courses, a few solid EC’s and good test scores (1300 CR/M or 29 ACT) you should be fine. I don’t know as much about the other schools, though wouldn’t Cornell be more of a reach than GT? Don’t want to get flamed or anything but i was under the impression Cornell was considered Ivy League.</p>

3

<p>Thanks for your reply.
I meant to say Rice, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, GT as Match schools and the others as reach.
Would schools take me out of consideration just because I have a low GPA?(I will have taken 11 AP’s by the end of the year and I have some good EC’s) or do they really view applications holistically as they claim to do?</p>