GPA woes

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
1

<p>i love penn and ben franklin.</p>

<p>that said, i don't think i could get in with my 3.88 GPA since that doesn't place me in the top 10% of my class.</p>

<p>however, i have an explanation for the grades i got in sophomore year that brought down my 4.0 GPA.</p>

<p>i plan to add this to the additional info section on the common app: "I humbly request you to take into consideration the initial stress and pressure that I faced when I separated from my father and moved to a different city two weeks after the beginning of my sophomore year in high school. Although I do not want to make excuses, I do feel as if the grades that I earned in a few classes during the transitional period do not accurately represent my knowledge and ability to accelerate in those types of courses. Therefore, I ask you to not focus on my past, but rather on the future that I aspire to have."</p>

<p>MY QUESTION IS: should i?!! is it useless to point out my outlier grades in sophomore year? do they already look out for that stuff?</p>

<p>another thing is that, even though i got As during freshman year, my GPA doesn't factor it in...so it's just my sophomore and junior year...which is a narrow margin...so...help.</p>

<p>should i send in the additional info?</p>

2

<p>A 3.88 unweighted didn’t get you in the top 10%? Dang…
I love UPenn and hope to see you along Locust Walk next year.
However, I do not feel qualified to answer your question. Best of luck to ya!</p>

3

<p>Personally I would send that in, just to be safe.</p>

4

<p>i think 3.88 gets me in top 20-25%
my school has 164 people and we don’t weigh our GPAs at all…so someone could be taking multiple art and PE classes and have a higher GPA than I do</p>

5

<p>I had bad grades my freshman year that brought down my GPA. I did decide to include in additional information that my father had a brain tumor freshman year… which was true… because it seriously hurt my grades and I didn’t want my grades to be considered without that knowledge. UPenn will want to know that something happened that affected your grades. I think you should include that.</p>

6

<p>you could and they’ll look at it but I feel that it is low for you to do that.</p>

7

<p>yeah i felt like it was low as well…</p>

<p>the only reason why i would submit it if they won’t realize why my grades dropped…but i’m pretty sure they would</p>

8

<p>3.88 and not even top 10%?! i have a 3.6 and am top 1%</p>

9

<p>If you have an interview, they will ask you if you want to tell them any additional information that you haven’t included in your application.</p>

10

<p>I think you could put it a little more objectively. For example, I had to move to another country and skip freshman year cuz of family issues. So in additional information, I simply stated this fact, and didn’t add any other comments about it affecting my grades (although it did). But of course, I don’t know much about what happens in the process, so do whatever you think is best.</p>

11

<p>I’d say go ahead and include it. Otherwise they won’t know what to make of those grades other than just assuming you couldn’t make the cut. Extra info always gives them a clearer picture.</p>

12

<p>but my transcript is obviously from two places…i guess i’m wondering if they’ll piece the puzzle.</p>