<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I'll be applying to colleges in the US this year as an international student and was hoping somebody could help me out.</p>
<p>I'm applying to HYPSM, Penn, Caltech, USC, Rice, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Duke & Northwestern.</p>
<p>Please comment on the following.</p>
<p>The thing is that I have a really low GPA of 3.2. But then so does everybody else in my class. Despite this low GPA I've always been in the top 1-2% of my class. In India this is a really good GPA because everybody screws up in 11th grade and there is huge grade deflation. My marks\grades also seem to wildly fluctuate and I was a bit concerned that Stanford doesn't see it as inconsistency.
In 9th grade I scored 90%, in 10th grade 95% (national exams), in school exams I did miserably (80%-85%), in 11th grade 86%. But in India this is kind of normal because the schools really make tough exams in 10th (to prepare us for the national exams - 'Boards') and in 11th (for apparently no reason).</p>
<p>I'm not too sure if the colleges I'm applying to will accept me because of my low GPA! Apart from academics, my ECs and recommendations will be good so no problems there. I got 2270 on the new SAT. Will give SAT II in Oct.</p>
<p>What should I do? Should I send a note explaining the above stuff?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>P.S. - In case you haven't realised - I'm from INDIA.</p>
<p>The colleges probably know, and will take into account the different grading systems in the different countries. Have people from your school successfully applied to any of the colleges you're considering?</p>
<p>When I was applying to an American High school and coming from a CBSE school in Dubai, I found a website with a grade conversation scale which basically said that </p>
<p>Indian Grade of-------------------------American Equivalent</p>
<p>60% and above--------------------------------A
50% and above------------------------- -------B</p>
<p>Not sure how accurate that was although the website had grade conversions for a lot of countries.. I guess if you attached that link, maybe it would show that your grade isnt bad at all according to Indian standards.</p>
<p>Good job though.. those are good scores .. lol! I got 87% in my 9th grade and I know how hard I had to work to get that .. lol!</p>
<p>EDIT: on second thoughts, the universities probably have their own grade conversion factors since there might be a lot of students applying from the same board..</p>
<p>yeah, i had to work pretty hard! not sure if the us colleges understand that though! lol</p>
<p>no most ppl from my school don't apply abroad and the few who did their stats weren't comparable to mine (i.e. they were lower)</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>Which board does your school follow? CBSE? If so, then I dont think it should be a problem coz there are quite a few applicants from both CBSE and ICSE. not sure about local boards like the Bengal board, Maharastra board,etc..</p>
<p>Btw, check this out:</p>
<p><a href="http://admissions.cornell.edu/apply/international/internationalsupplement.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://admissions.cornell.edu/apply/international/internationalsupplement.pdf</a></p>
<p>Its cornell's international supplment. For applicants from India, they need to have high DIVISION 1 results which I guess is around 70% or more.</p>