Graduating with 14 APs but will my 3.5-3.6 gpa due to course load ruin my chances?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hey, guys and gals. I’d like to start this post by thanking any responses in advance. This question has been bugging me for a while and any advice, knowledge, and/or personal experience would be greatly appreciated.

I’m a high school senior at a non-ranked public school in Florida. My GPA is a very unimpressive 3.5 (unweighted) at the moment. My composite SAT score is 2100 (M720 CR700 W680) and I am involved in my school’s National Honors Society (useless for Applications from what i hear) and Robotics Club, I have been a starter on the varsity lacrosse team since freshman year while playing club outside of school year round and I have over 100 hours of community service. Additionally, I lead a small group of 7th grade guys at my Church’s Youth Group and myself and a selected group of students at my school are currently designing and executing a an experiment to research “hydration of lunar regolith in micro and lunar gravity situations” that will be flown in a manned spacecraft this year. Overall, I feel that my ECs are pretty decent and my SAT is OK. But I am aware that my GPA is really sub-par. My only hope is that the schools that I am applying to will take my arduous course load into account when looking at my grades.

If it makes a difference, here are my classes:
Fresh: AP Human Geo, Honors Algebra 2, English honors, Biology honors, prince tech 1 (magnet specific pre-physics), french 1, and art (required fine arts credit)
Soph: AP World, AP Psych, Honors Pre-Calc, English 2 Honors, French 2, Chemistry Honors, and something else that i can’t remember.
Junior: AP Physics 1, AP Chem, AP US History, AP Composition, AP Calc AB, Weight lifting (for lacrosse), Somthing else that I can’t remember(magnet required),
Senior (current): AP Physics 2, AP Gov, AP Macro Econ, AP Calc BC, AP Bio, AP Comp Sci, Intro to Engineering Design (Magnet Required), and English 4 Hon (Hate literature so that’s why I’m not taking AP)

(I will graduate having completed 14 AP classes in case you don’t want to read all of that^)

I am interested in majoring in Computer Science and/or Electrical Engineering and here is a list of the schools that I am interested in:
-UCLA
-U. of Washington
-U of Texas
-Cal Poly
-Carnegie Mellon
-University of Illinois
-San Jose State
-Colorado School of Mines

What do you guys think my chances are at some of the above schools? Will colleges take my courseload into account and cut me some slack for my GPA? Thanks!

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Colleges will look at your curricular rigor and take it into account, but your 3.5 GPA will be a factor, as will your 2100 SAT. Your 14 AP’s won’t count for much. Here’s someone who got 5’s on 15 APs and who got rejected by almost all the schools to which he applied:

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/admissions-hindsight-lessons-learned/1790144-what-did-i-do-wrong-p1.html

Why are you applying to so many different state schools? OOS applicants don’t have any edge, and don’t generally qualify for much if any financial aid. State schools usually are also much more rigid regarding GPA/class rank cutoffs.

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I’m really looking to get internships/jobs in silicon valley at a tech startup or big name tech company. Obviously this depends on my success in college but i want to put myself into the best position possible. I will be applying to the University of Florida as well but i’m really ready to leave Florida.

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Renaissancedad, that comment was in response to yours. Thanks for the reply!

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You do have quite a few reaches on the list. OOS flagships like UT Austin, UCLA, and UIUC (for CS or other engineering) are rather high reaches. High course rigor is good but not at the expense of GPA. Nevertheless, it would be fine if you are not looking at the very top notch schools. For top schools, they want both high course rigor and near 4.0 GPA.