<p>I have a 3.17. I took one of the heaviest courseloads at our high school. My other stats are decent (1840 on SAT, my parents are from Ethiopia and english is my second language), excellent EC's. Just wanted to see if anyone was in the same boat :/</p>
<p>Don’t fret. I know people with lower stats than yours that got in. As long as you put together a decent application, with particular emphasis on your personal statements, then you’ll get in.</p>
<p>people with low gpa’s do get in. however, they have to have great personal statements and essays about ecs, too.</p>
<p>I had like a 3.2/3.3 cumulative when I applied with a semi-heavy course load and I got accepted in Spring of 2011. I am confident to say that I killed my essays and they helped me A LOT with getting accepted (not to sound egotistical).</p>
<p>@ilikeUW congrats!!! what was your SAT score? and did you have good EC’s, or any hooks?</p>
<p>yeah i’m trying not to worry, what happens now is out of my control.</p>
<p>I think it depends more on what school you go to. For example a admissions counselor was talking to my teacher and said a 4.0 at a inner-city Seattle school was less than a 4.0 at my school. So it depends.</p>
<p>true but how does admissions know the rigor of your school?</p>
<p>they probably don’t.</p>
<p>If it’s an in-state school then I imagine they would have better knowledge. They could also judge from past students who have applied from the same high school, as I am sure they could make judgements regarding how various schools tend to weight class difficulty differently.</p>
<p>It is true that the GPA number by itself is relatively meaningless, although a low GPA from any school could disqualify, a 4.0 by itself is no guarantee of admission.</p>
<p>To determine what the GPA means from a given high school, UW maintains a database of all past GPAs of matriculated students with their high school of origin. They use this to correlate students’ high school to UW GPA and hence infer the rigor of high schools. They thus have data on the rigor of virtually all in-state high schools and even some out-of-state high schools. If UW doesn’t have your high school in their database, they will do some research (e.g. look at the high school profile, which shows AP course offerings, and average SAT and AP scores) and estimate the school’s rigor.</p>
<p>When you apply to any college you’re supposed to let your HS counselor know which school you apply to. The counselor will then send a report to that college with information on the HS. ie., classes offered at school, rigor. This way the admissions office can compare the classes offered at your HS, with what classes you actually took. For instance, if your HS doesn’t offer many AP classes, UW takes that into consideration when looking at your rigor of classes.</p>
<p>and my act score is 29! i hope it will make up for my gpa because everythibg else in my app was pretty good</p>