<p>Hi, I just finished my freshman year with a bad GPA. My semester 1 GPA was around 3.4 and my semester 2 GPA was somewhere from 3.4-3.6. Semester 2 I missed about 6 weeks of school, and for the first month or two of high school I screwed around and this really hurt my semester 1 GPA. I am doing something unique for school next year, not sure what. I will either take a lot of APs for the rest of high school (total of about 7-9) or I might take mostly community college classes(home school based curriculum). Assuming I can keep my GPA around 3.9-4.0 for the rest of high school, I play a couple sports, am a member of a club, have a lot of community service, work experience, and internships as well as do 1 or 2 summer programs at colleges, do I still have a shot at getting in to Princeton or U Penn for undergrad? I want to study economics, business or finance.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>You are making a lot of assumptions on what you will accomplish. I take it that you were involved in no major EC’s/community service/leadership, this will hurt you. Ideally you would have been involved in the same activities all four years and grown into a leader in those activities. I am also assuming that you took no honors classes, if you had the opportunity that will hurt you. The low GPA also implies you have a low rank, which may be hard to bring up. Depending why you missed for 6 weeks that will be viewed as a legitimate reason for the low grades, though the other semester where you “screwed around” will not have a justification for the grades.</p>
<p>I think it could happen if you do everything you say you intend to do (assuming your ACT and/or SAT scores are great). But you are assuming you will achieve too much for it to be very realistic. Find some schools that are not ivies that you would be happy at and if you actually do everything you will have a shot.</p>
<p>I just want to point out you plan to have much higher grades even though you will have less time to study and plan to take harder classes. Don’t assume you will get a good internship or even a job, they can both be hard to get.</p>
<p>Thanks for the help! I can easily get a job( I already had one) and a good internship. I’m not worried about this. This year I participated in the Future Business Leaders of America Club and founded a stock market club at my school. I had a job(only for 2 months-long story why I quit) and I now work a little for my dad. I didn’t play any sports, but I have recently (in the last couple years-this year) started swimming, playing golf and tennis. My goal is to play at least two of these sports competitively by my junior year. I will continue to work a little for my dad (he’s a lawyer) throughout high school and I will probably get another job when I get my driver’s license. I applied to a summer program at Georgetown this year, haven’t heard yet. I applied late. I plan to get at least a 3.9 next year, continue my clubs, find a job and next summer there is a business/entrepreneurship program at DePaul in Chicago that I want to do. What do you think? Anybody else have more advice?</p>
<p>And I can easily get a 3.9 or above. I got all A’s 4th semester and only did school work for an hour or less every night.</p>
<p>Anybody else have some advice?</p>