Hello everyone, I am a junior in high school starting my second semester of junior year. I have an unweighted gpa of 2.4 and a SAT score of 2340 (first try). I go to a STEM school in which I have already taken 5 AP courses (8 by senior year) and numerous gifted/accelerated courses. My gpa very low because I came into a college level high school very immature and lazy. It took me a long time to grow up and get my work done but my mistakes have caught up to me this year (college searching time).
I am hoping to get a perfect SAT score on my second try and maybe a gpa in the high 2s by senior year, end of 1st semester.
So my question is, based on my numbers, where do you suggest I apply to ? What schools would be reaches and which would give me average chances ? I would prefer Georgia schools but this is just a preference and I am willing to go where ever is best for me.
Also, If I do regular decision , how many more semesters will I have to raise my gpa before colleges see it ?
Agree that time and money investing in trying to get a perfect SAT score is not well spent. To be brutally honest, you score and gpa already flag you as a very bright kid who, for whatever reason, didn’t take their studies very seriously, and getting a perfect score will only enhance that impression.
Key question: do your grades show an upward trend? Probably not so true of the very most selective schools, but many places will forgive early stumbles if you’ve since demonstrated that you’ve gotten (or are getting) your academic act together.
Regarding what colleges will see, obviously your entire junior year and at minimum your first quarter senior year grades. Regular decision schools will look at full first semester senior year grades.
And it’s very hard to provide recommendations without knowing what you want out of a school other than that they’ll let you in.
If the colleges see an upward trend, it helps, as @rayrick has stated, but your GPA and SAT will be compared to STEM school applicants who do have both high GPA and test scores.
You can go to the admitted student profiles and common data sets to compare your stats at the schools you’d like to attend.
Our son, who was also a late bloomer to taking high school courses seriously, and was a high SAT, mediocre GPA kid, benefitted from taking a gap year. Mostly, the benefit was in giving him more time to mature. But the other, more practical benefit was that by applying to colleges during his gap year, the grades for his whole senior year were counted in his GPA. As his grades had steadily gone up, that made a difference.
What state are you in? My older son did not have scores anything like yours, but they were over 2000, and his GPA wasn’t a whole lot higher. He also had disciplinary problems, but he got into our state flagship. Those test scores will open doors for you at the majority of four-year colleges. I think you will probably be better off at one of them than at a CC, where you are likely to continue slacking off and your GPA might not be strong for transferring. If you become more motivated, and begin performing better in college, you can always try to transfer up.
With a rigorous curriculum, your weighted GPA is probably over 3.0. That will get you in many places. Just don’t bother applying to “Top 20” schools, despite your terrific scores. They have enough high-stat applicants to fill their freshman classes several times over.
You could try GA Tech as a reach. How GPA-focused is UGA? Some state flagships are more so than others (you would have real trouble with, say, UT-Austin or most UCs). Check on GPA minimums for out-of-state at USF, UCF, UTenn, and UAB: I think most of them would like your test scores a lot, provided you clear their basic criteria.
You may want to investigate GT’s transfer admission and transfer credit pages to see whether there are any advantages to starting at GSU versus a community college when aiming to transfer to GT.
A sophomore level transfer will typically be evaluated partially on college and partially on high school work, due to limited college work that can be evaluated at that time. A junior level transfer will typically be evaluated mainly on college work. In either case, you need to do a lot better in college than in high school.