<p>Is there an Ivy or Ivy-caliber school that is known for placing more emphasis on SAT's and ec's, rather than GPA? I have a 3.6-3.7 GPA, my SAT's are 2190 and my extracurriculars and references will be excellent (briefly, I founded and was president all four years of my school's PolySci club and am on student council, etc.). My GPA is the most negative thing on my transcript. I would love to go to Penn, but my GPA would probably keep me out. Is there another school where more emphasis is placed on SAT's and EC's. Thanks, everyone.</p>
<p>One more thing - my SAT II's are similar to my SAT I scores.</p>
<p>Adcoms are going to curious WHY your GPA is so low. Your SATs demonstrate that you're really competent, so what happened to your GPA? Your transcript is the most important part of your app - if you have a ligit reason for it being so low, you may get by - but from what I've seen on this site and others, 3.7 seems to be the cutoff.</p>
<p>Hopefully, they'll see that I took a lot of AP classes. For example, I took AP Physics this past year in 11th grade, and got a B+. Obviously, I won't be able to verbally explain this, so hopefully they'll take note of this when looking at my transcript. I'll tell you - I really question whether taking a lot of AP courses is worth the effort. For example, if I took regular physics and got an A, we wouldn't be having this discussion.</p>
<p>Your SAts are just average for a top school so I would have to say you have little shot all in. That said, your rank is more important. If your school doesn't have grade inflation and you are at least top 10% it would be worth applying to Penn.</p>
<p>The #1 factor for any top school is GPA combined with rigorousness of courseload so taking regular courses through high school just to get a high GPA when more challenging courses are offered is a sure way NOT to get admitted</p>
<p>I agree- besides, I have self taught a number of AP courses and really haven't found them that challenging. On the other hand, I have been working from a nicely condensed prep book.</p>
<p>At certain schools with certain curriculums, gpa will not kill you. From my school, people have got into:
Columbia: 3.4, 34 ACT
Northwestern: 3.3, 32 ACT
UPENN: 3.4, 28 ACT
Johns Hopkins: 3.35, 34
Emory: 3.4, 34
Tufts: 3.35, 32
Wash U: 3.6, 31</p>
<p>What was their class rank?</p>
<p>Class rank is not very applicable. One class had 5 students, one had 25, one had 20. A 3.4 will put you around number 7 or 8 out of 20, maybe 4 or 5 if you take allot of classes. again, students are not ranked.</p>
<p>Do you have a guess of where you're ranked in your entire class?</p>
<p>i can only guess...see, I do not know how to rank honors classes, additional classes, APs, nor do I know other people GPA...I would say I am about 7 out of 26 with a 3.7 gpa.</p>