<p>Hey CC! I am currently a sophomore attending a non-competitive high school. During my freshman year, I was extremely lazy and had no distinct academic dreams or aspirations and thus did not focus on my grades at all. My cummulative was a 3.5 UW and my class rank was around 90/400. After finding CC as a rising sophomore, I realized that I too wanted to attend a top notch college such as MIT, Caltech, Harvard, etc. I am positive that I can maintain straight As for the rest of my high school career and am planning to take many AP classes to bring up my class rank. I could possibly even be valedictorian if I take the amount of AP classes I plan to. However, the highest my unweighted GPA can be is a measly 3.83 by the end of junior year. How much will this hurt me in the game of competitive college admissions? Please be honest.</p>
<p>I’d like to know as well. Thanks in advance for any feedback.</p>
<p>Of course, I understand that GPA is just one part of an application…but would a relatively low GPA for top schools (3.8-3.9 UW) be detrimental to unhooked Asian applicants?</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard, freshman year grades are much less important than sophomore and junior year grades.</p>
<p>3.83 is a solid GPA - balance it out with a rigorous course load and you’ll be fine. The problem is that your maximum is a 3.83 - assuming that you screw up even once, you’ll more likely end up with a ~3.75 than a 3.83.</p>
<p>A 3.75 is by no means exceptional, but it won’t exactly get you in to top schools.</p>
<p>^^Once again, these are just numbers. At most schools, they are looked at in the context of your school. At some schools, high GPA’s are the norm and not all that difficult to obtain. There are schools with multiple valedictorians and then there are rigorous, private schools, where a 4.0 is virtually unheard of. Many of these schools do not rank or weight grades so admissions officers have no idea where a student even stands in relation to the rest of his class and must weigh each transcript separately based on the rigor of the individual student’s curriculum and the school profile. Do not get too hung up with the numbers.</p>
<p>Does that mean class rank is more important than GPA itself? (Because class rank provides an academic evaluation of the applicant to the context of his peers)</p>
<p>In that case, would a ~3.85 UW GPA be a crutch to one’s chances even if he was ranked, say, 10/700 (just outside the top 1%)? Would stellar AP/SAT/SAT II scores be able to recover his chances? And how much could outstanding LORs and extracurriculars do to help that applicant revive his chances? </p>
<p>I know this is purely speculative, but I’d like to see how much a 3.9-ish GPA would damage an unhooked applicant’s chances at the most selective schools. Sorry for dominating your thread, OP, but I think you may have similar concerns as I do.</p>
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<p>Yes. The OP’s rank will be a huge detriment.</p>
<p>So if I were to be ranked 1 or 2 out of 400 with a 3.83 UW, how would that be viewed by admissions officers?</p>