<p>you try and narrow yourself to two interests and breed depth through meaningful extracurriculars into them, it’ll be very impressive towards the colleges that foster strength in those particular interests but all in all, i believe Penn and Northwestern are the best matches for you. they are good for both writing, journalism, and business but doing environmental studies in those school would be more than adequate as well…i should have put Penn under Business. have you heard of wharton? it is one of the best business schools</p>
<p>Yeah, I’ve heard of Wharton. Northwestern…is that in Illinois? I’m focusing on 3 areas right now: writing, the environment & arts (plus volunteerism).</p>
<p>yep it’s in illinois</p>
<p>that’s good, now that you’ve narrowed down your interests you can narrow down your colleges: NYU, American, Penn State, USC, UCLA (Ucla’s volunteerism is good…everyone is really involved in bettering the community)</p>
<p>Are you a freshman or in 8th grade?</p>
<p>When I said freshman year doesn’t matter, I mean, colleges look at your GPA, sure, but they care mostly about 10-12. If your grades go up, they’ll know that freshman year was a fluke and disregard it. Besides, freshman year is really not that important. It’s like in middle school, when everyone was concerned about getting good grades for college and then they went to high school and realized it didn’t matter.</p>
<p>i iz a fre$hieeee</p>
<p>For business, Northwestern’s Kellogg school is beast. It’s not Wharton, which I think is #1, but it is like #3 or so. As much as I hate complimenting NU (since my sister goes there, teehee :D), I have to thrown that in.</p>
<p>Trufflie: you seem to know alot for a fre$$shiie (: </p>
<p>Anonymous: (or anyone who knows) - do colleges look more at your individual GPA’s for each year, or your final GPA? </p>
<p>Also, how can 12th grade grades count? Don’t you receive a decision before April/May? Also, my school supposedly doesn’t factor senior grades into final GPA’s, as I stated earlier…(which competely sucks)</p>
<p>^Your transcript matters more than your GPA. Think about your GPA in terms of that. So colleges see all the trends: if your grades went up or down or remained the same over the years, if your lower grades were concentrated in one subject area or spread out. That’s the best answer I can give you for that question. Junior year matters the most, btw, and freshman year very little.</p>
<p>Colleges get your Mid Year report, which has your senior year first semester grades, or whatever your latest grades are. However, this is not a super important term. Your second semester/final senior year grades only matter for your admission being rescinded. Basically, don’t totally change your academic behavior and you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Okay. Here is my understanding of how GPA works, I’m sure someone will know more. Colleges look at your class rank, or percentile if your school doesn’t rank. As long as you’re in the top 10ish% of your class, or even 5ish%, then you should be okay. They also look at your courses, so that if you get a B in Linear Algebra as a freshman as opposed to an A in prealgebra as a freshman, the B is better. I imagine that they also look at the trend of your grades, so that if you show a marked improvement, that just shows that you’re capable of accomplishing things if you set your mind to it. Junior year is the most important year, IMO because it’s the year where major opportunities open up and when you should be ready to take on more challenges. Honestly, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think your GPA can’t be overcome by other things. Like if you write a book and get it published but you aren’t valedictorian, I don’t think a college will care.</p>
<p>Haha, threads like these make me laugh continuously…</p>
<p>Schools don’t give a dung about the “number” for GPA, they look at it year by year. I had a B/- average freshman year (the horror! a C+ in Geometry!), then an A- average Sophomore Year and an A average Junior year. Overall, I had like a 4.0/4.83 (right between an A- and a B+ in an honors class in my weighting system), certainly not good on paper, but Yale looked at the trend, how well I achieved in Junior year, and they didn’t care about Freshman year. Also, I am not a URM, nor did I get a 2400 on my SAT 
(I got an average (for Yale) of 2180).</p>
<p>Some schools say right out they don’t look at freshman year (Princeton comes to mind).</p>
<p>^^ i agree. being valedictorian is the most overrated thing…honestly, there’s some real dumbasses who can become valedictorian. and there’s also people who others regard as amazing but really they’re not even outstanding…but im probably biased because my schools’ past valedictorians have been praised as “gods/goddesses” but end up going to not that great schools and have those common extracurriculuars. really come on go on CC to see who really are the demigods.</p>
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<p>There are some amazing people on CC. Yeah, being valedictorian just means that you study hard. </p>
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<p>How I love Princeton :)</p>
<h1>1 Person: Wow! What were your EC’s and essays? Also, what type of school did you attend?</h1>
<p>Here is one of those accepted student stats threads; <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/820223-official-university-chicago-ea-decisions-class-2014-a-28.html#post1063747733[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/820223-official-university-chicago-ea-decisions-class-2014-a-28.html#post1063747733</a></p>
<p>Never mind… #1, I looked at your posts. You’re a Yale legacy!</p>
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<p>Eg: You! You’re like the smartest person who frequents HSL.</p>
<p>Ha, true, well I also got into a lot of other schools too (Tufts, UChicago, JHU, etc) and wait listed at Princeton, so my analysis of legacy is that it might have been enough to push me from Waitlist status to Accepted</p>
<p>My point is still valid, is what I am trying to say :P</p>
<p>You’re right, those are great schools also. Well, congrats :]</p>
<p>@#1 Person
how do you balance sports with academics? :O</p>