<p>Here's my story. I'm an international student at a top 3 Canadian university. I'm taking Civil Engineering, and will be applying to Civil grad schools in US. I had a very tough freshman year experience. Language barrier was a big problem and I had some adaptation issues. That's why my freshman grades are pulling my cumulative down so much.</p>
<p>First year GPA: 2.6.
Second year GPA: 3.4
Third year GPA (first semester): 4.00</p>
<p>Cumulative: 3.10 (Because of that freshman year...!)</p>
<p>1) This summer I will be doing research with our schools #1 structural eng prof. I'm also waiting to get an award from the Reseaarch Council of Canada. If I get that, 1st author published paper is guaranteed before I apply for grad school.</p>
<p>2) I'm hoping to do well and get a GPA of 4.00 for the next 3 remaining semesters. </p>
<p>Here's my question:</p>
<p>Do I still stand a chance for top 20 schools such as Columbia, Stanford, IUIC, Northwestern, Berkeley, Cornell for Civil Engineering? If so, what else can i do to improve my current condition? Should I wait for my senior year second semester grades and apply for spring enrollment? Help me out guys... I really want to get into these schools.</p>
<p>UC Berkeley doesn’t even look at your freshman year. The GPA calculator looks at the last 2 years. That is probably true for some other programs as well.</p>
<p>^ is it true that Berkeley doesn’t look at 1st year gpa. it’s news to me.</p>
<p>for the op: you will be applying before the end of the fall semester. so, technically you have only one more semester’s (the current one) worth of GPA to boost your overall. unless, of course you the a gap year and apply for fall 2014 admission.</p>
<p>with a first-author paper and excellent LOR, you may be fine for some of your target schools. but you got to expand your list to lower tier just to be safe.</p>
<p>Grade Point Average
If you received your undergraduate degree at a US university or college then calculate your GPA using all coursework towards the degree after the first two years.</p>
<p>If you received your undergraduate degree outside the US, then have all coursework calculated on the system used in your country. We do not convert international GPAs to the US system.</p>
<p>My apologies. Did not realize that the procedure was different for international students.</p>
<p>hasuchObe’s post may have been tongue-in-cheek but it’s correct. Nobody can tell you what your chances are; this isn’t like undergrad (although most of that is wild mass guessing, too, especially when it comes to top schools that accept infinitesimal proportions of their applicants). You can only apply and hope you get accepted.</p>
<p>I will say that freshman year grades are far less important than sophomore and junior year grades.</p>