<p>If my gpa for core classes (math, science, English, history, language) is fine for a top school (like a 94) but my cumulative gpa is only like a 92 and takes into account classes like drama, gym, and 3 religious classes per year that I had to take, will it be looked down upon by top tier schools?</p>
<p>Bump… …</p>
<p>Even a 94 across the board make it a tough road for the top tier schools (Columbia, Penn). </p>
<p>What’s done is done. You should frankly stay off of CC from here on out. What does it do for you to have random strangers comment on your chances? It’s clear you have academic potential and will be in a great location in Sept. Be content at that. Go live your life.</p>
<p>Actually, T26E4, this poster is only a junior (see <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/1453007-my-gpa-making-me-really-depressed.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/1453007-my-gpa-making-me-really-depressed.html</a>).</p>
<p>Elnamo, I think the time has come for speaking plainly: you are starting to make a spectacle of yourself. Stop the inane and incessant requests to be chanced. Stop posting the same questions over and over. Stop fretting about petty distinctions in your GPA.</p>
<p>Elsewhere you have said, “Many of my teachers in fact say that I am the hardest working student they’ve ever seen.” OK, that’s really good. Are you also one of the top few students in your school? </p>
<p>If you are, great! You’ll have about the same meager chance of admission to “top colleges” as everyone else in the applicant pool. If you’re not, you’ll have a problem. Because if you want to be admitted to “top colleges” (and I see you on the forums for Penn, Columbia and Barnard), you need to be “highest achieving,” and not simply “hardest working.” Indeed, as you seem to grasp on some level, “hardest working” without “highest achieving” is a recipe for doom at “top colleges.” It spells disaster in the admissions process, and it should, because if you attend a top college, “hardest working” without “highest achieving” would spell disaster for you in your classes. You’d be in classes with pretty much two kinds of students: those who were top academic performers in high school without really breaking a sweat, so they had plenty of time for extracurricular accomplishments too; and those who, by virtue of studying as hard as you say you do, became one of the top students their teachers had seen in decades. If you’re busting your backside in high school and you’re not one of the top few students in your graduating class, it’s pretty likely that in an elite college, students of either type could eat you for lunch. It wasn’t always this way, but it is now.</p>
<p>So, here’s the deal. You’re a good student. You’re hard-working, which is an excellent predictor of success in college. You’re ambitious, which is another good predictor of success in college and beyond. So stop fixating on a few exceedingly selective colleges and universities, and instead assemble for yourself a sensible college list that includes safeties (colleges that you’re pretty sure you can get into and that you’re sure your family can afford and that you’re pretty sure are places where you could be successful and happy), matches, and (if you want to reach) reaches. This is what the smart juniors are doing in the spring of eleventh grade–not blindly chancing each other on some internet message board. And if you do it, too, you’ll have plenty of good options to choose from in April 2014.</p>