<p>These last two years have been pretty rough for me. I graduated high school with a low GPA (~2.5) and decided to study in Canada (I'm American). While here I've continued to do poorly in my classes and I'm going to be struggling to maintain a 2.0 after this semester. However, I'm done being lazy and making excuses for myself and because of the way credit recovery works at my university I am looking at a possible 3.0 if I get an A in each of the 3 courses I'm taking next semester.</p>
<p>I want to transfer to UCF for next Fall. The Computer Science program there, from what I can tell, is amazing. The research being done in Computer Graphics really interests me and the school offers an Accelerated BS/MS program that I'd like to be a part of. However, the average GPA -- according to the admissions website -- for admissions last year was 3.9, which obviously worries me.</p>
<p>What can I do to improve my chances of being accepted as a transfer student?</p>
<p>I will be working part-time next term and, since I'm only taking 3 courses, I should be able to spend a fair amount of time working on some sort of personal project. I like to program and I'm interested in getting into game programming (with an emphasis on computer graphics), so would something like that make me stand out?</p>
<p>My current university has something similar to basic studies, but you spread them out over 4 years rather than doing them before declaring your major. The courses I've taken while in school are mostly math and computer science courses. By the end of next semester I'll have taken Calculus I, II, Linear Algebra I, Object-Oriented Programming (Java) I, II, and Introduction to Algorithms and Data Structures, in addition to various unrelated courses. I've heard that the rigor of one's secondary school courses is taken into account, is this true and, if so, how rigorous would you say these classes are?</p>
<p>I took the SAT a couple of years ago and I feel that I could do better now. My original score was 1170/1690 (520CR/650M/520W) and I'd like to bring that up to 2000, at least. Will my SAT scores be taken into account at this point?</p>
<p>What else can I do to help myself? A solid education is very important to me and UCF offers one of the best -- if not THE best -- computer science departments in Florida, and that's a major pull factor for me.</p>