I’m currently a freshman who hasn’t even completed her first quarter of university. I am doing incredibly well in the classes I am taking and expect around a 3.75-4.0 (depending on bell curve grading etc) but did well, not so great in high school :(. I don’t even know what my final GPA (end of senior year) was in high school but I’m assuming around a 3.4ish (maybe even 3.39ish gah). (When I applied as a freshman, it was around a 3.45 but might have gone down second semester)
So basically what I’m trying to ask is, is it even worth it? I would like to apply to Columbia, NYU, and Stanford. Obviously CU and SU are HUGE reaches, but would I even have a small chance? If I, hypothetically speaking, received a 3.8 or above this winter quarter?
BTW the reason why I did not take classes Fall Quarter was that I chose to take a term off and travel to a different country and farm for two months w/ a volunteer group. So I did utilise the time I took off really well. I have continued to do a lot of volunteering…adding up to a total of around 400 hours.
My SAT is a 1910, received a 770 on my US history Subject Test and 2 4s on AP Euro and APUSH. I do have quite a few rewards including 2 state business competition awards (1st place state and Audience’s award 2nd best fast pitch), 1 national award (1st place), and 2nd place internationally in a business competition.
I think my professors (especially one of them) will write excellent recommendations and I have engaged with awesome conversations with one of them
But the thing is, during junior year, i received a D in my precalc class due to personal circumstances/best friend’s death. I made it up the next semester and received a B. So I feel like so many universities, when they see the D, it will be an automatic reject (especially being a transfer applicant)
reason why i feel this way is that well, last year when i applied as a freshman, every single university rejected me except for one(waitlisted me) when I applied via common app. (and the universities using CA require transcripts)
but all the public universities i applied to like UIUC accepted me because they don’t use CA and I feel like they wouldn’t have if they had seen the D when they were reviewing my app? (Public universities usuaully dont require transcripts until you’ve been accepted)
Meh so what do you guys think?