<p>I'm a junior in high school. My grades have been, in my opinion, very good until this semester, where I got three B's. Counting this year, I've taken nine AP classes with all the rest being accelerated/honors. After this semester, however, my GPA stands at 3.83. If I get my act together next semester and through my senior year, am I in good shape in this respect? Duke is my number one school, but I also have a lot of interest in UCLA, Northwestern, and Illinois. Any feedback is much appreciated.</p>
<p>I would like to clarify, this is my unweighted GPA on a 4.0 scale.</p>
<p>I don’t think your GPA by itself is going to keep you out. Hopefully your B’s were in tough classes… try and show an upward trend in grades going forward and hopefully you have other EC’s and test scores that are more within Duke’s range.</p>
<p>Hey, we have the same unweighted GPA (except I’m a senior)! To answer your question, I think that your GPA is just a number, and will probably be treated as such among certain universities, like the ones you’ve listed. As long as it isn’t hideously low, it shouldn’t be a big deal. Especially if you improve your B’s to A’s, that would look good because it shows improvement and that you tried that much harder to get good grades. The classes you’re taking will be taken into account as well. A 4.0 with easy courses is obviously different than a 3.7 with all APs.</p>
<p>GPA must be considered in the context of curricular rigor, which is a real Duke Undergraduate Admissions’ point-of-emphasis. Duke carefully assesses whether applicants accepted the challenge of very/the most demanding courses offered by their secondary school. Therefore, three Bs, although not “good,” is not a decisive reason for denial. Further, MANY other factors (standardized test results, recommendations, essays, EC, and so forth) are important. For ‘20 (and utilizing recent years’ data) Duke will:
- Receive about 33K applications
- Accept about 10 percent
- Matriculate about 1,750</p>
<p>You need to focus on restoring your grades to their previous, excellent level (u/w 3.8+); however, you also need to understand that Duke ardently attempts to look for the “individual behind all the application numbers.” In that environment, no single thing is VITAL, but everything helps Admissions to understand the candidate more-fully. </p>
<p>I agree with everything TopTier said. I want to add that I also think the rigor and competitiveness of your high school in general will be considered when Duke evaluates your grades. I am a current Duke student, and I wasn’t in the top 10% of my high school class (I was in the top 20%, though). I had a few Bs on my transcript and even one C+. However, I went to a prep school, and I don’t think I would have gotten into Duke with those grades if I had received them at my public high school. </p>
<p>That being said, regardless of what high school you are at, I don’t think your GPA will keep you out of Duke–after all, you still have a 3.83. I think that if you get an upward trend going, get 4s and 5s on your AP exams, and score a 34+/2250+ on your ACT/SAT (whichever you submit), then you will be a perfectly competitive applicant as far as academic performance is concerned. </p>