Junior In Desperate Situation

Applying to College
1

<p>Hello, my name is AAli4Real and I live in Texas. I am currently a Junior and I am extremly worried about college. The problem is the fact that I am surronded by relatives who all went to great schools (Harvard, Colgate, MIT, Yale, etc.) and I don't have the grades to match that. I do wish to get into Texas A&M or Southern Methodist, Balyor, or Texas-Austin but all these schools are getting competitve.</p>

<p>Here are my stats on high school:</p>

<p>2.45 GPA out of 4.0 (I think, not sure...)</p>

<p>SAT/ACT (Haven't taken them yet, niether AP but I will in May)</p>

<p>532 out of 694 Class Rank (Ouch!!!)</p>

<p>Activites:</p>

<p>Eagle Scout (Boy Scout) Heavily Involved in</p>

<p>Member of National Eagle Scout Association</p>

<p>Member of Psychology Club, Red Cross, YES Program, Newspaper staff at school, and Youth Club at church.</p>

<p>Played football 9th grade and track in 11th, had to quit due to injuries</p>

<p>Taking 2 APs this year and hopefully 3+ next year</p>

<p>I atleast want to get into a good journalism school or University of Houston, is thier hope for me or am I doomed?</p>

<p>Also, my parents refuse to send me to community college so I need to get into a decent university. Thanks for you help/advice!</p>

2

<p>With that GPA and rank ( and assuming your SATs are not high) a cc would be the best bet. Most ccs are very inexpensive. You can pay for it by working summers. Then if you get a high GPA at cc , you can transfer to a 4 year school. </p>

<p>My question to us is why are you allowed to take APs with such a low GPA.</p>

3

<p>Work your butt off and pull that GPA up to at least a 3.0 (higher will probably be needed), but than you will totally have to pull out something amazing on the ACT/SAT! You are not doomed, but you will have to work very hard, and from the looks of you're stats you are not accustomed to working hard (how did you get yourself such a low GPA it's really not hard at all to get at least all B's). The best advice is suck it up and pull out a higher GPA (no more laziness)!</p>

4

<p>Its not about being lazy, I worked hard but I had trouble wih my teachers (Most of the teachers I had had parents complain about them and our admin did nothing about it, seriously, some of these teachers quit or were fired during my junior years.) Hope colleges look at senior year grades...</p>

5

<p>^ they will look at senior grades, but no1 is going to believe you had that many bad teachers.</p>

6

<p>^ 2nd to Michael1. Pull off amazing senior grades and SATs and you've got a shot. But it's far from the end of the world if you go to a cc... it will save you a lot of time and give you a chance to get your academic act in gear.</p>

7

<p>Does Texas have smaller regional schools you could apply to? In Oklahoma for instance we have the 2 big State Us (OSU & OU) and several smaller State Us. The smaller regional Universities are easier to get into. That might be your best bet. With you GPA and class rank you will have difficulty getting into the flagship Us like Texas A&M. If you can pull youself together gradewise in a smaller school you might have the opportunity to transfer.</p>

8

<p>Work your butt off senior year and try really hard to get an amazing scores on the SATs. Include a letter to the colleges about why your grades were low. If these measures fail, then I recommend community college; your parents need to let go of their elitism and do what's best for you. If you do well in community college and have a direction, you'll be able to get into some of the schools you mentioned. Good luck, and remember, when you're 30 no one will really care where you went to college as long as you're good at what you do.</p>

9

<p>"My question to us is why are you allowed to take APs with such a low GPA."</p>

<p>In my school anyone can take APs. Whether you can handle them or not is your call.</p>

10

<p>
[quote]
Include a letter to the colleges about why your grades were low

[/quote]
</p>

<p>While including a letter about why your grades are low might be helpful in certain circumstances I definitely would not advise saying it is because of your teachers. I think that would be perceived very negatively.</p>

11

<p>Senior year really doesn't matter. CC looks to be the choice. The rank really killed you. Sats?</p>

12

<p>You don't need your parents to go to a community college. At least in California, CC's are relatively cheap. Perhaps you could get a job and pay for tuition yourself?</p>