<p>I'm a Portuguese student looking forward to apply to some US universities.</p>
<p>My grades are:
9th grade 4/5 (that's probably a 3.0-3.2)
10th grade 15.7/20 (3.0-3.2 again)
11th grade (exchange student in the US, 2 AP's, 1 Honors and 2 Advanced) - 3.38 UW GPA
(School didn't weight GPA, got B+ AP Chem, and B on AP Bio, but didn't take the tests) Ranked 21/125 (top 20%) (Ranks use UW GPA)
12th grade - Looking for a 16.5/20</p>
<p>ACT 34 composite (8 writing)</p>
<p>In Portugal my school doesn't rank. I'm at one of the top schools, nationally recognized private school. I have several EC's and some leadership positions.</p>
<p>What schools with good academics (majoring in sciences, possibly neuroscience) would take me?</p>
<p>Are you sure you have a 3.1 in American terms? Numericals don’t necessarily reflect value.
A 3.1 isn’t very good. Not horrible, but it means a few C’s, mostly B’s, and some A’s. Most selective universities would expect almost all A’s (A or A-) with some B’s.
In some countries, a 16.5/20 would rank you among the top 1% students in your country, but in the US, it’s not impressive at all. So, it’s quite possible you didn’t get the right translation…</p>
<p>In any case, I second the three universities above.</p>
<p>Thanks for your help. As for the GPA I’ll apply to some reach schools, but I’m considering my GPA on the low perspective. My school is ranked 5/612 in the country int terms of grades in National Exams (meaning its one of the most competitive). I probably ranked in the top 20%. </p>
<p>My GPA at the US school wasn’t the best, still 84th percentile, but they didn’t weight honors or AP, and I took 2 AP, 1 Honors and 2 accelerated, and that also caused the lower rank.</p>
<p>I get all the information online saying that a 15.7 is anything from 3.0 to 3.23 to 3.3 to even 3.8, so I’m considering it as the lowest the school might consider it.</p>
<p>Most conversions I found seemed off and they weren’t similar. I converted my grades to UK grades which, according to most websites, is 62-64. This then converted to US grades is a 3.3. This is most likely what it should be, since here it’s very rare to get 20, since teachers, mostly, simply don’t give them. I’m just not sure how universities will look at the 15.7/20.</p>
<p>I hope they don’t just make a simple proportion, because that would be off in terms of difficulty (and I’ve tried both systems, so I can assure you that). Most of our classes are very hard, right now I’m taking Bio and Chem courses harder than the AP’s I took, just as an example.</p>