Low GPA, High ACT

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

I’m really pessimistic about almost all my choices. It’s times like this where I really wish ACT mattered as much as GPA.
My stats:
ACT: 35 C (36 E, 36 R, 36 S, 33 M) 9 on Writing
GPA: 4.37 W/3.5-6 UW. My school has a harder grading scale, so I have about 3.61 IF schools take my grading scale into consideration. I’m worried they won’t, which will hurt my UW GPA.
Class Rank: Top 10%
Classes: My school only offers about 6 or 7 APs, some of which I can’t take (I don’t take Spanish, I take Italian, which does not offer AP). I have taken all possible honors classes all 4 years. APUSH (AP test: 5) AP Physics, AP Calc
-Letters of Rec: From APUSH and Italian Teachers, will probably be very strong due to our strong relationships.
ECs:
-4-year Varsity Lacrosse player, Captain
-3-Year Soccer Player
-President of the Service Team (Oversee ALL charities/drives/service programs done through the school)
-Model UN member
-Play the drums, guitar, piano, banjo, bass, and vocals; recorded music in-studio and performed live
-Play music at a children’s camp in the summer
-Artist, all kinds of mediums, took classes at the Art Institute
-Broadcast club Founder (announce sports games)
-Youth Initiative (Run different programs for improving student life)
-School Ambassador (Selective program where students are chosen to represent the school at different functions
-Eucharistic minister
-National Honors Society
-National English Honors Society
-Math Honors Society
-Italian Honors Society
Awards, etc:
-National Merit Corporate Scholarship Candidate (don’t know yet)
-Illinois State Scholar
Common App Essay: I talked about how my design was chosen for a Veteran’s Memorial in my area, culminating in a 600-person attendance for the unveiling and a Congressional Medal of Honor speaker. I talk about how it came about through my desire to use my art to impact the community.
What sucks is that I was deferred from Georgetown and BC EA, got into UVM and Villanova EA. I will be planning to submit a portfolio of some art and music, which I think is very strong. I will be applying into art history for most of these schools.

But I’m still worried about what the deferral is indicative of for certain schools:
RD Dartmouth, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Tufts, Georgetown, Brown, Northwestern, UChicago (legacy), GWU, Swarthmore
Will I have a chance at getting into any of those, or is my UW GPA going to decrease my chances to basically nothing, no matter the rest of my application?

2

Here I’ll do brown right here:
Well for Brown the GPA they look for is 4.05 UW because they want you to take all AP classes. You have a great ACT however as they only require 32. But with the low GPA it gives you about a 7% chance where as if you had a let’s say 3.9 you would have a 14.5% chance 5.5% more of a chance then everyone else. The average admittance rate is 9% so yours would be a 7% therefore for Brown it reduces your chances by 2%.
Here’s Georgetown:
They look for a 4.01 UW GPA they also look for AP and IB classes. For the ACT you’re 4 points ahead of what they normally admit into the school so that’s great. With your stats you have about a 23.2% chance. Again if you had a 3.9 you would have a 40% chance so your GPA reduces your chances at that school by about 20%.

So yes it will reduce your chances especially at those schools that have an under 20% admittance.

3

I’m confused by what you’re saying about GPA. UW is on a 4.0 scale. Are you talking about weighted? Because mine is 4.37, above the numbers you’re saying.

4

You’ve done yourself no favors with your grades, especially at the more selective schools, but you aren’t completely sunk, you’ve just put a lot more pressure on your ECs, essays and recommendations.

5

@Wetzel I’m saying most of these require a 4.1/4.0 they expect you to have AP classes which would allow your GPA to go above a 4.0. So it does bring it down but doesn’t mean you’ve completely lost the ability to get in.

6

@wetzel I’m talking about UW they want above a 4.0 but you have far below that

7

I agree. It’s just very frustrating seeing as I am still in the top 10% of my class, and our grading scale is tougher so letter grades are usually one off (we’re on a seven point scale, as opposed to the ten point used for UW GPA.)

8

@wetzel when replying to someone tag them with this: @ and then their username so they can see your reply

9

Your unweighted GPA is supposed to matter more. Weighted GPAs are calculated differently from school to school more often than unweighted GPAs, thus making it more difficult to make fair comparisons.

What I think colleges should do is have you enter your grades into the application, and then the application calculates the GPA that will be used by the admissions officers. This puts every applicant on the same scale. This is how medical and dental schools do it.