Low GPA Hurts?

<p>I have an overall unweighted GPA of 3.57 taking most of the hardest courses at a competitive school. </p>

<p>Freshmen Year: 3.56
Sophomore Year: 3.53
Junior Year: 3.65</p>

<p>So there is an increase in my GPA to junior year, but with a good SAT Score like a 2200+, is there still a chance for me at top schools like Georgetown, NYU, and Cornell with this low GPA?</p>

<p>My school doesn't have rankings, but it does have a chart that shows the numbers of people getting GPA's between two numbers, and about 30% of the students in my grade have a 3.5 unweighted GPA or beter, but the chart does not factor in the difficulty of the class that one takes.</p>

<p>Any advice would be greatly appreciated!</p>

<p>there is a chance for you at those schools, but you are not only going to have to get great SAT scores, but the subjective parts of your application will also have to be incredible. colleges lean more towards high gpa/low sat then low gpa/high sat, and your rank seems to be much lower than that of the students that these colleges usually except. Don't give up, though!</p>

<p>fish, i have to disagree. ivy league colleges often lean towards high sat low gpa. a high gpa and a low sat hints at grade inflation or someone who just works really hard but doesn't have any insight. a person who has a high sat and a lower gpa may just not have been challenged and got bored, or was challenged heavily at a prep school.</p>

<p>i agree with kriegz</p>

<p>anyway, what matters is that you're taking the hardest classes at your school. colleges have regional directors and stuff who will know how competitive your high school is.</p>

<p>plus, getting good grades in the right courses is more consequential than having the right overall gpa. some schools use weird methods that create huge subjectivity, so they sometimes aren't very reliable.</p>

<p>Well I'll agree with fish, I think the ivies and top schools would take the top student with lower SAT's (within reason) than the other way around. I agree with your argument Kriegz but I don't think the top schools do.</p>

<p>Anyway the problem is even though your grades are good and you took the challenging classes, Georgetown and Cornell and NYU to a lesser extent have enough people applying who took the hardest classes AND are at the top of their class. Is the SAT of 2200 what you hope for or is it based on previous testing?</p>

<p>An SAT of 2200 is what I hope for... combining my 3 best SAT scores together.</p>