Mid-year Senior grades

Applying to College
1

<p>I recently got a reply from what should have been a safety school saying that they would like to see my mid-year senior grades. First off, does this mean its unlikely that I will be accepted?</p>

<p>My test scores are on the upper end of the spectrum: 34 ACT, 770 Math I, and 720 Bio. I just took Math II so I'll see how that goes. My GPA however, does not look so good, a 3.1 UW. This was caused by some personal issues freshman and sophomore year. By junior year my issues had been solved and managed to get a 3.7 for that year. ECs were athletics, playing a high level club team that takes up 18 hours a week minimum as well as playing for the school team left not much time for anything other than school. I did some volunteering in whatever spare time that had. I also did a CTY engineering course over the summer. I thought this would be enough to easily get into the school (not sure if i should disclose which school but it's around a 50% acceptance rate and median test scores way below mine). </p>

<p>The school was not common app and did not have a place for me to add details of my issues during the first two years of HS. I'm pretty confident that those grades are what got me "referred". </p>

<p>Anyways, onto the real stuff. After being "referred" from a safety school, I'm scared that I set my expectations too high and I wont get into schools I originally thought I would get into. Should I start applying to lesser schools? Should I keep my list as is and mark this down as a misunderstanding? Should I call up the school and inform them of my issues? Help would be greatly appreciated. </p>

2

<p>Routine inquiry. In fact, it’s a positive sign, if they didn’t want to see them, it’s more worrisome. Few schools are going to give you a pass on senior year, they’re just checking to see that all the good things they see in your application are continuing to happen - when you read about how applications are processed, you’d be surprised this is the stage that trips up so many students. “Johnny was doing great, but he really is letting it slip in senior year. We’ll need to defer him and see how he does the rest of the semester, otherwise we could have admitted him.”</p>

3

<p>Did you apply EA/ED? It is not uncommon for adcom to ask for mid year report, however, it would be even more common for those candidate sitting on the border line that they need additional information for final decision. Perhaps they want to see an improvement in GPA in your case.</p>

4

<p>That’s what I was afraid of. This was a safety school and it was rolling admission. If I’m on the border of a school that i thought I should easily get into, maybe I should reevaluate my options. </p>

5

<p>Even the strongest candidates get asked for midterm review, because even those kids crash and burn senior year and no school want to deal with rescinding admissions later on. Better to be sure early than to have to deal with that. Don’t be so negative.</p>