<p>Sup! Here's the situation:</p>
<p>My dream school is UC Berkeley or even MIT (dream)</p>
<p>I am an IB student from Canada, and recently I've been doing very bad in my schoolwork, I've screwed up the first and second term school reports already, and school results over these years completely suck.</p>
<p>However I took the SAT test in May/June and I scored 2340 on the SAT I, and during Summer I built a functional car that runs at about 30 mph all by myself using stuff at my garage and a few components bought via eBay, and I'm planning to move to to build something greater in these few months. I am planning to pursue mechanical engineering.</p>
<p>So, since MIT also looks at GPA (which worries me most), I was wondering, should I go and take a few APs, if I manage to do well in these tests, do I still stand a chance to MIT? How much do my school reports and results affect my chances if I do well in my APs.</p>
<p>P.S. My school results from grade 9 till now is really screwed up (GPA 2.0)</p>
<p>Any extra recommendations are welcomed.</p>
<p>-Jace</p>
<p>If you are asking about one college, you should be posting in the forum for that college. But since you ask about 2 I will comment. I’m afraid that gpa is going to rule you out despite your excellent SAT and your very ambitious hobbies. While schools look at you holistically, that gpa is too low to be excused. It doesn’t indicate ability to do well in a college setting, you see. Now you don’t say what year you are. If your gpa can rise significantly and be maintained in challenging classes like your IB classes, or AP if you prefer, you might have time to make a case for how you have turned it around. </p>
<p>What is the reason for the poor school performance? Have you been tested for a learning disorder? </p>
<p>There is always the option of a California Community College to UC route. Many Calif kids take that due to not having the grades for UC or the money. You can’t be guaranteed for Berkeley but it will be a realistic possibility with outstanding performance. I’m not sure how out of staters are treated in the transfer guarantees to UC’s.</p>
<p>Yeah, you’ll want to work on improving your GPA. MIT doesn’t treat the SAT with huge importance, so I wouldn’t worry about that (although you need to take a math and a science subject test). Make sure you can get some great recommendation letters.</p>
<p>What’s your cumulative GPA?</p>
<p>Consider the caliber of work at MIT-- perhaps it is not the right fit for you anyway.</p>
<p>I agree - the question is why you haven’t done well in high school to date. Are classes boring and you simply don’t do the work? Learning disability? Classes too hard? Each reason can have implications for what MIT or similar school might think… The bottom line question is if you can’t manage the workload or commitment in high school (we aren’t talking about a single semester since it sounds like your grades for all of your time have been poor), what makes you think that MIT would be different? You need to show the schools that you can take your education seriously…</p>