<p>freshman and sophmore year were rough years for me at home due to some personal issues and i had roughly a 2.8 unweighted gpa(granted I had ap classes) i took ap world history test and the ap english test and got 4's on both and junior year maintained a 4.0 (with ap casses) and heading into senior year i plan on doing the same, I have been doing some calculations and it dosen't look like my unweighted GPA will be much more than a 3.2 or 3.3. i feel i belong at a more prestigous university (stanford ,NYU, williams, amherst) but from the looks of their acceptance rate is that possible?</p>
<p>and my psat was 210 so im hoping on SAT i can get 2200+</p>
<p>DS was in roughly the same situation as yourself, 3.3/2200+ after jr. year. It did knock him out of any chance of gaining admission at a top-tier institution as he had no outstanding talents to help him. He found that average grades hurt him more than high SAT scores helped him. Fortunately there are more intellectually challenging colleges than prestigious colleges. Continued strong mid-year grades as a sr. will help your case, as will strong essays. For a quick read on how colleges size up credentials, try to identify one or two safety schools that have rolling admissions and apply as early as possible. To supplement your application, you may want to address the personal issues that account for your fr/so performance, not as an excuse, but to show the actions you have taken to overcome them. I’m not sure of the best way to go about this.</p>
<p>and i think it’ll make you feel better jeff that if you apply to Stanford (and some other schools…not sure which ones) they will re calculate your GPA excluding your frosh year grades </p>
<p>I didn’t know some schools did that, recalculate GPA w/o freshman year. That could be helpful in some cases, like jeffums, but more often could make it actually harder. Lots of kids can get a 4.0 for freshman year. It’s the kids that can maintain it as the classes get significantly harder and the student has more demands on their time (jobs, ECs, etc.)</p>
<p>The honor roll is published in the paper here (small town!), and the 4.0 freshman list is long. It gets shorter each year.</p>
What’s DS? First thing I saw reminded me of Nintendo DS, but that can’t be the case. Sorry, I see this come up occasionally but have not the slightest clue of what it actually is…</p>
<p>To the OP: Stanford omits freshman year grades, and it’s pretty unfortunate that you messed up a bit sophomore year but with explaining your circumstances and showing that you improved junior year I don’t think it’s all that impossible, although it will depend on your EC’s and such as well.</p>
<p>LOL – DS is kind of a cutesy and loving (sometimes totally sarcasting) way of referring to loved ones: DS stands for ‘darling son’ DD for ‘darling daughter’ DH ‘darling husband’ – you get the idea…</p>
<p>without freshman year and assuming my grades remain constant i’d be looking at a 3.566 and hopefully a 2200+ on my sat im not entirely sure about ACT</p>
<p>Ive been a volunteer at my church for years and also worked at a community center for disadvantaged youth for a couple of summers </p>
<p>can this coupled with an extraordinary essay and a select few ECs (students for political awareness, english honor society ,and debate) get me in </p>
<p>and as far as talents I have a few skateboard competitions under my belt and a sponsorship.</p>
<p>stanford is really my passion and it has been the worst feeling ever to think of what could have been had i not slipped up for a year. any stanford students in here who might be able to shed some light on my predicament</p>
<p>I’d also advise you to explain the personal issues in your application. Sounds like it wasn’t simply that you were slacking off and didn’t care, but something was causing the grades to go down (which you’re showing by picking them back up now), so tell them about it. Also, upwards trends can only help you. Never count yourself out of the running, and good luck!</p>
<p>you should include the issues you faced in your essay. colleges really look at essays when they consider you. i used my essay as a way of spilling out all my problems and showing how i got over them and it got me into brown :)</p>
<p>btw. i was by no means a star student. i got 2110 on my SATS</p>
<p>Also, if other than the soph year grades, you are a strong enough candidate, would you be comfortable if your GC – or you under the anything you want to add part of the application – straightforwardly and briefly explained the personal/family issues that impacted your achievement? Clearly, you have gotten past whatever the problem was in terms of your ability to function very well academically. It might help the admissions committee to understand, and could give an ad com who supports your application more to go on in presenting you to the committee in a sympathetic light.</p>