<p>And again. Trying to keep this from falling off the page.</p>
<p>i never got how people can say “low gpa–gonna hurt you” how do u kno how hard the school is??i can say that the val from past years probably all had 3.7 unweighted GPAs or less…and we sent almost the top 40 kids to ivies + MIT + caltech + stanford. so #40 probably has like a <3.4</p>
<p>ur SAT scores are high so you probably have a GREAt chance at wherever you decide to apply</p>
<p>I honestly have no idea what grades my class’ val has, but I’m willing to bet it’s a lot greater than mine. My GPA really is average to low for several of the schools I’m applying for.</p>
<p>oh well not in my school</p>
<p>Yay…you too NLE, too…I don’t think I have ever “met” anyone else who has. Impressive language awards…</p>
<p>NLEs are fun. 
Dunno if I’ll be able to take it this year, since I’m not in a ‘real’ Latin class, but I’ll give it a shot. I’m just annoyed that my one silver has lost me my shot at a JCL scholarship.</p>
<p>i think you’re a good match for all of your schools, except for maybe duke, JHU, and cornell. like you’ve acknowledged, your GPA is slightly low for these three schools but your EC’s and SATI score makes up for that somewhat. I personally don’t believe you have weak EC’s–national awards are VERY impressive (or so i’ve been led to believe) and you have definitely shown a commitment to your interests (latin and greek). good luck with your admissions decisions!</p>
<p>p.s. were you named a semifinalist for emory scholars? jw :)</p>
<p>No, but I made Oxford Scholars. I appear to be the only person on the site who wanted to go to Oxford over Emory proper anyway, so I’m quite pleased by that.</p>
<p>oh congrats! i will see you at the finalist weekend then!</p>
<p>You have something pretty amazing…800 scores in verbal, writing and lit. I think that makes you stand out. Almost a hook. But schools like Duke and Cornell would expect amazing essays to go along with those scores. From your posts it’s obvious you write well. What do you think of your essays? Are they outstanding? Should be. If so I think you could be in everywhere regardless of gpa, which isn’t really THAT bad.</p>
<p>“From your posts it’s obvious you write well”. A little digression from the post but i just saw that she had 3 mistakes in a 3 line post above. :P</p>
<p>You know, I really think GPA’s are not good measures to see a student’s intelligence. Most schools in America still prescribe to the “memorize and reproduce” thinking system, which, not surprsingly, to do well in, you have to memorize and reproduce information from your text book onto your tests. Standardized tests ask you to show pretty basic skills and apply them on different problems. For example, how can someone who got A’s in advanced math for all four years get a 660 on SAT math? Was he/she stumped by the 2x=5 problem or the PEMDAS question?</p>
<p>Now this would sound like a complete divergence but it’s noto since I fundamentally think this applicant SHOULD be accepted to all the schools shes applying to. Whether she will, I am simply as blind as those before me.</p>
<p>Necroposting a bit because I, er, didn’t notice the new replies:</p>
<p>2331k, I think I’m justifiably proud of my writing. My essay wasn’t my favorite thing that I’ve ever written, but I’m usually harder on my writing than most of the people around me. </p>
<p>Hey, Moizuhk, it’s an online forum. I’m typing the way I speak, not the way I write in an essay, hence the rather fragmented sentence structure. And isn’t it a subset of Murphy’s Law that when we critique someone else’s grammar, we always make mistakes ourselves? You yourself made at least four grammatical mistakes in your barely-two-line post above. </p>
<p>With respect to my GPA, I think that part of the reason it’s so comparatively low is that I’ve never been particularly motivated by grades. I try to do my best on whatever I set my hand to, but I’m not really the sort who tears at her breast and wails because I get a C on a test or something. My strength is in long-term retention of facts and concepts, which is probably the reason my AP scores are high. Once I get something into my head, it doesn’t come out again, particularly if the test is based around something with cued memory like multiple-choice exams.</p>
<p>That said, I am doubtful about the usefulness of SAT scores. I’ll take any advantage I can get from my scores, of course, but personally I adhere to the opinion that the SATs measure the endurance of a test-taker above all else. (I’m also extremely doubtful of the Collegeboard’s claims to be non-profit, but that’s a rant for another day.)</p>