<p>Actuarial Science, as of now.</p>
<p>3.38 unweighted, 4.31 weighted GPA because of a lot of honors and AP classes. Great AP exam scores (including 5 on Calc BC junior year), 33 ACT, NM Commended (too low for NMSF in our competitive state), racked up a lot of B's and even a C+ because of clashes with some Humanities and English teachers on things like interpretation and analysis.</p>
<p>HS GPA grading scale:
93-100 = A
86-92 = B
etc.</p>
<p>And yes, the C+ was an 85%.</p>
<p>Class rank varies as much as GPA: 26th percentile unweighted, 7th percentile weighted.</p>
<p>Other info -- non-distinguished varsity athlete, moderately involved in extracurriculars like music and volunteering with some leadership positions, NHS, and a part-time job.</p>
<p>First of all, your intended major doesn't matter- you are admitted to the university as a whole, regardless of which school/college you want. Next, grades and test scores are more important than ECs, don't worry about your ECs, they sound fine. According to the admissions expectations chart you fall int the 50% chance, but close to the next box, a 70% chance. Unweighted grades are used, hopefully your school reports a weighted class rank (how do you come up with both?). Improving grades count more than declining grades and one blip of a low grade looks better than uniformly lower grades. They aren't going to know you just missed a grade cutoff, thousands of students fall on the lucky/unlucky side of the grades. Clashing with teachers is not something to put in any college application- as your reason for the lower grade they will see that you just didn't get what the teacher was trying to impart (a trained teacher's view carries a lot more weight than a cocky teenager's inexperienced analysis). The high ACT is helpful but they would wonder about you underachieving, ie not doing the work based on your grades. They don't want to admit people who may not succeed, test scores may show ability but grades may show poor study habits- both are needed. </p>
<p>The short answer, sounds like you have a good chance, but don't count on getting in, ie have a safety.</p>
<p>I appreciate your input, but I disagree about trained teachers' views. C+ in AP Eng Lang + Comp class because of subjective grading; 5 on AP Eng Lang + Comp Exam which includes scored essays/free responses. Less than 10% of AP Eng Lang + Comp Exam takers earn a 5, and that's already a pretty selective group of students.</p>
<p>I suppose the teacher's grade does measure how willing you are to parrot the teacher's thinking and views in your work without developing your own thought processes, though. Is that important?</p>
<p>You need to learn how to open your mind to survive teachers you disagree with, you will find them at any college you attend. Regardless of how valid your opinion of any teacher is all the colleges will see is your transcript and the grades you got. It is in your favor to have the good AP scores to show you learned the material. It would not be in your favor to place blame for your grades on any teacher, the best students know how to work the system. You mastered the AP version of the course, some teachers teach above and beyond the AP curriculum, sometimes giving a better course, sometimes missing material needed to do well on the AP exam. We do not know, and can't know, the truth of your situation. The important thing for you is to realize the expectations of any course and to meet them, during HS and in college, if you want the top grade. You still don't get it- to have an opposing view be accepted you need to show your understanding of the teacher's view and go the extra distance to show why you disagree. Learn how to deal with people in positions of power if you want to get ahead in a given system. That's the reality.</p>
<p>I understand what you're saying, but I think you're leaning too far in the teachers' favor on this. Only a handful of students out of 4 AP Eng Lang + Comp classes in our HS earned a 5. It's not a matter of the teachers going above and beyond. They didn't even cover all of the material on the exams. The kids who scored well on the exams did so because of outside studying with AP Course guides from the bookstore to fill in the gaps.</p>
<p>If you're working professionally with a client, I can see the point of giving the client what they want within the limits of what you are able to offer for the agreed upon price. But we're in school to learn, not to be programmed to mimic particular teachers' thoughts and opinions, especially in subjects that are open to interpretation.</p>
<p>You could use an above the mean test score to improve your chances--29+ ACT or 1300+ SAT VM.</p>
<p>Yes, like a 33 on the ACT. But like wis75 said, admissions will look at that 33 and the 3.38 GPA and think underachievement. What really happened was the ACT score matches the AP Exam scores, while some of the teachers' subjective grades were out of line and this lowered the GPA.</p>
<p>I guess the bottom line is which is more important - did you learn the subject matter and how to use and communicate that knowledge effectively so that your ACT/SAT and AP Exam scores reflect that? Or did you parrot your teacher to get good grades, but your test scores are lower?</p>
<p>The chart on the link below favors grades over test scores.
<a href="http://www.admissions.wisc.edu/images/UW_FreshmanExpectations.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.admissions.wisc.edu/images/UW_FreshmanExpectations.pdf</a></p>
<p>A student with a 3.8 GPA and a 23 on the ACT has a 70% chance of being admitted, while a student with a 3.3 GPA and a 30 on the ACT only has a 50% chance of being admitted. That seems odd considering how widely varied the difficulty level of high school courses throughout the country are, not to mention the variations in grading scales.</p>
<p>A key issue is having learned how to study. Having native intelligence but not showing it by grades may mean a lot of difficulty in handling the required college work. Someone who outperforms their test scores is more likely to be in the habit of working hard and doing so in college. If you are willing to get by with lesser grades you may not know how to work hard and fail in college. A university would rather gamble on the student who has shown they can /will learn the material and be successful than someone who merely has the potential to do well.</p>
<p>Being a whiner/complainer/making excuses will not impress anyone nor will it get you where you want to be. It takes more than one low grade to lower a gpa that much, one bad teacher is no excuse. Look at where you got the other grades and how you could have done better. As long as you play the "it's not my fault, the teacher's grading gave me lower grades" game with yourself you will continue to be at the mercy of external forces and not in charge of your life. Maybe you will get admitted to UW and have respect for the faculty so you do the work needed to be successful. Maybe you will go elsewhere and be able to prove you can succeed. If not, don't blame the world but look at how you need to change your attitude.</p>
<p>everyone at my school that got higher than a 27 on the ACT got accepted into Madison..most had 3.6 gpa or lower. So you have nothing to worry about.</p>
<p>I'm sorry but some of you guys are full of it. Wisconsin is not on Berkeley or Virginia's level. He is in at Wisconsin with an ACT score of 33.</p>
<p>wis75 - Where in any of my posts did I say that studying and hard work weren't involved? It takes much more than native intelligence to score a 5 on AP Exams. They're not IQ tests; they're subject content tests. The disputes leading to lower grades were due to students expressing original, independent thinking in written analysis and interpretation assignments instead of parroting teachers' social/political worldviews.</p>
<p>Don't forget that this is a grading scale in which an 85% is a C+. Subjectively marked down writing assignments easily pull a course average down to a 90% or 91%, which is a B.</p>
<p>This is exactly why we have standardized, vetted tests and exams. It exposes the flaws inherent in teachers' subjective grading.</p>
<p>And if you think that complaining about teachers with political/social agendas sabotaging students' chances of getting admitted to colleges of their choice by marking them down for not toeing the party line is whining, then I'll continue to whine.</p>
<p>wis75, are you professionally connected somehow with UW-M? I'm more than a little concerned that UW-M's likelihood of admissions chart gives the impression of preferring teacher-pleasing, less knowledgable conformists over demonstratedly knowledgable independent thinkers.</p>
<p>Finally, I'll refer you to ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks which based on the data of over 90,000 students at 98 colleges and universities indicate that a student who scores a 33 has a very strong likelihood of success in college courses.
<a href="http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/benchmarks.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/benchmarks.pdf</a></p>
<p>UW-M stands for University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. Madison is just UW. Anyways though, I had almost the exact same stats as you but I didn't have any ECs and I was immediately accepted. Good luck!</p>
<p>Sorry, michael32 - thanks for the clarification! And thank you for your wish for good luck!</p>