I have a 2.8 GPA and 1310 sat. I am going to my senior year and applying to Penn State main campus in September. I took 3 honors and 2 academic courses in 9th grade. In 10th grade, I took 3 honors and took 1 ap course. And in 11th grade, I took mostly all acidemic courses and took 1 ap course. In 12th grade, I’m taking all academic courses and a lot of business electives. I am thinking to go undecided to Penn state and going to choose to do the summer start to increase my chances. I have 200 plus volunteer hours. I am not going to apply for any financial aid. Can I do anything to help my chances? And also do I have a chance to Penn state?
I think that GPA is probably going to hold you back from PSU main campus, unfortunately. And they don’t have a binding ED option to boost your chances.
Why Penn State? Are you a PA resident?
What’s the major? GPA is low so that’s going to be tough
Do you have any extenuating circumstances that were the reason for your low gpa? If so you may have a chance, make sure you put that in your essay/personal statement. Definitely look into the other campuses for 2+2, Altoona, Harrisburg, and Erie are great campuses if you want a typical college experience, Altoona is good if you want to go up for football games at UP.
I was thinking to apply undecided, then sophomore year transfer to business
Yes i am a PA resident
@Pittunvi so you could try DUS summer start and have a branch campus as second choice.
Make sure you have precalculus honors, Foreign Language through level 3, because math is a weedout class and foreign language is going to be a time sink our first year.
You’re better off starting at one of the 3 residential branch campuses though - with only a handful of honors/AP courses, the sink or swim nature of UP courses is going to be very tough for you.
Yes, I am willing to do the summer option and have a branch as my second option. Can I do anything else to get into Penn state main?
Can I do anything to get in? I am a PA resident and I could retake the sat again for a better score in October. What should I do?
Penn State decisions are 2/3 GPA and 1/3 Test scores and other factors. So that being said, your SAT is already good for Penn State. The middle 50% GPA for Penn State main campus is 3.55-3.97. You fall well below that. Is the 2.8 weighted or unweighted. If it’s unweighted and you have a higher weighted GPA, that may help. But if the 2.8 IS your weighted GPA then you are most likely going to be admitted to a commonwealth campus. Choose Altoona, Behrend or Harrisburg as your second choice as those are 4 year colleges in their own right. With an intent to go into business, my advice would be to start at the commonwealth. The admission requirements to the business school are among the most difficult at Penn State and the weed out classes weed out quite a large number of kids. If you can take those weed out classes at a commonwealth, they are smaller classes and students generally do better.
Can I do anything to help me get into the Penn state main campus? I am willing to take the summer option if that helps. I will also apply for undecided. What should I do jlh?
Take a more rigorous schedule senior year (rigor is factored in: how many honors, IB, AP, DE, AICE courses you’ve taken is taken into account. 16+ is good, 10+ is expected.)
What’s your schedule as of now?
Advert/Prom
Health and Physical Education
Academic Physics
Business Comm
Finance
Honors Introduction to Philosophy
Accounting
Entrepreneurship
Fundamental of Calc
Lunch (SEM 1)
Lunch (SEM 2)
Acad English 4
Honors Level V Spanish
I took a lot of business classes because I would like to do something in business. I will also make sure I get a 4.0 GPA. Like I said I will apply undecided though and apply for the summer option to help my chances.
If you want to improve your odds of getting into UP, replace Advert/Prom, Entrepreneurship, Health&PE with APES, plus 2 from Statistics, Psychology, and Economics regular or honors.
Take English 4 Honors rather than English regular.
Remember that total number of honors and APs will matter.
Colleges don’t expect specialization in highschool; 5 business courses is way overboard.
Is that the only thing I can do MYO to help my chances? And also like I said I’m going to go undecided and apply to the summer option. I am also a PA resident. Does this all give me a shot? Is it a very high chance I get rejected?
@Pittunvi , while I appreciate your passion for UP/main campus, please know that demand for UP far exceeds the available supply of spots, even for DUS/summer. Likewise, once you get there, you will need to take a handful of entrance-to-major required courses (often deemed weed-outs due to their level of difficulty) if you are considering business and earn a strong GPA within a specific credit window in order to gain entry into your major. Many kids get to UP and discover the coursework is so difficult that they cannot obtain the GPA required for Smeal and then won’t have the opportunity to earn a business degree…thus changing their major to communications, human resources, or economics. If you go the 2+2 route, you will benefit from smaller class sizes and more 1:1 attention, which may improve your chances of obtaining the GPA needed to declare your major. Then you could move to UP junior year in the Smeal College of Business. Bottomline: based solely on your past academic performance, you may have a better shot of achieving a Smeal business degree by starting in the 2+2 program. About 60% of PSU alums start in 2+2, so it really is the norm – and often a smarter choice for kids who want one of the more difficult/competitive majors like business, engineering, etc. One current Smeal student in the summer program said 1/4 of students in his business statistics class dropped the course as it was too difficult and they didn’t want to ruin their GPAs. UP can really be that challenging, even for hardworking students with outstanding high school records. Good luck with your application and your senior year. And MYOS is right about adjusting your senior schedule to increase the rigor of your courseload.
@Pittunvi your gpa is low for main campus, and Penn State doesn’t consider your senior year grades for admission, although they do look at your schedule and rigor. But I don’t think there’s anything you can do to change your gpa for admissions purposes at this point. Your SAT score is good, but the gpa will probably mean starting at a branch.