Recent ADHD Diagnosed (Rising Senior) Atrocious GPA/ Good EC's /Decent Test Scores

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Hello fellow aspiring scholars and parents,

 Let me start off by saying thank you for taking time out of your days to offer me some guidance. This is my first ever post here, and I apologize in advance for any forum rules I will potentially violate.

In addition, I apologize for the length of my post, but I prefer to have you awesome people know a little more about me, as opposed to making assumptions based purely on numerical data.

I examined quite a number of low sat/high gpa threads on this site simply to give me a glimpse of hope for my similar situation. However, they only discouraged me, as I found that many students that have such qualifications are told that they simply should not even entertain the idea of applying to a decent school. However my situation is a bit different from these student, so I would like to start off by telling you a little bit (a whole lot) about myself.

I recently turned 16 and am a rising senior, at a top 20 public school in New Jersey. My mother has attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, my father - Seton Hall, and my sister at Princeton (she too had lower GPA and also suffered from a case of ADHD). My father owned a successful business that at its height was worth millions (not to brag just to give you idea of my financial situation). Unfortunately as a result of the economic, crash it suffered financially till mid this year, when his new company took off.

I had hopes my whole life to attend Rutgers University, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, or UCLA. I know know these universities are likely out of my reach at the moment, but being a New Jersey native, I grew up with Rutgers and still am clinging on to my dream of attending Rutgers University - New Brunswick.

Throughout middle school I was a strong student (but who wasn’t), though I really had to spend about twice as more time as most of my classmates studying to get the grades I did. I was class president from 5th to 8th grade, and was a member of my schools Debate Team, Science Club, Competitive Math Club, and our very competitive basketball team.

I will start off with the good

High School: Good EC’s/ Decent Class Rigor/ Above Average Athletics

Freshmen Year: 1 Honors (History)
Sophomore Year: (Grade 10 History Honors not offered) 1 AP (Chemistry)
Junior Year: 3 Honors (English/Spanish/Calc) and 1 AP (Bio)
Senior Year: (Scheduled for) 1 Honors (English) 4 AP (Easier in my school- Economics/Environmental) and AP Spanish 6/ Comp Sci - (I have a lot of experience in Programming so it should be an easy A despite teacher being a little strict)

EC’s ( so far)

Philosophy Club (Very Popular club/ Should be top 3 in size next year) - Founder/ President - 1 Year

FBLA - 3 Years (very disorganized club beyond repair will probably be dissolved by next year)

Investment Club - 2 Years (Soph-Junior) Secretary Sophomore Year

Community Service: I am actually very passionate about community service, as both my parent (even when they struggled themselves) always found time and money to spare for charity. Therefore I have collected a total of 280 hours so far on weekends and over the summer, and intend to continue

I have most often volunteered for

-Habitat for Humanity
-2 distinct organizations for 3rd world development
-Rural Hospitals in Virginia and Kentucky

Athletic Extra Curricular (so far) - Will List Specific Awards later

-State Ranked Track and Field Athlete (3 years)
-Initially joined because basketball team required too much time commitment but went on to gain interest and invest more time than I even would have in basketball team

  • 3 year Varsity (will be 4 next year) - Will be captain next year
    • Have been looked/received letters at by Colleges (Babson, LaFayette, University of Pennsylvania, Marist, Muhlenberg, William and Mary), but no offer yet :( -Wrestling (1 year)
    • 2nd Degree Black Belt

In School Extra Curricular

Philosophy Club (Very Popular club/ Should be top 3 in size next year) - Founder/ President - 1 Year

FBLA - 3 Years (very disorganized club beyond repair will probably be dissolved by next year)

Investment Club - 2 Years (Soph-Junior) Secretary Sophomore Year

Drawbacks

-Financial Struggle (till this year)

-Diagnosed with ADHD during Spring Break when GC and teacher’s contacted parents about it
- I used to study for hours only to get straight Bs
- Once I received proper medication and guidance I studied for less time than I used to and received all As and 2 Bs for the remaining Marking Periods.

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Sorry end got cut off :slight_smile:

Test Scores

-SAT Subject- taken it in May (Post ADHD recovery)

Math 2 - 720

Math 1 - 690 (IDK why i took it haha)

SAT 1 - June

-1960- retaking fall (Taking an elite and rigorous class that should improve this score greatly)

Ok and now for the bad part…

My GPA for now is around a 3.0 I know this is horrible and many will say that it will negate most of my efforts
However, the general response for those I ask (including my counselor) say that having Undiagnosed ADHD throughout Highschool will drastically alter the view of how the admissions officers take in my GPA.

I did my best to show that in just the few months of the school year I spent with proper medication, I have improved my academic record. I have dramatically increased my grades (while balancing track) and achieved pretty good standardized test scores in that time. So will this show that I have the ability to succeed in college, and allow Admissions Officers to somewhat overlook my past grades? I understand a school like Rutgers may not take my essay or EC’s into much consideration as they are more just focused on numerical stats, but are there any other good schools that would consider me?

Thank You All for your time and I look forward to hearing from you. :slight_smile:

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That GPA was unweighted btw

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@TF2016 I’m absolutely sure that if you have a GC talk about the ADHD matter addressed in a rec letter or that you mention it in the “additional information” section of you application, the college will let your grades slide just a little.

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anyone else? Any help is very much appreciated

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Do you have an IEP? If not the colleges will want to see it.

Your best bet would be to start talking to the college coaches who showed interest. The July 1 contact date just started so you might be able to get pulled in with coach help.

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OP, have you thought about a PG year at a boarding school? I wonder if that would give you a chance to show what you can do academically. It also sounds like you may be young for your grade, so one more year of maturing before college might be beneficial in other ways.

Best of luck -

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My son got into Rutgers-New Brunswick SAS with similar statistics (lower unweighted GPA).

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@GnocchiB I actually have considered the gap year, but did so for the purpose of raising my GPA senior year.
Thank you for the suggestion.

@woogzmama That is pretty reassuring, thank you!

Also, after just 2.5 weeks of rigorous SAT prep class, I am now scoring around 2050-2150s on practice exams, and still have 8 more weeks of the class. So I am confident, that I can raise my score significantly, possibly giving me a greater chance.

I know Rutgers barely considers EC’s or Recs/Statements, so would anyone have any suggestions for other colleges in that range which will better consider my EC’s?

When I asked my guidance counselor (who is aware of my entire situation), she said schools from Mich State to Vanderbilt would actually not be out of my reach. I am aware Vanderbilt rejects top students, and barely has a double digit acceptance rate, but at my school, it accepts a quite surprising 38% of applicants. Many of these accepted students had relatively low GPAs, but had higher end test scores.
However, I would be more than happy to simply attend a larger public school with a reputable business school

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I think you have a good shot if you show an upward trend then your GPA doesn’t matter as much. You SAT score is promising too. Sorry I took so long to respond.