Scholarships when great recs, scores but meh GPA

Paying for College
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<p>My daughter is just starting her senior year. She scored 1420 on the SAT, 32 on the ACT, has extremely positive recommendations from teachers, area leaders, heavy volunteer work for three years for American Cancer Society, strong work history, has taken nearly all Honors, Pre-IB (attended Pre-IB school for 9th and 10th grade) and AP classes. Sounds pretty good, right? Unfortunately, and this still sort of amazes me, one of her top two choices of college (NOT an Ivy, but one with a good Honors program and strong dept in her major) only considers her unweighted GPA for grades 9 - 11, which would be around 3.0. A significant hit was when she FAILED chemistry -- bad teacher and some medical issues combined, but then she retook chemistry and made an A (97 average). </p>

<p>Her school's calculation of her weighted GPA is 3.48. This college's admissions office calculated her GPA twice, once saying it was 2.98, then 3.03. However, they also told her that it would be up to the Honors dept (which recommends a 3.5 for application) and the scholarship office to calculate her GPA but that they would not weight for honors, AP or pre-IB classes. </p>

<p>This absolutely amazes me. I have a younger son and this would seem to indicate that I should encourage him to take the easiest classes possible so he can get the guaranteed scholarships based on gpa and standardized scores. WHY would a school not give some additional weight for a kid who has pushed themselves? Sorry, I am venting and getting away from my question.</p>

<p>At this point she is struggling and a bit down and I feel that it might be time for mom to give her some advice but what? College B, which has accepted her into their Honors program and we are pretty much assured of an excellent scholarship (based on test scores and weighted GPA) might actually be just as good or better, but we were pleasantly surprised at the wonderful "fit" there seemed to be with college A, and felt that she was likely going to end up there. Now she CAN attend but she would not want to without being in the Honors College and without getting a significant scholarship. Neither the application for scholarships nor for the honors college request recommendations, essay or anything other than transcript and test scores, but the admissions officer suggested "contacting them and maybe sending a letter or something to explain the failed class, pointing out the challenging classes and letting them know how much she would like to attend school here." She worries that it will sound like whining and/or begging, doesn't know it will help and I have no idea what to tell her. </p>

<p>Any ideas??</p>

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<p>Your daughter has done a magnificent job. Her SAT and ACT score, as well as the challenging classes that she had taken corroborate this fact. She should not be suffering for this. On the contrary, she should be rewarded. I think it is a good idea to send a letter explaining in detail your daughters achievements and why she failed her chemestry class. it couldn't hurt. Besides, the admission office will have a better idea of the kind of student that your daughter is. you shouldn't think of it as begging or whining, colleges really like when a student shows interest. Don't forget the fact that colleges receive a considerable number of applications every year; for this reason, it is very easy that your daughter's application get lost among the other thousands of applications. Sending a letter explaing what happened could give your daughter the opportunity to get into the admission officer's mind. If this does not work, your daughter shouldn't been dissapointed, taking challenging classes is not only about getting into the college of your choice, is more about learning how to survive college and graduate from college. Your daughter may not get into the honors progam at the beginning, but if she does a pretty good job the first year ( I am sure she will) she can get into the honors college in the second year. There are many students that get into the honors college the first year, and then they have to leave because the cannot keep the GPA. If she is worry about scholarship money, she shouldn't because with her scores, there are thousands of private organizations willing to give her scholarships ( go to free search engines, and make some research, it shouldn't be a problem). Encourage her, as well as your son to continue taking challenging classes. You may think that this is not paying off as you expected; but later on, you will realize that taking challenging classes is helping your daughter to deal with all the work that she will have in college ( I am going to start college in the fall, and the fact that I took AP classes in high school is helping me to deal with the stress) My advice is not to worry, your daughter has talent, and that is something very hard to get. If some colleges do not appreciate this, then they are the ones making a mistake not your daughter</p>