<p>How does having a good test score and a not-so-good GPA look to a college? I've heard lots of stories about kids with great grades and poor scores, but not so much the other way around. Some say scores help indicate readiness for college work, but if my GPA isn't up to a certain par, will it make a difference? Will the score "make-up" for the GPA? </p>
<p>ACT: Comp:34 English:34 Math:34 Reading:33 Science:34<br>
SAT: (nowhere near as good, so not going to bother with it)</p>
<p>UW: 3.5 of 4.0 W: 4.0 of 4.5
(This may change after my first term b/c taking my first 2 APs sort of kicked my butt)</p>
<p>Depends the college. I think you’re GPA is great, most colleges would agree. Your test scores are awesome. Of course they’d help at least a bit, but it depends on the school.</p>
<p>For top colleges, the cutoff for UW GPA seems to be around 3.7 unless you have a hook,which you have not mentioned. You need to be sure you include some matches and safeties on your list that are further down the scale on average test scores than the top 20 or so universities or LACs.</p>
<p>Maybe it depends on how your transcript looks? Did you have an average freshman year and great sophomore and junior years? Did you take harder classes than most people at your school?</p>
<p>Your GPA is perfectly respectable, but probably not competitive for the most selective handful of elite colleges. Your scores alone won’t guarantee admission to those colleges, either, but you can probably get in almost everywhere else. You can select one or two ultra-selective colleges as reaches, and then formulate a realistic, balanced list of matches and safeties. That strong ACT performance will give you a boost for the second tier, or for some merit scholarships. Where do you want to go?</p>
<p>@ribbonroad224 Every class I have taken in HS was honors, and am currently taking AP Calc AB and AP Gov in addition to Honors Computer Science, Engineering Design and English. My school is generally pretty rigorous. I mostly didn’t take the history or English APs b/c I’m still trying to improve my writing skills in the honors level English. For the most part, it has also been an upward trend in grades</p>
<p>@intparent @woogzmama I think my list of applications is weighted more on the safe side (score wise)
Avg ACT
U of Notre Dame (hook: legacy) 33
Rice 34
WashU 32
Clemson 27
Clarkson 23
Illinois Tech 28
UConn 27
RIT 25</p>
<p>That’s pretty balanced and realistic, although I thought that 32 was at the low end of the median range (ie. 25th-percentile) for WashU. I would have suggested WashU or Vanderbilt as reaches for you. If you want Engineering, you might include Purdue and RPI. </p>
<p>I’ve tried to keep my schools’ enrollment relatively small (UConn’s a “safety”, so I’ll go if nothing else pans out) b/c I wanted the more personal community that it provides (my HS has around 900 students). Purdue, at over 50,000 is way up there; when I visited RPI, is wasn’t terribly impressed with the location or the campus. </p>
<p>URochester should be on your list, since you’ve got RIT, so location shouldn’t be a problem… Good engineering, smaller, merit, especially for someone with your test score. USC (California, not South Carolina) is not out of the question. Lehigh should be a match.</p>
<p>Overall, I think you’re covered on the low end and are realistic. It’s some better schools you should think about adding that you should take a chance on. (So unusual here at CC.)</p>
<p>OP - I hear you re: RPI. I went to boarding school nearby, and can attest to the fact that Troy is a pretty dreary place. RPI underwent a major facelift, and is more attractive now than it was forty years ago, but I respect anyone who would prefer to spend four years elsewhere. I second MrMom62’s suggestion of Lehigh.</p>
<p>speaking of merit (and still related to scores vs GPA), some merit scholarships are based on courses, rank (top 10% usually) and test scores. My school doesn’t rank, but i have roughly calculated that, if they use Weighted, I’m around 18%; if they use unweighted, around 22%. How would that work out, theoretically? Might they still award it? Or is it a no-go b/c of GPA and proposed rank?</p>
<p>You will definitely be admitted to IIT and might will likely be invited to interview weekend for Camras Scholarships. You have a good list of schools and the suggestions made above are good too. I suggest that you put your priorities into looking for a university whose program fits you best. Make sure to visit if possible.</p>
<p>Does your school do class rank? If so, then that could affect how the adcoms view your gpa, along with class rigor and other factors. A 3.5 GPA is good at most schools so don’t fret too much :)</p>