I really want to get into emory but I transferred to a governor’s school my junior year and my grades dropped to B’s and C’s.
I have a decent SAT score: 2110 but I wanted to ask if there is anything I could do to improve my chances of getting accepted. BTW I am an URM and my family is very low income, if that might help i don’t know.
@elpinchemoyo Just try to take advanced/AP classes and recover your grades…seriously (if you can write about your improvement after having a rough time adjusting, it could sell). That is likely the best you can do. URM is certainly a hook and it is very good that your SAT is average for Emory, but the grades will hurt. They’d honestly rather see the person with a heavy courseload (AP/IB/Joint Enrollment and solid scores…because you can show subject specific strengths which is honestly what matters for college success where exams are not formatted like SAT/ACT), a solid GPA, and lower SAT/ACT scores than either a) Strong grades, weak scores, with low intensity courseload, or b) high scores, low GPA. Perhaps very strong EC’s (particularly ones that flaunt your intellectual abilities) and solid AP/IB scores can mitigate your grades some. Is it too late for you to attempt joint enrollment at a college? If you get something like Millennium-Gates scholarship, that could also make you more attractive. And you could of course apply to Oxford College which is much more lax on the GPA (the score gap is beginning to close though it certainly exists).
Since Emory purports to have a ‘needs blind’ admission process, your income level would not be a factor in the acceptance process (it would help with financial aid). URM probably makes an already attractive candidate more interesting but I doubt that alone will make up for major deficiencies in basic requirements. After all, it does not help the university in any way to accept individuals whom they feel are not likely to succeed.
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You’re also going to have to look at your strategy for applying - if you try to go ED1 your app will have to be complete by11/01 and that means that your GPA at the end of junior year is all they will be looking at. This seems to outweigh any advantage of applying early. If you go ED2 or Regular Decision you may have a chance to show a GPA improvement in the decision process. I believe Emory may also discount your freshman year when looking at GPA, which may in your case would not be helpful.
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Sometimes a person who falters and then recovers can appear as a much more interesting candidate than someone who sailed though with perfect grades. That will depend a lot upon how you present yourself in your essays and other materials. I would not advertise myself as a victim but rather be candid as someone who aspired to excel, stumbled a little when the regimen got tougher, but then figured out how to adjust and work through that. After all, this is what a lot of people experience their first year in college.
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I wish you the best of luck.