Should I take online summer classes solely for the GPA boost?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>I don't mean to sound arrogant or overly concerned or anything like that. I'm just wanted to know if I'd be overlooked if I didn't do this.</p>

<p>I've taken the hardest possible course load my schools offers. I'm one of 8 out of 300+ Juniors who is part of the IB Diploma Program at my school, and by the time I graduate, I will have taken 5 AP classes (7 AP exams), and 10 IB classes (6 exams).</p>

<p>Since I've taken 15 very difficult college-level classes, my GPA isn't as high as it could be. I wanted to challenge myself and that's why I've taken these classes, even if my GPA is hurt a bit. At the end of my Junior year, my UW GPA will be in between 3.55 and 3.6, which is good, but a number that would almost be surely overlooked by top schools.</p>

<p>Even with my difficult course load, I feel that top schools will look at my transcript, see a 3.5something GPA and toss it away immediately without fully realizing the difficulty of my course load.</p>

<p>I am seriously considering taking 4 or 5 online classes over the summer in order to boost my GPA up to a level that top schools won't automatically overlook. </p>

<p>The classes I'm looking at aren't pointless classes either like Gym 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. SCVSP (the South Carolina Virtual School Program) offers classes like Personal Finance, Entrepreneurship, Web Design, Financial Fitness, Statistics, as well as a few basic science classes that I may be interested in. I want to major in finance so most of these classes would definitely be practical and interesting to me.</p>

<p>Top schools say they consider applicants holistically, including the difficulty of courses, but I think having a 3.5x GPA will put me at a severe disadvantage to someone with a 3.7 and I believe I can remedy that by doing this. </p>

<p>What should I do?</p>

<p>**TL;DR: I have a low GPA because of really hard classes (15 AP/IB). I think taking 4-5 interesting by academically useless classes over the summer will help improve my college admission chances because 3.7>3.5something.</p>

<p>Should I take the classes?**</p>

2

<p>I didn’t even read all of it. (Read half of it). </p>

<p>Take the class.</p>

3

<p>Alright. I added a TL;DR for your reading benefit.</p>

<p>(Ignore the typo, it should be “interesting but academically useless…”)</p>

<p>And is it realistic to assume that a lot of colleges will focus primarily on the low GPA versus the reason for the low GPA (all the hard classes)?</p>

<p>I’m sure Ivies wouldn’t want a student with a 3.5 GPA no matter what their course load, SAT scores, or other factors were.</p>

4

<p>Hello! My sister took a lot of summer courses to boost her GPA, and it helped her get into UC Berkeley, so it certainly couldn’t hurt. :slight_smile: Best of luck!</p>

5

<p>Do you think your sister wouldn’t have gotten in if not for the GPA boost?</p>

<p>Is there any chance that it could backfire and hurt me?</p>

6

<p>I took two summer cc classes relating to my major the summer before senior year and got A’s in them. I talked about how I received those grades in them compared to a few ugly grades I received my junior year (C in Honors Chem and Honors Precalc) and got into UCLA and Berkeley. I think the good grades in cc classes AND the initiative I showed in taking them contributed to my acceptance. I wouldn’t take 5 at once though, because you might do bad…which will probably backfire.</p>