Hi everyone I just wanted to offer my story on applying to college as an underachiever. A little about me: I’m 18, a senior, I go to school in Baltimore, MD, and currently have a 2.8 GPA, and my highest pre-2016 SAT score out of 2400 was 1780. Very mediocre scores. I’m white, and middle class, and I applied for finanaical aid. During much of my high school career, I always thought that a lot of what I was learning in school was useless to me, because of my career interests being in law and law enforcement and finance. So for example, learning chemistry, to me, was pointless. Of course I know that school is there to prepare us for the real world where we’ll have to learn things we don’t know but still, that’s one of the reasons why I never went above and beyond. The other being that I was more interested in doing my own learning. I research a lot of stuff for fun like economics and aviation, etc. the last reason is that I has significant family issues in freshman year and a poor financial issue. I was hearing from everyone especially my guidance counselors who basically told me I probably have a learning disability, which I don’t, that I wouldn’t get in anywhere, much less a reputable institution of learning. I will say that my EC’s were pretty good. I have two years of varsity wrestling and varsity lacrosse, 400 hours of community service, and a lot of work experience.
I applied to George Wasginton University, Tulane Univeristy, NYU, Syracuse Univeristy, Fordham Univeristy, Univeristy of Alabama, Univeristy of Illinois, University of Delaware, Univeristy of Miami, and Penn State. I’ve gotten into all of them excluding Tulane and GWU, but they just haven’t made a decision yet so it’s still up in the air. I’ve got to be honest I’m not exactly sure why they accepted me because I didn’t do anything to special, I didn’t even do any interviews, but I’ll admit I did so well with the essays and written answers. I really tried emphasize that I’m not lazy, I just need to be studying the curriculum of something I’m passionate about to succeed. I also talked about how my financial situation and family issues established a firm foundation in my passions for law and finance. it was honestly a bit sob story but it seemingly worked. My advice would be to tie in your circumstances with what you want to study. I also can’t stress enough the benefit of researching all the little unusual or interesting facts about the school that you’re applying to, that way they see you’re dead set on going( even if that schools is low on your list) I don’t know if this helped in me getting in but I also talked about how I would be taking advantage of all the opportunities on campus like my plans to do internships, Greek life, and ROTC or NROTC. I got into the rest majoring in Finance. While I do plan on transferring to one of my dream schools after a year or two of hitting the books, i feel like the group of schools I’ve gotten into are pretty darn good schools for my stats, especially considering I haven’t gotten rejected (yet?). I honestly sort of regret not applying to the the schools I REALLY wanted to go to, but I will just transfer. I just really wanted to post this because I know how hard it is as an underachiever with big ambitions, but I feel like my situation shows that if any things possible and you can still get into a really good school even if you have average stats. Hope this helped any underachievers out there.