So I’ve got a pretty good upward trend going on right now. I’ve heard admissions officers look favorable upon this but does anyone know how significant it is? Say I have a ACT score near but not at the 75% for percentile for my top school and have decent extra curriculars and such but am worried my low gpa early into my hs career will hold me back. Will admissions officers see the upward trend and overlook some of the poor grades?
It depends on the selectivity of the school. The more selective the school, the less they feel they have to lower the bar to accept any “upward trend” applicants without other, significant attractive features.
I’ve heard many times that an upward trend in GPA looks good on an application.
FWIW, I’ve also heard these schools do not consider high school freshman grades when judging GPA:
Princeton
Stanford
UCs
CMU
JHU
Cal Poly
My son had so-so freshman GPA (3.4 ish), better Soph year (3.7 ish), 4.0 junior and 4.0 first semester senior year. Although rejected at JHU and Cal Poly, he was accepted and attends CMU. YMMV of course.
Cal Poly Pomona does not consider Freshman grades in their GPA calculation but all CSU’s and UC’s still look at Freshman grades to make sure the a-g course requirements are met with C or above grades.
Cal Poly SLO does consider Freshman grades in their GPA calculation so the exception.
@pickpocket Princeton does consider Freshman Year Grades (according to Princeton rep). This myth has been discussed before on CC and most recently here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1934062-does-the-highschool-you-attend-matter.html#latest
It did appear in the early 2000’s they tended to ignore Freshman grades, but no where on the current Princeton website is this policy stated. Stanford, that does have such a policy, explicitly states it in several areas of their admission website.
Better to assume that they do consider, or better yet, call to confirm.
@pickpocket Thanks for the information. Your son’s grades and mine are very similar. Though the weird thing about my hs is that they don’t give students a gpa but an average of all your grades and no classes are weighted. They also say that a 92 average is a 4.0. Which I’ve gotten all 4 years but freshman year. However I know some schools recalculate gpa and I saw that my top school disregards easy classes (non core) that bring up your average and that only classes 95+= a 4.0 in their eyes. Do you know if most schools recalculate gpa?
Uh, that is a GPA, unweighted.
@datboigoes2skl Yes I believe most schools recalculate GPA and do their own ‘weighting’ (methods are often not public). And I know a lot of high schools ignore + and - in computing GPA, so a 92 equalling 4.0 is understandable. Averaging all grades to compute unweighted GPA is common and probably the best way to compare apples to apples. CDS data and online college ranking/comparison sites also tend to use unweighted 4.0 scale (all classes) in their data, so there is some consistency. Good luck.