I am going to be a senior in high school, currently in the process of applying to both the USAFA, USNA, and the AFROTC and NROTC scholarships. I go to an extremely small private school in Ohio. My non-superscored ACT score is 32 (34 math, 29 English), my unweighted, cumulative GPA is 3.83 (our school doesn’t offer honors, dual-enrollment or APs because it’s so small), and I am ranked 4th in my class… of 10 people. That puts me in the top 40%, which is very bad for the colleges I’m applying to. I also have C’s on my transcripts from EXAMS (my final and quarter grades are mostly A’s, few B’s), which, as far as I know, very few schools put exam grades on the transcript. I am transferring to a public school in Arizona for my senior year, but the counselor there said they can’t update my transcript (where I will have a higher rank and my exam grades won’t show) until after the 1st semester ending in December, which will be relatively late for my applications. Also, my deadline for completed application for USAFA is Nov. 15th. Should I send in the transcript from my old school or wait? I feel like I’m screwed…
The academies are used to dealing with students who change high schools. It is inherent in the military life. The admission boards will take into account the small size of your previous high school class and will look at GPA as well as class rank. Your ACT score shows that you have the smarts to make it. You will submit 7th semester grades to the board before a decision is made, so make sure that the new school grades are stellar. Make sure you keep up in athletics in your new school and get involved. It may make it harder to get leadership roles going into a new school, but there are ways to do it.