I’m just wondering what my chances are. I have a 1210 SAT, a 3.11 Unweighted GPA (2 AP’s and 7 Honors for 9th grade to 11th grade and I’m taking an additional 2 AP Classes this year), they are: AP Bio, AP US History, AP Literature, and AP Environmental Science. I applied for DUS and also applied for the summer option. Thankyou!
What is your weighted GPA? A 3.1 will likely be deferred to a commonwealth campus but I’m assuming your weighted GPA is higher with AP’s and honors.
My school does not give a weighted but most of the gpa calculators I’ve put my grades in give me a weighted usually between 3.5-3.7
Plus my school is a private school so an A at our school is 3 points higher than an A is at most local public schools and a B is 5 points higher than it is at local public schools and so forth.
^ that won’t be taken into account. You’re applying to a super large University, they don’t have time to parse through that. (For hokisitc, personal reading of your application, apply to Allegheny, Muhlenberg, Goucher…)
They’ll see something like 3.5/1210, 11 honors/AP, private school, DUS.
Your odds are good, at least 50%, although the 3.1 unweighted may put your directly in summer session.
Okay awesome, I would more than happily accept summer as well, I just want to go to Penn State, it’s literally my dream school
Since you attended a private school, I assume you’ve had good peer caliber and are used to a lot of hw, can read/write at a good level, so my recommendation would be (if you get in) to NOT take English/Speech&Comm over the summer (there are various LEAP choices), and declare yourself a DUS Paterno Fellow Aspirant. It means you’ll have access to Honors classes - in particular, the 137-138 sequence which is awesome (it does suppose strong verbal skills - most of your classmates will likely have taken AP Lit or AP Eng Lang) - it’s a year-long, project-based class. These classes are more demanding (I don’t recommend you take the Math/Science Honors sections unless you got an easy A in AP Bio -keep in mind the Schreyer students have 1400+ SATs, 20 honors/APs, etc., so you have to be willing to be challenged) but they’re also more interactive, personal, and “fun” than the regular classes, which is especially good if you’re interested in Humanities, Business, and Social Sciences. Regular classes tend to be large and impersonal in the first year, with a lot of memorizing/scantron tests v. the more dynamic, discussion-based Honors classes for the same subject (say, Econ 104 vs. Econ 104H, or BBH101 v. BBH101H). You can take 2 Honors classes and 3 “regular” classes (foreign language, math…) for a well-balanced schedule. Don’t overload since no matter what it’s a tough adjustment.