<p>What happens to kids who get great SAT scores and yet ignore doing homework in high school and get low GPA's? Do they still get into great colleges? I'm just curious if someone knows someone like this.</p>
<p>Depends on how you define "great college." Also depends on how truly bad the GPA is; how competitive the h.s. is. Then there are essays... intangibles...</p>
<p>But, ceteris paribus, kids with low GPAs do NOT get into "great schools." Poor performance in h.s. is not viewed by adcoms as a technicality...</p>
<p>Please define any vague terms and give specifics. Otherwise it's hard to decide. Some super-obssessed people view a 3.7 as horrible. Some slackers thing a 2.3 is great.</p>
<p>how about someone with great SAT scores and GPA of 3.0?</p>
<p>They probably wouldn't get in anywhere. They have a future waiting for them in a cardboard box on the streets of New York.</p>
<p>Well... you can't get in to "great" colleges if you have 3 GPA and like 2200 on SAT but no E.C.'s. Activities and involvement in community are important in the admission process too...</p>
<p>I had this crazy friend (seriously, she was awesome, but she was one of those people who's so brilliant they can't function) who had something like a 3.1, but nearly perfect SAT and SAT IIs (all 800s on IIs, 2300 on SAT). She applied 6 places, varying a lot in selectivity. She only ended up getting accepted to her safety, a small, mediocre school where her gpa was only a bit below the average.</p>
<p>In the minds of the adcoms: Poor grades + great SATs = smart but lazy. </p>
<p>Some schools will take smart but lazy students, but many of them won't.</p>
<p>What if have a huge upward trend? In my old school, I was terribly mediocre - on a 100-point scale I think my average was in the 70s, at best. Then I switched schools, took on the most demanding course load offered, and worked my ass off, getting straight As. If a teacher from my old school writes me a recommendation saying that I just wasn't suited to their style of teaching, would my very recent (past 11 months) huge upward trend offset the devastating record of the two years before? Or is it too easy to pass on my case when there are so many other students who've been scoring straight As since kindergarten?</p>
<p>I brought this back out from the bottom (meaning the last post of the CC College Admissions forum), just for fun. :)
I hate seeing the same threads on the top over and over again.</p>