My d has a relatively low GPA for the schools she’s looking at (e.g. Pamona and Wellesley) at a 3.6 unweighted and a 3.9 weighted. However, she has a strong upward trend. Her SAT score is a 2220 super scored (800 CR, 710 M, 710 W). My question is: where have other students with a poor GPA but good scores gotten into/rejected from? Any input will be helpful (even if the numbers don’t exactly match my d’s!) 
Please don’t think your child has a low GPA. If she has challenged herself with difficult classes, that is a good GPA. My son with a similar GPA and 34 ACT goes to Vanderbilt, off of the waitlist. He was rejected at UNC, Northwestern, USC.
That GPA is fine for thousands of colleges.
That’s not exactly low.
LBowie, that’s a great ACT score and congrats on Vandy!
I know that for many colleges this GPA is perfectly fine, and I appreciate your input. Perhaps I should have reworded this. 3.9w is low but her scores are great for some of the schools she is looking at and I am curious to see where other students in the same boat as her get in.
Like I said…there are thousands of colleges…thousands…where this student will be accepted. And some with merit aid as well.
Perhaps if you list the colleges she is considering, folks can tell you their experiences with admissions stats at those schools.
Keep in mind, many schools look at things in addition to SAT score and GPA. Yes,those are important…but really so are essays and LOR at many schools. You just never know what will jump out in an admissions application for a student that will top admissions in the student’s favor.
In addition, your student has the chance to show an upward trend by getting great end of year marks now, as well as great first semester marks her senior year.
Class rank might matter too. If 3.9 puts her in the top 5% of the class, that might mean more to the admins than the actual 3.9.
If you’re asking if students with her stats ever get into top ranked colleges? Yes, they have. Are they likely to get admitted to top ranked colleges? No they’re not. Actually no one is likely to be admirtted if the acceptance rate is below 20%, no matter the stats (Pomona is one such school).
That said, Thumper1 is right there are hundreds of colleges that will admit your child and many will give her generous merit aid.
As others have said, a lot depends on how that GPA places her among the other students in her grade. For some high schools, that would put her in the top 10% but at our local HS, would not. It also will depend on how the grades are distributed. If she wants to be an engineer and has top math-science grades but lower English or language grades, the higher grades may carry more weight.
Here are historical lists of college acceptances for 3.3 - 3.6 kiddos.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/767486-where-did-your-3-3-3-6-gpa-child-get-in.html
There are also lists for 3.0-3.3 kiddos. I’m attaching just one of them, but there is one each year.
If your HS participates in Naviance, then you will get a better sense if a kiddo from your HS has historically been accepted into Pomona or Wellesley with a 3.6 UW. But even without looking up stats, my gut says 3.6 UW will be a no for Pomona.
At our high school, a 3.9 weighted average would be in the top 10% of the class. (Last year, those in the top 10% had a 3.8 and above.) So it really depends tremendously on the high school.
I think she has a shot at Wellesley. My D was waitlisted there with low-ish GPA/high SAT, both slightly lower than your D.
Check that thread YoHoYoHo linked above, as well as the following. These helped us during the admissions process:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/869995-the-3-3-to-3-6-gpa-parents-thread.html#latest
and
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/649604-the-i-got-in-without-a-3-7-gpa-club-p1.html
The list below shows LACs that rank among the US News top 50 national LACs, sorted by the percentage of students entering from their HS top 10% (the middle number in each triplet). I’ve omitted any LACs with a higher T10% rate than Wellesley’s (83%). If she likes Wellesley and Pomona, she might want to check out Scripps. Scripps is a women’s college (like Wellesley); it’s a Claremont college (like Pomona). However, its average stats are a bit lower than either (with ~25% of students admitted from outside their HS T10%). Also check out Bryn Mawr and Smith (two other women’s colleges that are in consortium arrangements with neighboring schools).
Data Source: USNWR “Ranking Indicators” (which should in most cases reflect the numbers in each school’s 2013-14 Common Data Set).
School … (AVG SAT CR+M , T10%, ADMIT RATE)
Wellesley ( 1410 , 83% , 29% )
Davidson ( 1335 , 81% , 26% )
W&L ( 1385 , 80% , 18% )
Carleton ( 1430 , 79% , 21% )
Barnard ( 1340 , 77% , 21% )
Colgate ( 1360 , 76% , 27% )
Scripps ( 1366.5 , 75% , 36% )
Claremont McK ( 1410 , 74% , 12% )
Middlebury ( 1385 , 74% , 18% )
Hamilton ( 1385 , 72% , 27% )
Gettysburg ( 1285 , 69% , 41.60% )
Wesleyan ( 1400 , 67% , 20% )
Vassar ( 1395 , 66% , 24% )
Colorado Col ( 1325 , 66% , 22% )
Bryn Mawr ( 1340 , 65% , 40% )
Kenyon ( 1320 , 65% , 38% )
Macalester ( 1350 , 64% , 34% )
Colby ( 1345 , 64% , 26% )
Richmond ( 1310 , 64% , 31% )
Union ( 1310 , 64% , 37.30% )
Grinnell ( 1320 , 63% , 35% )
Oberlin ( 1362.5 , 62% , 30% )
Smith ( 1335 , 62% , 43% )
Bucknell ( 1300 , 62% , 29.50% )
Lafayette ( 1275 , 62% , 34.10% )
Whitman ( 1321 , 61% , 57% )
Bard ( 1275 , 58% , 37.60% )
Mt Holyoke ( 1325 , 57% , 47% )
Holy Cross ( 1305 , 57% , 33% )
Bates ( 1345 , 56% , 24% )
Franklin & Marshall ( 1315 , 56% , 36.20% )
USAFA ( 1317 , 55% , 15% )
Pitzer ( 1305 , 55% , 14.50% )
USNA ( 1280 , 54% , 7.40% )
Trinity ( 1240 , 54% , 31.80% )
Connecticut College ( 1325 , 52% , 37% )
Centre ( 1230 , 52% , 68.60% )
Occidental ( 1305 , 51% , 42.40% )
Soka ( 1210 , 50% , 43.40% )
USMA ( 1282.5 , 46% , 9.00% )
Dickinson ( 1277.5 , 46% , 44.50% )
Skidmore ( 1240 , 45% , 35.10% )
Sewanee ( 1260 , 42% , 60.30% )
I can understand. Yes, there are more colleges than not that will see a 3.6 as a great GPA but when your kid is looking at Pomona and Wellesley, they certainly “feel” very low… and they are for those schools.
My kid was applying with a 3.6uw/4.1w. All her non “A” grades clustered in sophomore year. She had high test scores, 34 community college units with a 4.0 average in them, atypical long term passion based EC’s, great recs and good essay. I will say though that she took the classes she wanted, not the classes those elite schools expect. So while she hit atypical levels in English, Social Studies and languages, she opted out of Calculus (took Stats) and went for classes like physical anthropology instead of AP chemistry. I’m sure that effected her admissions too. She got into all the California in-state public schools she applied to accept for Berkeley (UCSD, UCSB, UCD, SD State, etc.) She was rejected from Pomona and every LAC with an admissions rate under 30 percent (and she went for several because they were “meets full needs” schools and finances were an issue.) Over 30 percent LAC’s and OOS publics she was admitted with merit. She’s at the University of Richmond and it fits like a glove. She absolutely loves it.
Good luck with your searches. People will continue to tell you that a 3.6 isn’t low and they are right. It’s not low. It does effect a kids options though and you aren’t wrong for recognizing that.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
I changed the thread title from “low GPA” to “lower GPA” In part because the GPA is not low as well as to head off the inevitable posts respond “That GPA is not low.” Since this is a new poster, perhaps the advice given can focus more on match/safety schools for his/her daughter.
I would think that the list in #13 should span a fairly comfortable “match” zone for her. Some of the schools near the top veer well into “reach” territory; a few of the ones near the bottom might be safeties (IF cost is not an issue.)
For true admission and financial safeties, you definitely need to think about cost and the financial aid patterns at various kinds of colleges (unless you are wealthy enough that money just isn’t an issue).
Percentage in top 10% has become an almost meaningless statistic, as the number of high schools that report class rank has decreased. Here are some examples (all from 2013-2014 CDS):
Williams: 31% submitted class rank (81% submitted SAT 1 scores)
Amherst: 43% submitted class rank (63% submitted SAT 1 scores)
Bowdoin: 48% submitted class rank (53% submitted SAT 1 scores)
Swarthmore: 35% submitted class rank (81% submitted SAT 1 scores)
Middlebury: 28% submitted class rank (71% submitted SAT 1 scores)
Pomona: 23% submitted class rank (78% submitted SAT 1 scores)
CMC: 22% submitted class rank (58% submitted SAT 1 scores)
^ What would be a better way to identify (for someone like the OP) a set of colleges that fit her profile?
One could use GPA as reported in the Common Data Sets, but there are issues with those numbers, too.
But the high school profile lets schools figure out about where a kid ranks. And the course info tells whether the kid was generally at the top of the range of grades in each class.