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midisoliman · 01-16-2008, 09:04 AM

Hello fellow posters. There is one issue that has been bothering me for the past week. My GPA this term is likely to be 0.2 or 0.3 points lower than it normally is. I'm very worried if this drop sends a bad message to Johns Hopkins University (If I was an admissions officer, I wouldn’t be to pleased as well). But the problem is that I don't want JHU to think I am one of the millions of high school seniors who have come down with a bad case of senioritis (I think I'm vaccinated for that any ways). The reason for the significant drop is actually my schedule and the rigor of my classes. My first class starts at 6:55 in the morning and I end school relatively early at 1:00 in the afternoon. After school usually from 1:30 to 8:30, I'm busy working on my research project at a local Medical Research Center. The research has been moving at a steady pace as I have just recently started getting some good data (I have provided Johns Hopkins with an abstract and research update of my current results) but the only problem is that most days, I don’t come home until 9:30. This leaves me only a few hours to eat dinner do my homework (for a few AP classes and other honors classes) before I could go to sleep. Most days, I go to sleep between 1:00-2:00 AM in the morning, only to wake up by 5:30 to get ready for school. In total, I generally get 20 hours of sleep a school week (25 on good weeks). I also cant make up sleep on weekends because I have other obligations. I’m working on a cohort study with the Hypertension League to help learn more about high blood pressure in the urban community. I feel like I have ran into the perfect storm. I enjoy the work I have been doing but I’ve lost virtually all my study time which is directly related to my drop in GPA. I have always understood that no matter how much outside work you do, it always comes down to grades, grades AND grades. Obviously my chances will decrease, but by how much?

01-16-2008, 09:04 AM	#69
midisoliman New Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Threads: 0 Posts: 4	Significance of Mid-Year Reports Hello fellow posters. There is one issue that has been bothering me for the past week. My GPA this term is likely to be 0.2 or 0.3 points lower than it normally is. I'm very worried if this drop sends a bad message to Johns Hopkins University (If I was an admissions officer, I wouldn’t be to pleased as well). But the problem is that I don't want JHU to think I am one of the millions of high school seniors who have come down with a bad case of senioritis (I think I'm vaccinated for that any ways). The reason for the significant drop is actually my schedule and the rigor of my classes. My first class starts at 6:55 in the morning and I end school relatively early at 1:00 in the afternoon. After school usually from 1:30 to 8:30, I'm busy working on my research project at a local Medical Research Center. The research has been moving at a steady pace as I have just recently started getting some good data (I have provided Johns Hopkins with an abstract and research update of my current results) but the only problem is that most days, I don’t come home until 9:30. This leaves me only a few hours to eat dinner do my homework (for a few AP classes and other honors classes) before I could go to sleep. Most days, I go to sleep between 1:00-2:00 AM in the morning, only to wake up by 5:30 to get ready for school. In total, I generally get 20 hours of sleep a school week (25 on good weeks). I also cant make up sleep on weekends because I have other obligations. I’m working on a cohort study with the Hypertension League to help learn more about high blood pressure in the urban community. I feel like I have ran into the perfect storm. I enjoy the work I have been doing but I’ve lost virtually all my study time which is directly related to my drop in GPA. I have always understood that no matter how much outside work you do, it always comes down to grades, grades AND grades. Obviously my chances will decrease, but by how much?