bleedblue12345

Hey everyone, I thought it would be good to discuss trends in GPA and how they affect your application strength.

My GPA freshman year was:
3.37 (1st Quarter)
3.81 (Second Quarter)

My GPA sophmore year is/was:
4.2-4.3 (1st Quarter, our school calculates A+'s as 4.5)
My hopeful second Quarter: 4.4-4.5

If I continue this trend, with 8-9 AP's [over my 4 years], will I be competive for most schools (assuming my EC, test scores, and everything else is strong, and our school is extremely competitive and demanding[ minimum 3 hours of hw in regular classes per night ]) (specifically my state schools and a few other schools I want to look into, maybe a high reach like Notre Dame or something?)

Also discuss trends and how you feel they effect admission etc.....

Thanks everyone...

el duque

I feel like how the admissions views grade trends is pretty intuitive. Ideally you would consistently do well. If you start out poorly and improve, then they might recalculate your gpa without freshman year and use that. A steady decline is obviously the worst trend. They would probably look at your test scores to see if you just couldn't handle the more advanced classes or got lazy. Neither one of them is good. You would need to expain what happened in your application. As far as your stats, I'm not going to comment because you're only a sophomore and should be focusing on high school.

hawaiiboy15

crap, I'm going through a downward trend now, lol. But my weighted GPA is higher than ever, but they only care about unweighted, right? I guess it just depends on the school.

book_worm

I have a flat trend - no difference at all between years.

Hypothetical Situation:

Student A - 3.8 UW GPA, strong upward trend in most advanced courseload offered.
Student B - 4.0 UW GPA, most advanced courseload offered.

Assuming both students have comparible ECs, test scores, and URM/ORM status, who gets in?

hawaiiboy15

B, I'd say, he was perfect, A was good, very good, but not perfect 4.0