baumnath

Hi, I was born and raised in NJ, and I currently go to Grinnell College, which is a very competitive liberal arts college in Iowa, where the average incoming freshman GPA is absurdly low (around a 2.0). I did quite well on the SATs, 800 math, 800 CR, 750 writing, and I also have 800s and 790s on several SAT 2s. In high school I had around a 2.9 GPA unweighted, 3.4 weighted. My current GPA is a pretty lousy 2.35 (although that is actually not considered absurdly bad at my college for an incoming freshman, like i said before the average hovers around a 2). Also, the GPA is worse than it should be because I am incredibly unhappy here, thus why I am transfering. In addition, I took a very challenging courseload first semester, including 2 sophmore/junior level math courses.

I am now applying as a transfer student at UDel (late for the rolling admissions). I have never applied to Udel before. The only reason I am applying so late is that I was banking on getting into Rutgers (which I didnt, even though I was admitted last year out of high school). I have a very good letter of reccomendation, and a lot of great jobs and internships. Last year applying out of High School I was accepted to The College of New Jersey, University of California San Diego, Rutgers, and Grinnell College.

popsicle

Does UD have rolling admissions for transfers? They don't for freshman.
Not to be rude, but it looks like you slacked during HS if your SATs were so high and your GPA so low and that you continued to do the same (low GPA) in college. And if Rutgers didn't take you as an instate transfer when they admitted you before, why would UD take you as an OOS especially when they are tougher on OOS? It seems like you might need to go to a community college for a year and work hard and get decent grades and then try to transfer, but I'm not expert.

afro_ninj4

I dont see how Grinnell is highly competitive when the avg freshman gpa is a 2.0

baumnath

I would think the word "competitive" means that A's are not simply doled out to all students, and that there is somewhat of a more even Gaussian distribution in opposition to the documented rampant grade inflation that occurs at many universities in the country.

baumnath

I'm sorry, perhaps I was misunderstood. When I said average incoming freshman GPA, I meant the average GPA earned by a freshman in his or her first semester, as opposed to the average GPA of a freshman coming out of high school. As for the average freshman GPA coming out of high school, it is something like a 4.

baumnath

I didn't mean to be rude in my post on the defenition of competitive. I now realize that I used highly ambiguous language originally and I'm sorry about that.

collegeprep11

i couldn't agree more with popsicle's comment.

hayden

I somewhat agree with popsicle. But how about putting your unhappiness on the back burner, suck it up, and get great grades at Grinnell for this semester, and taking some courses at Rutgers during the summer session. If you can do that, then re-apply to a school you like more, including Rutgers or TCNJ. You need to show someone why they should bet on you. Unhappiness as a reason for low grades doesn't cut it, because then you're really not asking a college to assess your academic capabilities, but rather to make a guess on whether you're going to be happy in the future.

baumnath

I am doing a lot better this semester. Here are my grades as I expect they will probably be for this semester.

Introductory Computer Science: A-
Intro to Sociology: A-/B+
Education methods in science: C+/B
Differential Equations: W (I withdrew... because I was doing really bad... that class was impossible for me)

Last Semester these were my grades. However I was taking two higher level math classes that freshman very rarely enroll in. Combinatorics and Linear Algebra are typically taken first and second semester of sophomore year.

Combinatorical Mathematics: C
Linear Algebra: B-
Education in Plural Society: B- (this is the same professor as I have now for education and he wrote me a really good recommendation. Despite not doing very well in his class, he has a lot of respect for me personally and really liked several of my assignments and really hated others)
Weird Music (A freshman writing tutorial class, there are many different options with different themes): C

I applied as a computer science major because it is definitely the class I enjoy most and I am pretty sure I wanna major in it. However, my schedule all year was really geared toward a Math/Education double major. I wrote in my self-appraisal partially about why I wanted to go into computer science instead of mathematics/education.

So basically I have really good recommendations, SATs, Essays, extracurriculars, and a challenging courseload, everything except the GPA. However, my GPA is much better this semester than it was last semester, but I dropped a course. I guess I'm a really weird case, because I'm so hit or miss with everything, so I honestly have no idea whether or not I'll get in. If anyone knows anything about how colleges tend to consider very unusual applicants, I'd really appreciate if they shared that information with me.