3.7 UW GPA, but everything else great for MIT?

Chance Me / Match Me
1

<p>Hi guys,</p>

<p>My dream school is MIT, and almost every facet of my application is up to par. My physics teacher was really enthusiastic when I asked if he would write a recommendation and I’m friends with my history teacher too, so I’m confident about my recommendations. I’ve done a ton of fundraising and a events for my school’s Ronald McDonald House Charity Club and I think I can get a chair next year. I’ve been thinking about the things to write an essay about and I think I can write some pretty great things (I want a job that directly contributes to society, so I plan to be a civil engineer). I’ve been fencing competitively for many years and the MIT fencing coach said he would write the admissions’ office a recommendation for the NCAA Women’s Fencing Team. I got a 2210 (800M, 720R, 690W) on the SAT which I will retake because I know I could do better (I bombed the essay since I didn’t know what I was doing, but I only got two wrong on the MC for writing) and a 33 on the ACT (35E, 34M, 8W).</p>

<p>And I love love love taking crazy hard classes, which is where I run into a little trouble. My school offers about a billion APs and IBs, so I tried to snatch as many as I could. Finishing my junior year, I’ve taken 7 APs and got 5s on five of them and 4s on two of them. My junior year schedule included AP Physics B, AP Chemistry, AP Calculus AB, AP US History, IB HL English w/ AP English, and IB SL Spanish. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep a 4.0 with a schedule like that - Physics and English were the only solid As, Calculus and Chemistry were A-s, and History and Spanish were B+s.</p>

<p>So will my tough schedule and other credentials make it so my 3.7 GPA doesn’t totally eliminate me from the tough schools? Can I use my high AP scores as evidence that I had tough teachers (which I did; once my US History teacher raved and raved about an essay I wrote as an example to everyone else and I got a B- on that essay because I misunderstood a couple of details I included. Plus, I couldn’t get above a C+ on my AP World history tests and it was my one B in what would have otherwise been straight As in all honors classes my sophomore year, and turns out I was one of the 6% of students that got a 5 that year). The 3.7 is a mixture of As, A-s and B+s; I only got one solid B and that was my lowest overall grade in a high school class. Every year in social science / history I got a B+ or B but I got a 5 every year, and my B+ in IB Spanish is after a not-recommended move-up from regular Spanish where they put all of the non-native speakers, since I decided that I’d prefer to actually learn some Spanish.</p>

<p>Thanks so much for reading.</p>

2

<p>Well, what is your class rank? Most schools look at gpa in context of your class. For example, someone could have a 3.4 gpa but be salutatorian. On the other hand, someone could have a 3.95 gpa but only be in the top ten percent. So, your raw gpa number means nothing; how are you grades (uw and w) compared to your classmates?</p>

3

<p>The goal is to get the highest weighted GPA you can. If everything else lines up you should be good but of course nothing is garuanteed… I think an admissions officer said something like “most incoming students have a healthy mix of As and Bs.” If you google that you’ll probably find the quote. I think you’re good. It is worth taking the harder classes for the B, just not for the C. Good luck :)</p>

4

<p>Chance back? <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1532897-linguistics-chances-updated.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1532897-linguistics-chances-updated.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

5

<p>Thanks for the responses. I know most people in my class would consider me easily one of the smartest people in the grade, but the way my school weights grades doesn’t really enough to make up for the tougher classes. Students who take much easier classes than me end up with higher GPAs, both weighted and unweighted. My school only uses class rank for calculating valedictorian and salutatorian, otherwise they keep it private, fortunately.</p>

6

<p>At this point you make the cut for MIT. Understand that the level of competition is incredible, so that 80% applicants will have your stats. Your GPA isn’t going to hurt so much as the fact you’re “only” at Calculus AB whereas your school is likely to offer Math HL, for example. Many other applicants will have taken <em>very</em> advanced math classes or have a good reason for not having done so (their school doesn’t offer it and there is no community college nearby or offering more advanced classes, for example, or no money to take community college classes or no DE…) This will hurt you more than the 3.7 GPA. At this point you can try to pull a “straight A first quarter” senior year to mitigate the situation. Your test scores will be looked at in the context of your family’s SES and school’s range, but overall they’re good enough that they keep you “in the race”. Fencing will help, too.
But none of this is, in and of itself, enough.</p>

<p>For admission you’d need something truly distinctive, an independent research project, some extra curricular activity that pertains to science AND where you ranked at least at the State Level…
Have you participated in Science fairs? How far have you been able to go? Have you won anything? Invented something? </p>

<p>BTW, look into Harvey Mudd and the women’s colleges.</p>