I’m an international applicant from a place that doesn’t count GPA, my education system prioritized government standardised school leaving certifications, so mid-terms and and mock exams weren’t given as much attention as they could have gotten, neither was I informed that they were looked at by universities until it was too late. I had a look at my highschool transcripts recently and the result is that my grades are likely to be under 3.0 should they be properly counted. I’ll be resitting my ACT and SAT so I’m wondering if scores in the upper percentile for standardised tests can help “overlook” my horrible grades. I have a decent amount of ECs and decent enough essays, but neither are anything to really run home about. I’ve picked Wisc-Madison and a couple other Big Ten schools as reach schools, but I’ve only got one state university with a 70+% acceptance as a safe school. Can I really do anything about my bad GPA? Should I apply to another safe school?