During sophomore year I ended with a 2.8 GPA. It was the worst year by far I’ve ever had. I realized things had to change and got my GPA up to a 4.15 during Junior year. My cumulative went from a 3.02 to a 3.4. Will the increase in GPA look good in an application or will it go unnoticed? Do they just look at cumulative? I had personal problems during sophomore year which greatly affected me in school and I really hope I can still get into my dream school. I am an in-state student as well. Thanks for your help.
Congratulations on your massive improvement!
There are several ways you can increase your chances:
- apply undecided (in DUS)
- apply for the summer semester
- put a branch campus as a backup
You can see the distribution of GPAs (note: on a 4.0 scale) for this past year’s freshman class here:
http://budget.psu.edu/CDSRedesign/cds.aspx?reportindicator=FreshAdmn&Location=UP&AY=20152016
It says that the average GPA on a 4.0 scale is 3.60, which is quite high. I’m not sure what your unweighted GPA is, but it’s mathematically going to be lower than your weighted (3.4) so you should probably take the measures listed above to have a shot.
And no big deal if you have to do the 2+2 plan, in the end. Most people do.
When I went to an admissions tour at PSU, they discussed in detail how they look at applications and what I got from it was that they have too many applications to look at each one too specifically. GPA is 2/3 of the decision and test scores are 1/3, so if your test scores are high, you might still have a shot at University Park (but your GPA will hold you down a little bit).
However, with a 3.4 you’ll still definitely get into Penn State even if not UP at a branch campus. I know a lot of people who go to branch campuses but still LOVE their college experience. Applying for the summer session would also help tremendously. Good luck!
As long as you kill it with SAT, you will 100% get into PSU. To be frank, Penn State Main is not the hardest place to get into. Anyone with a properly working brain can get into it.
^ That’s a lie and not helpful in the least.
@jpsu11 At least 15 kids from my sons school did not get into main this year. They are pretty-smart kids. They chose a satellite campus instead because they REALLY wanted to attend PSU. I think it is still fairly hard to get into main as a freshman.
Nope, look at what kind of scores are needed to get admitted into Penn State. They are embarrassingly low. Among other Big Ten universities, Penn State Main is, without a doubt, the easiest university to get into. This is one of the reasons why Penn State has become a huge magnet for attracting out-of-state students (1/3 of its student body are from out-of-state, for Pete’s sake); these students only decided to go to Penn State because they couldn’t hack it at their flagship universities. Otherwise, why would anyone with an actual brain be paying over 30K - 40K annually for a mediocre education?
6: spoken with the authority of the all-knowing adolescent :).
As for the idea that people with a 3.4 - a good B+ average for Pete’s sake! - can’t attend a 4-year university …O_o
Penn State UP is heavily GPA based. It’ll really hurt you because 3.4is considered 'branch campus ’ level.
As Bodangles stated, check 'summer semester’s and 'dus ’ to increase your odds. It won’t hurt you in any way and makes it easier to get in for 3.4 students.
Are you registered for the June sat or act? If not, hurry.
In addition, as part of their decision, they’ll count whether you’ve had four years each of English, Math (up to calculus or pre-calculus), and foreign language, plus if you had all three of bio, physics, and chemistry (at any level, regular 's fine). You should have had at least 4, preferably 5 weighted classes per year, for a total of 16-20 over 4years. Armed with that knowledge, build your senior year schedule carefully, since your course choices will matter. You should take as many honors classes as you can handle, and have all the classes listed above.
That’s funny, my very intelligent boyfriend got waitlisted at Penn State main 
@jpsu11, feel free to take your pointless claims elsewhere. PSU may be a safety for some, as it was for me, but a 50% acceptance rate doesn’t mean that half the people who apply are too dumb to go to college. Grow up.
@bodangles As depressing as it sounds, going to college is not an endowed right guaranteed by the Constitution; rather, it is a privilege you have to work your butt for. In my previous comment, I never said half the people that were rejected by the admission office are too dumb to attend any sort of higher education. Instead, I recommended that perhaps, it is better for them to attend a community college first and be transferred to another four year university, rather than go to a PSU branch campus straightaway.
@jpsu11 Ok…I’ll bite. Since it’s mother’s day and my kids are leaving me alone for a little bit, and because I’m a research junkie - I decided to test your theory with actual numbers. I used the common data set for all big 10 universities and used their listed average GPA and their average ACT scores. In lieu of ACT score or GPA, I used acceptance rates in places where either were not available. IF you see a “0” in the chart, the data was unavailable and I did not use that school to calculate the averages.
As you can see from below, PSU has both a higher freshman average GPA, ACT and lower acceptance rate than the averages of all of the big 10 schools. And that is including Maryland’s astonishing 4.22 average freshman GPA and Northwestern’s amazing 13% acceptance rate. Excluding those two schools and those specific factors, Penn State would outperform even higher.
So, if you think a school with an average acceptance GPA of a 3.76 means ‘anyone with a brain’ can get in there, I don’t know what planet you are living on. As @bodangles and @japsmom and @MYOS1634 have pointed out…your assumptions are dead wrong.
I am a Penn State alum as is my husband and my daughter is a freshman there now. Don’t throw out unsubstantiated and ridiculously unproven statistics here because a Nittany Lion will show you how to accurately back up your statistics.
I can’t get the chart to print correctly here on CC, but the average GPA was 3.73 for all big 10 schools, 27.9 average ACT and 57.27% average acceptance rates. PSU is 3.76, 28 and 51% respectively. It’s all there in the data below…CC just wants to squish the table no matter how I edit it.
Average GPA Average ACT Acceptance rate
Ohio State 3.46 29 49
Michigan 3.83 31 0
Illinois 0 29 66
Michigan State 3.65 25.5 66
Indiana 3.64 26.5 78
Iowa 3.66 25.5 81
Maryland 4.22 0 45
U of Minnesota 0 28 45
Nebraska 3.52 25 76
Northwestern 0 32.5 13
Purdue 3.72 27 0
Rutgers 0 0 60
Wisconsin. 3.85 28.5 0
Penn State 3.76 28 51
Overall 3.73 27.96 57.27
@jlhpsu I got into both maryland and Penn state and as a maryland high school student I can tell you high schools in this area grade inflate HEAVILY and howard county/ Montgomery County bring up the average gpa very high.
@asaberian I’m sure that’s true. That’s one of the reasons why many here always say it’s very difficult to “chance” someone based on GPA. The general point of my post was that PSU does not have the lowest entry stats of any of the big 10 schools - which was what was being claimed above.