<p>GPA: 3.42
SAT: 1590
ACT: Taking in December</p>
<p>want to major in computer science</p>
<p>Extracirriculars:
Regional Science Fair (2years)
State Science Fair (1 year)
did an internship at a it company
volunteered at Stanford Hospital
Started a project to start coding in elementary schools in my district
working on a startup (related to computers)</p>
<p>The reason for my low grades is my family problems and constant fear of grades and future…My grades have a downward trend until but this year (senior year) i am doing a good job…getting a’s and b’s…</p>
<p>what do you guys think? can I get into these colleges? </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter what any of the teenagers or tiger moms here think (myself included). We are not the ones who will be deciding whether you get admitted or not, asking things like this is a waste of time.
Despite that though I will still give you my two cents:</p>
<h1>1 Don’t name drop, the fact you specified “Stanford Hospital” instead of just “Hospital” already tells me your application is probably going to be pretty pretentious.</h1>
<h1>2 A GPA without any context on the courses you took or the high school you attended doesn’t mean much.</h1>
<h1>3 In regards to “working on a start up related to computers” no one cares, unless you have actual money from venture capitalists what ever it is you are doing is useless. Ever sense the dot-com bubble and after companies like Facebook etc. formed the term “start up” has become a buzz word, so unless you have something legitimate, saying that it’s a start up will make you look even more inflated.</h1>
<h1>4 I sincerely hope you have real family problems and if not, that you don’t write about them in your application. I can’t even imagine how many essays Stanford is going to get about how “My grades were low but its not my fault my hamster died blah blah its so sad, accept me please”.</h1>
<p>The only school you have a reasonable shot at is CalPoly. The rest of the school are from either high reaches - impossible (Stanford) given your low GPA and SAT scores. </p>
<p>@Janizary
Cal Poly is also impossible. They are all impossible. I had a 2300 SAT score, a 3.66 unweighted GPA, and a 4.29 fully weighted GPA. None of those schools accepted me. I was rejected/waitlisted by UCB, UCLA, UCSD, UCD, UCI, and CPSLO.</p>
<p>Unfortunately your GPA and SAT scores are not competitive for any schools on your list, especially for Computer Science which is extremely difficult. My younger son had an UC/CSU GPA 3.73 with an ACT of 31. Only UC accepted was UCR. Denied Cal Poly SLO but got into 5 other Cal States. If you a California resident, I would consider applying to UCSC/UCR, CSU Fullerton, SJSU, Cal Poly Pomona, Monterey Bay, CSU Northridge. Sorry, but CS is really tough. Good Luck and make sure you have some backups. No point in getting shutout…</p>
<p>I am sorry to say this but every single college on this list is a longshot. If you are so afraid of grades for the future, then how are you going to convey your confidence for college? </p>
<p>@nlt111
Your doubting me shows that you know absolutely nothing about college admissions. Colleges want students who are average or above average in all areas. They want balanced students, not lopsided students like me. My crap GPA killed my chances. Furthermore, high test scores are not important at all for the UCs. Scatterplots show that most UCs (UCSB is an exception) greatly prefer students with high GPAs over students with high SAT scores.</p>
<p>Therefore, I deserved those rejections/waitlists.</p>
<p>Also, I go to a very good high school with extremely smart students. Your assumption that a good high school leads to better admissions is greatly flawed. And my essays and extracurriculars are good.</p>
<p>i know i screwed up…i wasnt able to concentrate on my studies last year…also i am a first generation college student and first generation American…i am also from a low income family…althugh my grades are weak…my extracirriculars are strong and i am an extremely dedicated student…</p>
<p>@Mangiafuoco those scatter plots don’t mean anything, you must have really murdered your essays. I can tell from the way you talk that this was probably the case. Also “Your assumption that a good high school leads to better admissions is greatly flawed” how weird that almost a third of all the students who went to Phillips Exeter Academy attended an Ivy league school, MIT, or Stanford afterward. I guess you don’t know anything then do you?
<a href=“No. 6: Phillips Exeter Academy”>http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/29/best-prep-schools-2010-opinions-phillips-exeter.html</a></p>
<p>@nlt111
Scatterplots are the most useful tool for chancing. Unless if you know a better tool, you are a fool for dismissing them.</p>
<p>The high school that a student goes to certainly has an effect on admissions. In my previous post, I never said that all schools are equal. Instead, I said that a good high school does not correlate to better admissions. What I meant was that certain schools send more kids to top schools, but these schools that do so are not necessarily better than other schools. For example, my high school has many students with very prestigious awards (Intel STS, Siemens, ISEF, Math/Biology/Physics/Chemistry Olympiad, SciOly, NSB), but not everyone in the top 10% go to the top 20 schools. My high school is certainly a good high school (and I do not think that Phillips Exeter Academy is better than us in terms of prestigious awards), but we do not have better college admissions than inferior schools in our area.</p>
