Chance me please; Low GPA Asian in NJ striving for T20 [3.7 GPA (top 10%), 1550 SAT]

Very. Your test score seems to be in the ballpark.

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Delete - @DadOfJerseyGirl said the same -

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As an FYI to readers who may have missed this (bolding is mine)


Your school’s GPA system may be misleading to posters who are used to treating any A as a 4.0 (no difference for ±), Bs as 3.0, Cs at 2.0,


Being top 10% does give that some context. That is great!

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It’s so irritating. I don’t know why an A- would be considered a 3.6? Hopefully AOs give some leniency then. Thank you so much for clarifying for other readers

AOs will know because they will have your school profile and evaluate your application in the context of your school. So no need to worry about that. :slight_smile:

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AOs will compare people apples to apples. . That’s why your GPA (4 for A, 3 for B matters - not counting plus and minus). And since you have a rank and test score, they’ll use for comparison. Listen, you are who you are - that’s what matters
plus optimizing things like easays, LORs. It’s really low stress - you don’t see it - but if Rutgers is worst case, that’s a FANTASTIC worst case although I’d love to see you get a residential experience.

In the end, you have a plan. Work the plan - I summarized what I think it should be below but whatever your plan is, work it.

  1. Rutgers safety - you don’t seem wanting to add a TCNJ, Ramapo, etc.

  2. QB - you now have a plan - 15 schools. Personally, I would look at all 55 and apply to those that make the most sense; not the biggest names - but that’s up to you. For example, you seem to love W&L - and it’s great. But it has different characteristics than many of the other 54. Things like weather, size, urbanness or lack of, sports, distance to shadowing opportunities, etc.. As you note, W&L is great for pre-med. But likely are the 54 others too. So whoever are the 15 best for your desires - and that might be your current 15 you named or might not - but find the best “fits” to your needs/desires.

  3. Potentially supplement these with other meets needs (run the NPCs) like Miami, Lafayette, Franklin & Marshall, Sewanee. I would personally make sure to include Berea - because while others are need aware and will turn you down for needing too much, Berea is a school where 100% don’t pay tuition and 3/4 I believe don’t pay anything.

  4. Other schools, like SMU Presidential, Providence Roddy - have full ride scholarships. Near impossible to get but if you have time.

I think that’s where you should be - also noting the deadlines because I know QB comes up quickly.

Good luck.

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These things don’t align with your stated GPA system. If you’ve gotten multiple Bs and a C, your unweighted GPA would probably be below a 3.6 if 3.6 is indeed an A-.

To simplify it for the readers, just calculate your unweighted GPA with A = 4, B=3, and C = 2. Divide by number of classes. What is the result?

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My school only reports the weighted GPA so unweighted will have to be self calculated; this is my grade scale

And these are my grades

Freshman Year
English 1H (Honors) 95
Study Skills 100
Spanish 1 95
US History 1 H (Honors) 91
Academic Geometry 71
Biology H/Lab (Honors) 86
Graphic Arts 1 96
Health 9 100
Phys Ed 09 (Lab) 100

Sophmore Year
English 2H (Honors) 94
Spanish 2 H (Honors) 87
AP US History (AP) 92
Academic Algebra 2 81
Chemistry/Lab 88
Bioinformatics Research H (Honors) 96
Introduction to Business 97
Phys Ed 10 99
Drivers Ed/Health 100

Junior Year

AP Physics - 82
AP Lang - 93
AP World - 94
AP Gov - 96
Art Exploration - 97
Pre Calculus (Dual Enrollment) - 94
Health - 100
Anatomy and Physiology - 95
Phys Ed - 100

So the unweighted average over those 27 classes is 93.3
That’s an A (4.0) according to the conversion chart above.

Sir, I thought you add up the grade points for every course and divide by the number of courses (9). THen total all grade points over the 3 years then divide by 27 which gets you to 100.01Ă·27≈3.70

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Yes that’s another way to do it.
I’ll defer to @Mwfan1921’s expertise.

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I see one C and 4 B’s. Our HS does it the same way with A being the highest, pluses and minuses in the other grades, A is a 94+.

That’s similar to how our school does it, but they take out courses like PE, Drivers Ed, and Study Skills. So you’d be somewhere around 3.65.

At the end of the day, each university will have its own calculation based on your transcript. But this does give the readers a better understanding of your overall GPA so thanks for providing the information.

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The usual way to calculate GPA is to add up the points for each class and divide by the number of classes. Since your school uses +/- that means 4 for an A, 3.7 for A- , 3.3 for B+ etc. Some colleges will recalculate on a 4 point scale without the +/- grades and some will only count core academic classes - so they would not figure in study skills, health, drivers ed and phys ed. It’s probably useful to calculate all three.

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Yep, that is how I calculated my unweighted–by adding up the points for each class and dividing by the number of classes.

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Our school does this but also weighs courses differently depending on number of credits, so a semester course doesn’t count in the average as much as a full-year course. Most regular full-year courses are 5 credits, semester courses are 2.5, lab sciences are 6.4, and gym is 4.

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Good point. Semester classes should only be counted as half of a year long course. Op didn’t indicate if everything was year long and I assumed that in my explanation.

The sad thing is that OP is simply chasing a name. There is nothing remotely similar about Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Chicago, and Cornell. All will provide vastly different experiences. No way can you compare Hyde Park and Morningside to Hanover and Ithaca. Colubia’s core and Chicago’s core differ not only from each other but from Dartmouth’s distribution requirements and Brown’s open curriculum

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Chasing a name is the theme of a lot of these threads.

And for some students, college brand name is an important “fit” factor. It’s part of what they’re seeking in their college experience. While I always encourage students to look beyond rankings and prestige, I have no issue if that’s a key consideration for them.