Chance me to Fordham Gabelli (ED2)

Chance Me / Match Me
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3.59 unweighted/ 4.0 weighted

8 APs, 3 DEs

SAT: test optional

Concentration: Business- Information Systems

Honors: AP Scholar, College Board National Recognition Program: School Recognition Award, 2nd place school science fair, golden honor roll for 2 years, and Lamp of Learning for Geography

Extracurriculars:

1- Independent Researcher about Econ and finance

2- Founder and writer of a Website where I publish my research about international Econ, and world business and finance

Activity 3- Lead tenor player at my school’s Band

Activity 4-Assistant Teacher at a cultural/linguistic nonprofit

Activity 5-Transcriber and translator for a famous global organization. Transcriber for specific topics like business, Econ, and finance

Activity 6- National Leadership Conference where I learned international business and finance from professors at Columbia University

Activity 7-NHS Member: Provided academic support to 3-5 students each week and contributed to the school community by participating in the Haiti fundraiser project.

Activity 8- Student ambassador for my school

Activity 9- Independent Video editor(edited videos about politics and economics)

Activity 10- French autodidact(4th language)

I’m paying full tuition and I’m an international student

:double_exclamation_mark:: So I did get 1 F my Junior year. Basically my DE Psych. class was set up very weirdly where we had 2 portals with different days to submit an assignment. I tried to get out of the class but my counselor would not let me. Since I was so busy with other APs(and, most importantly, I was alone in the US since 2021 which gave me an emotional weight) I just gave up on the class as I wouldn’t get the assignment through the portal anyway.

:double_exclamation_mark:: I had all As my freshman and sophomore year but because of the hard classes and not having seen any of my family for years, my grades fell(3 Cs, 2Bs, 2 As). I was lucky able to bring them back up my 2nd semester, as I only got 1 B and 1 C.

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Why are you applying ED and ED2?

In my opinion, your downward grade trend and no strong SAT or ACT to counter it
will be noted by the adcoms.

@MYOS1634

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I’m applying ED because I want to go to Fordham.

Can I still get in with my F(Which I did do a lower level of the class and got an A) with my gpa?

on the common app I did explain why my gpa is low and the F. Would that minimize it?

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My nephew was turned down by Fordham because of a D in freshman year and espite the fact that his grades were overall very good otherwise and despite the fact that his father was an alum.

Apply, but have a Plan B. I wouldn’t be optimistic.

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Why ED2 and not ED? You sold me at full pay international.

Don’t blame your bad grades. You earned them. If you say, I didn’t see my family then why will college be different.

The downward trend isn’t good but at least the F was in psych. What’s your highest level math ? How many years of social science do you have - the F in psych not counting.

If you meet their requirements, 50/50.

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Since you know 4 languages, can you take a proficiency test in several of them and list these?
Applying for Global business at Lincoln Center may be easier but not sure it’d be interesting to you to travel so much (London, China..) or perhaps indicating it as your secondary concentration of interest (for the concentration you only need one semester abroad wherever you want, or two summers abroad.)

https://www.fordham.edu/undergraduate-admission/majors-and-minors/global-business/
It’d match your linguistic knowledge and reinforce your application.

Why no ACT/SAT score - it’d go a long way toward helping alleviate any doubts created by your downward trend.

You can say you were missing your family junior year because you had not seen them in (30) months and the burden&sadness caused you to lose focus on academics but you’ve now found ways to overcome this through (zoom, package exchanges, whatever) .

Being full pay will help but if that F is on your transcript it’s going to look bad. No escaping that fact.

That being said rigor and GPA are okay - B+/A- is decent, and you’re applying ED + are full pay.
So I’d guess your odds are 50-50, perhaps even 60-40 depending how much they’ll value full pay ED.

(ED is binding, meaning if they admit you, you’ll attend - and your parents are willing&able to pay your full costs. Correct?)

Where else are you applying?

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I saw the concentration for Global Business but they stopped offering it after the fall of 2025. I was thinking of applying for the IS as it goes with my main extracurricular and I also want to be a business analyst so it goes with it.

I already wrote in the Circumstances and Additional Info section why I got a bad grade and the F(which is basically what you said). And my counselor will explain my grades, hard work, etc, too.

Would my chances go up if I apply ED1?(which I don’t mind as my previous ED1, I kinda gave up on it)

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If it’s your top apply ED1.

You haven’t applied yet - not ED2.

Remove the ‘excuse’ - let your counselor mention it. You have no idea why you failed. You didn’t fail other classes. Excuse making is never a good look.

Just don’t. You got an F. You can’t blame it on other factors. It is what it is.

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^ I agree with the above. Let your counselor mention it.

If it’s your favorite choice, apply ED1, as long as you’re sure you want to go and your parents are okay with the costs. Have you visited? Can you visit before Nov 1?

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Not disbelieving that this is the case, but curious how you know what the specific factor was? Does Fordham specify anywhere that a D is disqualifying (like some colleges do)?

This is all I could see on their page - something for OP to take into account too:

Starting off a little bit on the wrong foot, but being able to make up for that with rigor and strength” shows you’re serious about your academic future, Dean Peek says. “What we don’t want is to see the opposite—where you start off really strong, and the harder the work gets, the lower the grades get.”

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All anyone can say is apply and see what happens. None of us can predict how any admission department will view the F and your downward grade trend.

Agree that it would be a positive if you had a strong standardized test score.

Also I wouldn’t make excuses for your grades. Instead ask your counselor to note the situation in their LOR.

The comments in your post asking about ED to BU would apply here as well.

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[quote=“SJ2727, post:10, topic:3694671, full:true”]

His father, a Fordham alum, appealed the rejection, met with an Admissions Officer and was told that the D was the reason that he was not accepted. I should note that in addition to his father, he had an older sister who was a successful Fordham student at the time. And he was mixed racial when that was considered a positive. And he graduated from a Catholic High School in the Bronx, which would normally be seen as a positive by a college like Fordham.

It’s not accurate to generalize from a single incident and I won’t. They may have changed their policies. It’s just a cautionary tale.

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Thanks for the clarification. It is odd that they didn’t overlook a freshman year grade given all the other factors - hope he ended up somewhere he loved.

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What about St Joe’s in Philadelphia? Drexel? University of Scranton? Susquehanna? You could visit (some of) them in one weekend/over Fall Break while visiting Philadelphia. They’d all be targets EA but are similar enough to Fordham ED1.
Or Duquesne and Pitt in one day (or make it a weekend and visit Pittsburgh :grinning_face:).

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Thank. You. Yes, he went to a small LAC where he did just fine.

We don’t know what goes on in any of these Admissions Offices. They say that they do holistic reviews, but I honestly don’t think that’s possible in the vast majority of the cases other than to distinguish among borderline candidates.

What I suspect happened in my nephew’s case is that Fordham had at the time, as a screening device, a policy to eliminate from consideration all applications that had even a single D or F anywhere on the transcript. They probably also had other screening criteria, all designed to get the pile down to a manageable number. I don’t think it means that this is Fordham’s policy today.

Anyone to whom I tell this story thinks that what happened was insane and indefensible - especially if they know the kid involved. But I think that it’s just life in the fast lane. There have to be all kinds of random things that happen during these admissions decisions of which we have no idea. So, I simply offer my nephew’s experience as a cautionary tale. That F could be a problem - although I have absolutely no way of knowing if it will be.

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I am sorry but didn’t I see this post before, or something similar?

hard to forget this scenario

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Exact same post asking about BU.

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But poster said they were applying ED (presumably ED1 ) to Boston University.

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Realistically, it’ll seem strange you didn’t drop the class or take an Incomplete. But what’s done is done.
You are applying with a B+/A- GPA, an F, no test score, good ECs, and a rare full pay budget.

If you like universities in big cities, you also have St Thomas, Hamline, St Kate’s in Minneapolis St Paul (+ of course UMN).

https://www.stthomas.edu/

UCincinnati

University of Vermont and St Michael’s could both be worth looking into (target, safety)

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Don’t know
maybe gave up on the idea of BU or else ED2 to Fordham as a second choice. @Ana4 do you care to clarify?

Bottom line is nobody can guess how any one school or admission officer will consider the F grade and/or the overall downward grade trend (especially with no standardized test score).

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