<p>Does a 3.6 totally ruin my chances for an Ivy League or somewhere like Duke or UNC?</p>
<p>Check your school’s naviance. I’ve seen 3.6uw in my daughter’s high school for Cornell, WUSTL, Claremont McKenna, etc… Since these kids are in California, not too many apply to Duke and UNC so I don’t have any statistics to back up.</p>
<p>Colleges look at the whole picture. Nothing’s certain :)</p>
<p>If you took hard classes, etc. it might be lower, but then again, there’s people with 4.0 GPA in 8 AP classes. It all depends on your school.</p>
<p>It also depends on what a 3.6 means at your school. If you go to an intense place where that 3.6 puts you in the running for valedictorian, it’s great. If you go to a place with incredible grade inflation where the average GPA is a 4.3, it’s not good.</p>
<p>Really, it all depends on context.</p>
<p>I got into UNC Honors with a 3.4 UW (4.5 W).</p>
<p>So no, I would not say your chances are ruined.</p>
<p>I believe on CC I heard of one person got into Stanford this year with a 3.4uw GPA but he has high SAT score and he is a URM. I also heard of another person got into Columbia a few years ago with a 3.3uw GPA, he applied ED. I’m sure there are a lot of other stuff in their applications but this is what they openly stated their GPAs on CC.</p>
<p>uw gpa still is the most important factor based on my observation so far.</p>
<p>I think GPA depends on a lot of factors: difficulty of your high school, your courseload, the trend(upward GPA but actual GPA is low).</p>
<p>Also, if you gpa is low because of your freshman year grades, but you have gotten mostly A’s since then, your chances are not as " grim" as you might think. Grade trend is very important to many colleges. My son got all B’s his freshman year at a rigorous college prep school, then got his act together his last 3 years. His final GPA was 3.7 and he was accepted at 2 Ivy’s and 10 other “top” colleges [ he did have tip top SAT’s, & EC’s]</p>
<p>I think if you had a rigorous course load and you high school has a reputation for being tough on grading you should still be ok but you might want to make sure other areas of your app. are super-strong.</p>
<p>By the way, my daughter has a 3.87 unweighted at a very competitive high school taking the most rigorous course load offered. An A+ = a 4.6. They do not rank but i would estimate her rank to be in the top 20-25% of the class. She got a 34 on the ACT, is president of two clubs, captain of tennis team, has an elected position in our school and was chosen to be a mentor. She also had the abstract from her science research project published ( and great recs including one from a prominent research facility). What do you think her chances would be at BC, Georgetown, Notre Dame or Yale? She’s had interviews with G-town and Yale that both went extremely well (they told her they were giving her a good recommendation).</p>
<p>Justin – Like a lot of other people have pointed out, your application is a package. Things balance out. Your GPA (which I don’t view as low in any way) can be counteracted by extracurriculars, or test scores, or a killer essay… It all depends on the school, the adcom, and the package you present.</p>
<p>Hold tight for the next three weeks, everything will work out.</p>