Freshman Year Grades Pull My GPA Down. How much will it affect me?

gsaray
Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:42:23 +0000

Hello,

I’m in my third year in a Top 3 Canadian university with national reputation. I’m taking Civil Engineering, and will be applying to Civil grad schools in US. Here’s my situation:

My first year GPA was 2.6. I had a little bit of adaptation problem since I’m an international student from Serbia. In second year, I had a 3.4 GPA but my cumulative is still somewhere around 2.85 (which really sucks). According to my calculations, even though I get 4.00 GPA for both third year and fourth year, my cumulative is going to be 3.4… I have no clue how effective GRE scores are. I also applied for a very reputable research award for this summer and I will be co-writing a paper if everything goes well. I’m aiming for schools like Berkeley, Stanford, CMU, Northwestern, UIUC, Columbia and Wisconsin.

1) I’m wondering… My cumulative sucks because of that horrible first year. But if I get two 4.00’s in a row for the next two years, will I still have a chance?

2) Can someone evaluate my chances for these schools?

3) My school also includes a second cumulative GPA in our official transcript that excludes first year. That one will be around 3.7 (assuming that I get 4.00s for the rest of my semesters). How much will that help me? Will grad schools just consider that?

4) Should I take a year off to do more research and then apply?

Any suggestions will help me a lot! Thanks…