High SAT Low GPA

sacchi
Sat, 22 Nov 2014 21:03:36 +0000

I made a similar post >5 years ago, when my son was applying. One of the best pieces of advice I got was to look for schools that offer National Merit scholarships, since they are certainly chasing high test scores.

My son applied ED to Wash U, and was admitted with a 35 ACT and 3.5 UW. However, his HS is a harsher grader than most, and he was in the Top 10% ranking (which was based on weighted GPA). He graduated from Wash U ~6 months ago, and now is in law school. Do you know your class rank? A 3.5 UW GPA can mean very different things at different HSs.

For someone with your stats, I would seriously consider applying ED to a reasonable reach school, if you have a favorite. ED won’t help you get admitted if your stats are out of the normal range, but may give you a little bit of slack on the GPA side, given your high test scores.

If you parents can truly afford to pay your full costs (and they know that those costs are $60k/yr and rising), another strategy might be to look at schools that are not need blind, and will give you an admissions boost for being full pay.