How hard is it to get in?

marie03
Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:23:32 +0000

In the past few days I’ve really been starting to fall for Tufts.

I have high test scores, in my opinion great ECs with awards, but my grades aren’t up to par. I have a cumulative GPA of about 3.65 right now. This consists of an average of my indexed, scholastic, and two other gpas. That basically means that It is an average of academic unweighted GPA, complete unweighted GPA, academic weighted GPA, complete weighted GPA. This year my grades are substantially higher. I’m hoping to get at least a 3.75 by getting As in all my classes except math (which is a killer for me, Bs all of high school). That is the GPA my school uses.

The reason my GPA is so low is because freshman/beginning of sophomore year my parents were getting divorced and I became so responsible for my little brother that I was acting like his mom. I had to do his homework with him all the time (he was on the brink of failing) and I had to pick up from school and take him places if I was capable of it. He was have psychological issues related to the divorce and so he constantly had to be watched. So if I wasn’t at yearbook I was with him. So it wasn’t my test scores, it was sometimes my homework wasn’t as well done as it should have been. I don’t regret it. I have priorities and my brother is my top one and always will be.

However, it has hurt my GPA. Is there a way of explaining this? Or does it not matter? I really love Tufts, but they are wildly selective. Our they the type of school who values numbers slightly more (Berkeley, Princeton, Harvard) or value that ‘unique individual factor’ (Stanford, Reed) slightly more?

Sorry for the long post. :)