How much will my 3.69 GPA hurt me?

Applying to College
1

<p>Are my chances extremely low - none with an UW GPA of 3.69 at most schools and a 3.84 at schools which don’t look at freshman GPA’s (Stanford, Carnegie Mellon…)? My W rank puts me in the top 3-4% of my class.</p>

<p>I attend a public school and have taken the most rigorous courses available, with the exception of my freshman year in which I only took 2 out of 5 offered Honors courses. I have taken more AP’s than the average AP-taking student (9). </p>

<p>I went from a 3.40 freshman year to a 3.68 sophomore year, to a 4.0 my junior year, and I’m expecting to have a 4.0 my senior year as well. I know that many other factors are included in college admissions, but just based on this GPA, how low are my chances at top-tier schools?</p>

<p>*About my school’s grading scale:
93-100 is an A, 90-92 is an A-, 86-89 is a B+, 83-85 is a B, etc, so it’s more difficult than at schools where a 90-100 is an A.</p>

<p>Junior Year:
AP Language & Composition
APUSH
AP Calc AB
AP Psych/Creative Writing
APAH
H Physics
H Spanish IV </p>

<p>Senior Schedule:
AP Calc BC
AP Lit
AP Spanish
AP Euro
AP Bio
Photography
Independent study</p>

2

<p>What percent does your school send to top 10 colleges?</p>

3

<p>I’m actually not sure. According to my school’s college decision Facebook group this year, there were acceptances from Brown, Boston College, UMass, Cornell, Duke, Tufts, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, and GWU.</p>

<p>I know that last year, there were Yale and Harvard acceptances.</p>

4

<p>Bump 10char?</p>

5

<p>Actually, it might be a 3.72 instead of a 3.69.</p>

6

<p>GPA must be viewed in context of class rigor and class rank. You say your weighted GPA puts you in the top 4% - is this your high school’s official class rank?</p>

<p>Your schedule, to me anyway, seems quite rigorous. I’m not sure where you’re applying, but I think it’s OK to have a GPA that isn’t a 4.0 with so many AP classes.</p>

<p>Good Luck</p>

7

<p>I’m not positive about my rank - it’s an educated guess :slight_smile:
The valedictorian will have a W GPA of 4.80. There are roughly 500 students in my class. In addition, there is a wide gap between the H’s/AP-track students and students who take regular classes. I’d guess that only about 25 kids take AP classes.</p>

8

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<p>Are most schools not like this? My school is 93-100 A, 85-92 B, etc, but most schools in our area are like yours, as are all of my twenty cousins, who are scattered across the country. I’m fairly certain this grading scale is the norm.</p>

9

<p>Only a small portion taking AP says not competitive school. A top college will look for the very top stidents from such schools.</p>

10

<p>At the VERY least, I’m in the top 5% of my class.</p>