Low Grades, Need College Ideas

Chance Me / Match Me
1

<p>Hi everyone,</p>

<p>I’m just looking for some ideas on what colleges I should be thinking about.
I’ve only really checked out California, Colorado (where I live), and Florida.
Not interested in prestigious places, and I don’t really feel like transferring out of a community college.</p>

<p>CGPA right now is 2.857 and ACT 30. Pretty sure I’m in top 50%, not looking at my transcript right now though. Also, because of the IB program, we have close to 50 people in 1st place then it slopes off a bunch. Class of about 300.</p>

<p>FBLA-2 years + upcoming year (high likelihood of 1st at java nationals, and probably make it to nationals with webdesign as well: Been close all years so far, but grades have prevented me from going :P)
DECA-1 year
Varsity Ice Hockey-1 year, then switched to club
Graduated from Middle Years Programme (First 2 years of International Baccalaureate Programme)</p>

<p>IB program freshman and sophomore years (mostly weighted courses), then AP Euro, Honors Physics, and Honors Pre-Calc last year (Junior Year). Senior year I’m taking AP Stats, AP Music Theory, AP Government and Politics, and AP Chemistry.</p>

<p>My grades have been around a 3.0 except for Sophomore year which my grades fell to a 2.3 both semesters. Although not really related to my failure, both my grandmothers died that year so I can probably use that somewhat (ya I realize thats probably a horrible thing to do).</p>

<p>I work at a small family owned bookstore (most of business is online and not my family) doing Data Entry with a bit of ColdFusion help here and there. Also, I freelance my webdesign skills out and I have designed two commercial sites for local businesses (and was paid).</p>

<p>As far as majors, I’d really like to do Game Art/Design, Information Tech, or International Affairs.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance for anyone who reads this =]</p>

<p>~Mike</p>

2

<p>Friendly Bump, sorry its not the most organized information, I’m not really an organized person. I’m a white male, middle class family, regionally recognized school as far as standardized tests and such, not much special there. I work 15 hours a week during the school year and 40 during the summer.</p>

3

<p>Your GPA is too low to consider applying to any UC’s since the min. GPA accepted is 3.0. However, your ACT is decent so i would recommend looking towards CA state schools if you’re interested. Another option would be going to a community college for 2 years and then tranferring to a university. It all depends.</p>

4

<p>few colleges want a kid with a lot of academic potential that is just plain lazy.
look into various state schools. You should be able to get into some of them.</p>

5

<p>California:

  • Try Pepperdine: they dont have a minimum gpa and ur pretty close to a 3.0. ur 30 Act is on the high end or above their range so u have a shot with a good essay.
  • Loyola Marymount: good shot because of ur ACT.</p>

<p>U might also wanna try Arizona State or UArizona even though its not in Cali.</p>

<p>I know Florida schools pretty well…</p>

<p>In florida because of ur High ACT u might have a chance at some good schools. unliike the UC’s they dont have that 3.0 minimum rule. </p>

<p>Here are options for you:</p>

<p>Safety:

  • Florida International University (Miami)
  • Rollins College (Orlando)
  • Stetson (orlando)
  • North Florida (Jacksonvile)
  • Florida Atlantic (Ft Lauderdale)
  • Florida Gulf Coast (Ft Myers)</p>

<p>Match:

  • USF (Tampa Bay area)
  • UCF (Orlando)
  • Florida State (only because of ur high ACT score which puts u way above their ACT ranges.)
  • New College of Florida (not sure if its a match but it might be)</p>

<p>Reach:

  • University of Miami (Solid Reach)
  • University of Florida (big reach)</p>
6

<p>how’d you do at state for web design? me and my friend took 3rd two years ago (not bad for something we slopped together in a night). We didn’t get in this year because they thought we used a template! Oh well, I take it as a compliment</p>

7

<p>ive got a feeling that its going to be quite a reach for you, but who knows - claremont mckenna college. even though the grades arent there the SATs/ECs are certainly there, and they tend to way those two more than the GPA. itll be a reach but youll at least have a chance</p>

<p>umm… how bout some other state schools? penn state is probably reachish, uconn could be more matchish…</p>

8

<p>Haha I wasn’t entirely clear. I’m prepared to go anywhere. I’m just saying that so far, I’ve only looked into Cali, Colorado, and Florida.
I did ok for website: my friend doesn’t know any sort of web language and didn’t help at all. The judges said I cheated because I used a rss feed for the weather (it was the topic of a tourism website for your city i think) so I ended up like 4th. But I didn’t try particularly hard at that, I was really only hoping to win at java (got a 93/100 on the district test, closest competitor had 33 :P)
Anyways, thanks to everyone who has replied so far. =]</p>

9

<p>Yeah thats the one where me and my friend took 3rd, the tourism one. It was pretty funny though, a lot of things we just based off of our own town’s website. My friend also had been working on a website for our school district, so we changed the logo a bit from that, that he was working on.</p>

10

<p>Let me tell you that the Video Game industry is really kind of strange–and that the people in it come from a strange variety of places.</p>

<p>For example, some of the top students come from the schools you might expect:
MIT, Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon–all of which you would have no chance at getting into.</p>

<p>However, some of the other schools that are leaders in this field are less likely candidates–and schools you might be able to get into:
Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX)
Indiana University (Bloomington, IN)
DigiPen Institute of Technology (in Redmond, WA–where Microsoft has its headquarters)
and Shawnee State University (Portsmouth, Ohio)</p>

<p>Since many of the top game design companies are in the Seattle area, the people at DigiPen do get good internships from what I understand. The other place that offers internships (and regular jobs, of course) is Electronic Arts (EA) in Redwood Shores, CA.</p>

<p>P.S. At Indiana, the program is offered through the Telecommunications major–and you have to get an “A” in the first two courses (the first which covers writing screenplays and directing TV/movie productions and the second which covers java programming) to get into the major.</p>

<p>Here’s the website for DigiPen’s bachelor degree programs: <a href=“http://www.digipen.edu/main/Degree_Programs[/url]”>http://www.digipen.edu/main/Degree_Programs&lt;/a&gt;
Here’s the website for Shawnee State’s program: <a href=“http://games.ssu.portsmouth.oh.us/[/url]”>http://games.ssu.portsmouth.oh.us/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Oh, and I should also mention USC–which has the best film school in the country along with NYU–both of these schools will undoubtedly be impossible to get into for you–but you might be able to go to one of these for an MS degree if you want after you get your BS at one of the other schools mentioned.</p>

11

<p>Digipen is going to take up a lot of my time to apply to because I haven’t really thought about putting a portfolio or reel together yet, but at the same time, that seems to be their main interest (at least more so than grades). I’ll go check out the other ones. Again thanks to everyone who has replied so far =]</p>

12

<p>I see where UC Santa Cruz has announced that they are going to be the first University of California to offer a degree in “Computer Science: Computer Game Design”.</p>

<p>You can check it out here:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/undergrad_adm/selecting/camp_descriptions/descr_ucsc.html[/url]”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/undergrad_adm/selecting/camp_descriptions/descr_ucsc.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The program is starting this year.</p>