MY Chances for penn state main..?

Sophley
Sat, 01 Dec 2018 20:44:11 +0000

Just my two cents but I think you both will be borderline if the GPAs you mention are unweighted. With AP and honors, hopefully your weighted GPA is higher…upper 3’s or low 4’s??? Applicants to UP (main campus) should have at least a 3.55 GPA, which is the benchmark for where the lower 25% of accepted students hit. Students accepted below that tend to have special circumstances (recruited athlete, special talent, child of professor or staff member, etc.). Your test scores are within range the mid 50th percentile for UP. My advice would be to apply to one of the lesser competitive colleges (liberal arts, Comm, etc.) if you have a genuine interest in one of those majors or DUS (undecided). If your end goal is engineering or business, go DUS. Also indicate a willingness to start in summer.

On a side note, if you are already pushing yourself to get the 3.3 or 3.4, you really would do better to start at a commonwealth campus as you will likely excel in that environment. Go where you can succeed…not where you will struggle. We have plenty of kids with 4.0 GPAs who have never really had to study and get a brutal wake up call freshmen year. Penn State UP is hard, so it’s easy to be crushed by the big school environement, rigorous academics, workload demands, etc. Go where you can grow both intellectually and in confidence.

Good luck!