So I always thought I did well in school, I am currently a sophomore with a 3.7 GPA. Well, looking at the stories on this site, I see all these kids taking 4 APs in 10th grade and 5 Honors classes as freshman and doing pretty much every extracurricular activity short of curing cancer and doing well at everything in life, and it just upsets me. My school does not offer a lot of upper-level classes for underclassmen, and I have taken a very rigorous schedule for what my school offers – I’m just not sure if it looks enough. Is there anything I can do to try and convince colleges that they should overlook my bad circumstance? While I am not looking to get into an Ivy League school, I still want to get into a rather prestigious school so I can get noticed and go into law school.
You will be evaluated based on what is available to you. If your school doesn’t offer 147 AP classes, how could they expect you to take that many?
However I believe what matters for law school is GPA and LSAT, not school prestige?
@bodangles While they do look at those things, it’s still beneficial to go to a pretty good (and usually large) school. These schools are easier to see the accomplishments of students. The rigor of the school is generally higher and will be an indicator of the things you will expect in law school.
@ucbalumnus Can you confirm?
I think a story about my brother will help here. The school he and I went to is like yours, with only a few AP classes and pretty limited resources for their students. My brother got a lot of B’s and C’s due to some personal problems, and only got enough money for college because he aced the PSAT and the local state college (known for its 80-90% acceptance rate) gives out very generous National Scholar award. No real standout EC’s.
In college, he totally changed and started getting straight A’s in his classes. He also starting working and did some cool EC’s like founding and managing a non-profit. This totally changed the direction of his life, and he managed to get accepted to MIT for grad school. He worked hard there too, and ended up as a consultant, happily married (just last month) and making $150k+ a year.
Long story short, your school or college doesn’t really matter so much. If you are hard-working and intellegent, colleges will recognize that no matter what. Just keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll be fine.
You’re fine, don’t overreact.
@MNballer19 Schools look at your achievements relative to your resources. If you are working your hardest and doing all you can WITH the resources you have, that’s awesome.
There are also programs that are free and challenging you can apply to next year such as TASP, LEDA etc…
There are plenty of colleges that will be delighted to have you. Keep your grades up, show commitment to a few ECs and focus on your test scores. I know how you feel. I was starting to think there was something wrong with my kid when I mistakenly compared him to the mind-blowing world changers you noted on this site – the unicorns. But then I realized that mindset was blocking me from appreciating the uniqueness of my DS and what he brought to the table. He got accepted at his non-Ivys and will have a great life as a race horse/Clydesdale/zebra, whatever. You will too.
To me it sounds like you are doing very well, and at a young age have a lot more sense than many students who post to CC.
“I am not looking to get into an Ivy League school,…”
Exactly. You don’t have to go to an Ivy League school or equivalent to get into a good law school, or to do well in life. If you understand that your don’t need to go to an Ivy League school, then this takes away the need to take 15 AP classes in high school and get an A+ in all of them while curing cancer in your spare time.
Do what you want to do, do it well, keep up on your homework, pay attention in class, be respectful of others, and you will do well in life.
Actually, how large your undergraduate school doesn’t matter at all. If you can pull a top 10% LSAT AND a 3.7 from St Olaf, Macalester, or Carleton, or from UMN 's honors program, ( a few thousands or 60,000 students) you’ve got excellent odds of getting into law school. Same thing if you attend academically legit but less prestigious colleges, UMN Morris, St Benedict, St Catherine’s, Hamline, Concordia Moorhead…
Colleges are only going to look at what you did in your school, they aren’t going to know that the school down the street has more offerings than your school. They are only going to look at the “rigor” that you took at your school. My son was in a similar position as you are in, and someone told us exactly what I told you and he worked as hard as he could with what was offered to him at his school and next year he will be attending classes at Stanford. So work hard and do YOUR best and go from there.
Remember that when you read CC:
- Not all you read may be true
- You are reading many postings from many people and taking the most advanced things from all those posts and are assuming everyone is doing these things
- You are assuming they will do well in these classes
- You are assuming their GCs will allow them to take these schedules
- They happen to have multiple APs at their schools
- The most motivated students/parents are on CC…they are the ones who take many AP classes ans also do internet research on teh college process
- There are 3000 colleges in the USA…there is one for you
- 99% of students don’t go to Ivies
- You will find a college that is right for you
- Colleges take into account how you do in the context of YOUR school…if you got A’s in the 2 APs they offer then you are taking the most rigorous schedule possible!