<p>I dropped out of high school with zero credits–literally all F’s. I’m currently 27 credits away from graduating cum laude with a B.S. in Biology. I got my GED, busted my butt at a community college for a year, then transferred to Northeastern.</p>
<p>I had a 2.5-ish or so in high school (not really sure, but it hovered somewhere around there). The only thing that kept it from being lower was that I got As in every single band class I took (I took 12 over the course of five years). I spent an extra year in high school, never graduated, never took the SAT/ACT, and took almost a full year off after I got out. Basically, there was no way any university would ever take me. Last quarter I started at a community college and got a 3.9. If I get my AA/DTA there I can automatically transfer to Central Washington University. It’s not super well-known or anything like that, but their program for what I want to do (music ed) is one of the best and is rather big for being a fairly small school.</p>
<p>My English teacher actually told me I should be aiming for Brown and other Ivy League schools because she thought I was an amazing writer, but I don’t really want to, as most don’t have music ed programs. :/</p>
<p>I attended high school outside of the US.
I did horrible and was almost not allowed to graduate.
My school used a grading scale where it’s based on percentages instead of just saying A, B, C, F.
My GPA was around 77% out of a 100% and 75% was the passing.
Then three years ago, my family moved to California and I was able to attend a community college.
Being new and not knowing anyone, I decided that I would just go try a CC for a while then eventually transfer to a four-year, well, in my case I was thinking the easiest four-year that I could get into.
I was unmotivated for my first semester and I was lucky enough to be saved by an honor society.
The following semester, my grades were good enough (3.5 GPA) to allow me to join an honor society. Through the members, I learned the many opportunities available for me if I could just get my act together.
So, I went from taking the minimum required units to be considered a full time student into asking the counseling department to grant me permission to take the maximum allowed units. I did that for three semesters.
I just finished my AA last May and I got accepted into USC’s Marshall School of Business.</p>
<p>My advice to anyone with bad HS record would be don’t lose hope. As long as you stay motivated and keep on trying, you’d eventually achieve your goal. And as my friend had constantly reminded me, “you wouldn’t know unless you really give it a try.”</p>
<p>cheeseburger, bandnerd and lazysoul… great stories. Thank you for posting.</p>
<p>
I have never heard of that and never seen it. I don’t think any college profs are focused on whether students are going to transfer out… and thus keeping grades down for that reason. I would file that notion under Things Not Worth Worrying About.</p>
<p>Re average GPAs at various colleges… I don’t know of a convenient source for that type of info. Would be worth your starting a thread on that somewhere, though.</p>
<p>In 9th grade I was playing in an indoor soccer tournament. I had headed the ball many times and was then knocked into the boards and got a bad concussion. I immediately had a severe migraine headache and began vomiting and was incapacitated for 5 or 6 hours. Unfortunately, this was just the beginning of the headaches. All throughout high school, because of the severe concussion, I had these headaches that kept me bed ridden for many hours and caused me to miss school. By junior and senior year they had increased which resulted in me being absent for over 1/5 of the year. My grades began to go down as a result of this. My parents and I looked all over the place/met with many neurologists for a solution. We considered a 13th year for me to boost my grades if the headaches did not subside. Toward the end of senior, I went to the Chronic Headache Clinic in Philadelphia. They prescribed a powerful medicine which seemed to temporarily stop the headaches. I decided that because of this, I would goto Elizabethtown College. Last fall they started up again and my grades in college began to reflect it. I began missing class and falling behind to the point where I had to drop Biology. However, in November, I met with a neurologist from Johns Hopkins who suggested drastically altering my diet to exclude many unnatural foods. This method has worked and I haven’t had a migraine since then and my grades show it. </p>
<p>High School GPA: 2.3
SATS: 1820</p>
<p>1st semester:
Biology: W
Chem: C
Calc: C+
First year seminar: B</p>
<p>2nd semester:
Comparative politics: A
English: A
Islam and politics: A
Modern terrorism: A</p>
<p>Cumulative college GPA: 3.34</p>
<p>I was accepted into Northeastern University and will be attending there in the fall. Fortunately, they were very understanding of my situation. If anybody needs help/advice with transferring after having poor high school grades feel free to contact me =].</p>
<p>Back in high school, all I cared about was skateboarding, playing bass and just hanging out and being cool. So, my grades suffered. I graduated HS way back in 1992, so I don’t even remember what my GPA was, although I am sure that it was somewhere around 2.0. At that time, I barely graduated HS, and no one thought that I would go to college; not even my parents or myself. I also must note that I had zero EC’s. </p>
<p>Three years after HS, I ended up at SCC, got about a 2.75 GPA and applied to CSUS. I got in, but ended up moving half-way across the country before I began attending any classes; and going from a California community college to a California state college was, well, too easy. I milled about for a year, then applied to MCAD, Macalester, St. Thomas and the UoM-TC. MCAD was the only one that accepted me, which I thought was odd because the UoM-TC is a public school. I guess that since it is Big 10 had something to do with it as my academic record was not up to par. </p>
<p>I went to MCAD for a year and did okay, but MCAD is a private art college, which made it expensive. So, I transferred to MCTC and ended up getting a degree in screenwriting (yeah, I know, worthless), while maintaining a solid 2.75 GPA, again. </p>
<p>I am now on the East Coast and applied to UNE and USM. I got into both, and chalk that up to my life experiences and the strength of my essay, but I am currently attending SMCC, as SMCC is not only way effin’ cheaper, but the specific program that I am is just as good, and in some instances better, then the one at UNE. </p>
<p>I thought that I would be shooting myself in the foot by attending community college again, but I see it as a building block. Many students from my program have transferred to some pretty nice schools, so I am hoping that I will too. I am mostly looking at Boston area colleges for transfer and I am also actively participating in the school (math club, school paper, and a few others) as well as doing some volunteer work that is related to my major. I just hope that it is not too little too late, as I would rather not go to a state college because of the research that I would need to do for my major, but this thread gives me hope that I can get accepted into one of my choices.</p>
<p>Any previous successful transfer willing to help with reading my essay? I need some opinions.</p>
<p>Please PM if you’re willing.
Thanks.</p>
<p>As a transfer student, can I get into an Ivy league school (preferably Dartmouth or Columbia) with a 3.2 HS GPA?</p>
<p>I plan to work as hard as I have to in college. I will be attending Boston University this fall. Besides good grades, what kind of things should I be doing to help my chances?</p>
<p>i got 1300 my sat test and 3.8~4.0 my GPA but i took esl class can i go to umass boston??</p>
<p>MMoralN10tion I totally agree!!!</p>
<p>Here’s my story:
In high school I could not get motivated. I ended up with ~2.5 GPA and one horrific ACT score. I enrolled into a CC with a whole new outlook on education and now I’m in my second year. I have a 4.0GPA with 34 credits completed. I am taking 22 credits this semester and will probably keep my GPA at a 4.0. All my classes are legit and Ive learned a ton. I do as much volunteer work as time permits (the funnest being a mentor for Big Brother Big Sisters). Also, I might start a tutoring job at my CC in the subject that I want to major in (philosophy). In addition, I have a pretty interesting background. I am a Bosnian war refugee that moved to the US 11 years ago with my family at age 7.</p>
<p>My goal is to transfer to Amherst College and head off to the Peace Corps after that. Ill also apply to a few ivys and some other top schools.</p>
<p>What do you guys think my chances are of getting into Amherst or an Ivy?</p>
<p>In high school, I took general population courses, rarely attended, dropped out junior year. Next year, I took courses at comm. college and dropped out by midterms. I didn’t care about school. I went to work and traveling.
I returned to school after 5 years of working to the same comm. college. Working full-time and going to school full-time, I earned a 3.33 GPA. I used the college’s resources to study for the GED exam (scoring in the top 2%) and conduct research that resulted in an invitation to academic symposium for comm. college students. I was able to transfer to a Tier 2 private school last year and now a Tier 1, my state flagship, school this year in the most competitive major in the most competitive college of the school.</p>
<p>inspiring stories!</p>
<p>My cousin started out high school amazing like 4.0 in all IB/Honors classes, excelling socially with many friends and basically an all around nice guy. Then in the summer of sophmore year his father died, he’d been suffering for a long time with lung cancer. There was a lot of onus on him to step up and become the man of the household, and he did well at first handeled a job and kept his grades. Then, his mom died, car accident, this was a shocker. Now, his grades plummeted all the way to a 2.8 which when begining from a 4.0 is huge. He went on drugs, and he got a lot of bashing from my family which I believe was unnecesary since many couldn’t understand what he was going through. No one really helped him at all, so he was totally bitter and lashed out against everyone. He sloughed through high school, but eventually graduate ending with a 2.8 and at the local CC. He had one teacher who I can’t tell for privacy reasons, but was amazing and really inspirational. The teacher also grew up an orphan and understood my cousin very well. He helped my cousin get himself back on track and eventually my cousin applied as a transfer student to Brown, Penn, Cornell, NYU, CUNYs, Syracuse, Boston University. He got into all of them except Penn and got a full-ride to BU. He graduate top of his class if I remember correctly and applied to law schools where he eventually attended Harvard Law.</p>
<p>^^^^^WOW. That is a great story and very inspirational. Thanks for posting.</p>
<p>I am also interested in this topic… I had a 3.4 high school GPA with a 4 on 3 AP tests (Calc AB, Environ Science, and Psychology) and a 2020 on the SAT I, no SAT IIs. I ended up going to a Cal State, not even applying to other schools (which in hindsight was a horrible idea, but I didn’t really feel like writing essays and stressing about the whole application process.). I figured that no one really cares about undergrad degrees and was planning on getting a masters at a better university. </p>
<p>Turns out that my choice in schools is under-challenging and under-stimulating me, and I am generally unhappy with my choice. I’m in my first semester here. I’d like to transfer to Reed, Amherst, or Cornell. What would you say are my chances at those places, assuming I achieve a 4.0 GPA here? What kind of ECs would you recommend?</p>
<p>A 4.0 is likely good enough to get you considered at these schools. The ECs should be what you love, especially at a “fit” school like Reed, where essays and interview are important (interview is only “considered” at Cornell, and “not considered” at Amherst). Chances are just too hard to estimate, I find.</p>
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<pre><code> Congratulations burgler09! Btw I am also a Biochem major. Anyway maybe you can give me some feedback on my chances of getting into Carnegie Mellon, Lehigh University, GWU, Colgate University. Here’s what I have to say below.
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<p>This e-mail is in regards of transferring during this upcoming semester, (Spring 09 to be exact) to either Carnegie Mellon, Lehigh University, George Washington University or Colgate University. Since I have a bad HS GPA of 2.4 and a College GPA of 3.62 with 69 credits amassed, I have some mixed reviews and notions about my chances. Also, I never took the SAT because I was unsure and undecided about what I wanted in college. CMU (Carnegie Mellon) says I shouldn’t fret about the SAT’S and so does Lehigh and GWU. However Colgate is telling me since I have alot of credentials maybe they can waive the requirement for me. I currently, attend a really good community college (Montgomery College in Maryland) so I know that this will help my chances of admittance but what about my offset HS GPA. I am a biochemistry major, with a Spanish minor and have taken wide array of courses from literature, genetics, chemistry, biology, calculus, and even phys ed. With this being said I know that I’m a very well rounded candidate but what about by admittance chances. I have taken at least 6 or seven science classes and 4 math ones too, so what I’m getting at is will this help my chances into the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon. Also, I should be able to delve straight into my major at any of these schools correct. Lastly, do to an unfortunate mishap, I received a grade of a D and C in college. However I retook those courses and ended up with a B and A. I guess i can include a little grade discrepancy essay right. Finally, the one thing that is mostly on my mind is my college hiatus. Since I haven’t been in college for two yrs, (2006 to be exact) I’m concerned that this might affect my chances of admission. However, I still stayed productive by working at a neuro science lab, advertising for a sports agency, and tutoring students in subjects that range from math to Spanish. Now, viewing this what are my chances of admission to these elite institutions?</p>
<p>Hey Everyone,
So if anyone could give me ANY advice, it would be extremely helpful and I would really appreciate it. I’m a Canadian student and I currently attend the University of Toronto. The only thing is, I hate it there. I mean, I am aware of how good the school is but I didn’t want to go there to begin with. I’m pretty surprised that I even got in with my grades. My HS GPA wasn’t good. To be exact it was 3.3. I began to procrastinate/slack off at the end of my junior year and it was all downhill from there. I formed bad habits and found it difficult to correct them. I thought that things would be different once I started university but they weren’t. I was pretty disappointed when I didn’t get into a school of my choice and I was stuck commuting to a school close to home. I wasn’t able to meet many new people and I hated the atmosphere of the school. I was basically really unhappy there. Anyway, to make a long story short … I ended up dropping out by the time midterms came around. Now I’m back, I’m focused and I know that I will do well. I’ve studied most of my course material during my time off and believe that I will be ready for everything this year. Only thing is that I still dislike the school and don’t believe that I’m getting the experience I want at that university. I also believe that I am ready to leave home and try things on my own. I want to attend a school in the United States and I was wondering if any of you could offer me some advice. </p>
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<p>I welcome and appreciate any advice or information anyone can share with me. I really really want to transfer out of this school to a good uni in the States so I will do anything possible to accomplish this. </p>
<p>Thanks!!</p>