TERRIBLE grades- will ANY uni accept me?

fallenchemist
Tue, 27 May 2014 14:59:17 +0000

@qqq123:

Sorry, I meant USC as in Southern California. I know it’s a high reach but I really want to go there because it’s highly ranked. Would it be possible for me to transfer over there from somewhere like Drexel, Temple, or even CSU-LA? I heard transfers are much harder.

I have to tell you, that is the worst reason in the world to be wanting a particular school, based on numerous factors. It is impossible to get into all those factors here, but it’s moot anyway. There is a 0.1% chance of you getting into USC, based on your current stats. I only put it that high because they could make a mistake. I am not trying to be mean, far from it. That is just the reality. These schools do care about stats (also for a lot of different reasons), but one of them is because it is a decent way to predict success at their school versus the competition from the other students. Let’s look at USC’s admissions stats for their last reported class.

Average GPA: 3.7 (UW) Yours: 3.4 with a downward trend, which is an unfavorable trend. You don’t say if that is weighted or unweighted.

Average SAT: ~2065 Yours: 1650 That is a very wide gap.

I am only sounding harsh on this point because I think you would be far better off focusing 100% on schools that are quite excellent academically that also match your stats to date. You also have to look beyond academics. Size of the school, location, sports scene, Greek scene, urban, rural…what factors are important to you beyond academics? This really does matter. You are fortunate that cost seems to be no issue, so we don’t even have to discuss that. I and many others would be happy to suggest schools where you have a good chance of gaining acceptance that meet whatever criteria you think are important. Spell that out for us as best you can and I am sure you could put together a list of 5-10 schools that make sense for you based on various suggestions.