Hi, I am currently attending a community college and I have received a 4.0 GPA during the first semester. I am going to maintain this GPA and I don’t think that I will have any problems with that. By the time I complete an associate degree here I will have taken Calc I-III, Modern Differential Equations, three Computer Science courses (sequence), a lot of philosophy and other courses that I am interested in or required to take.
The weaknesses on my academic record is that my High School GPA is 3.2-3.3 unweighted (2 honors, no AP) and that I haven’t done any notable extracurricular activities nor do I have any work experience.
I am looking to transfer into a suitable college or university as a mathematics or computer science major. My essays and recommendations will be good. I am more interested in small liberal arts sort of schools like Wesleyan, W&M or Rice.
Does anyone here have any tips or advice for me? I have time to do extracurricular activities, I think I would enjoy tutoring students at this college in mathematics and/or computer science. I am also a first generation college student, would that give me a minor advantage in transfer admissions?
Good news is as a transfer student your hs stats won’t be weighed heavily.
Bad news is that it can be difficult to receive significant financial aid as a transfer.
So my tips are to complete the general education sequence to your local state universities including state flagship.
To be competitive for those LAC you will really want a diversified list of ECs. Taking a bunch of math classes and tutoring math is good but you’ll need more than that to be well-rounded. I would HIGHLY advise joining your colleges student govt (or community to a college with a strong student govt program), join a sport (or commute to a college with better athletics), foreign language club, def get some type of volunteer work in, etc. Basically the typical list of ECs.
From my experience, high school grades, ECs and standardized test scores are pretty much irrelevant if you have an Associates degree. Look into some of the less well-known [url="<a href=“http://theaitu.org%22%5DAITU%5B/url”>http://theaitu.org"]AITU[/url] schools. They are small, like LACs, but value mathematics and science grades more than a broad background and lots of ECs. Some even have pretty decent transfer scholarships, particularly if you are a member of Phi Theta Kappa.