Hi, I’m an international applicant from India who moved from Chicago in 2012 and did middle and high school in India.
I want to apply to some top schools, but my grades are really low. I have a weighted 4.2 ( if I use the standard GPA calculator ) and an unweighted 3.4. This is because of two reasons:
- In India, there are two main exams for a student in my syllabus. The Board and the Entrance. Neither of these scores are influenced in any way by our school performance, so teachers often put extremely hard question papers so that these exams are a breeze.
- The syllabus heavily depends on memorization and penalizes answers that are not written exactly as provided in the textbook. I have synesthesia and suck at memorization and details, so…
I did some research and found out that out of the 12 classes I took over junior and senior year, 8 covered more portions than the AP syllabus. My vice prinicipal is writing me a rec letter including this point.
For extracurricular, I am a National first ranker in debate, both in team debates and individual public speaking. Apart from these two National Awards, I have also won a National Award with a team, my job was communications and speaking, for which our school got 100k. I started our school’s first debate club and have won awards in public speaking, and was made the first Public Relations Officer in our school, which means I do interviews for local newspapers regarding school activities and write them articles.
I plan on majoring in Econ, and for English Lang, Lit, and Econ I’ve scored straight A’s in all three since 8th grade. I have yet to take my SAT’s and SAT subjects. The science grades have really dropped my GPA…
Oh, and I’m taking Physics, Chem, Math 2, and Literature as my subject tests.
Do you think my grades make it impractical for me to apply to a top school? What would you set as a benchmark test score to have good chances?