Some stats:
Current Community College student (Michigan) with a likely first semester GPA of 3.9, and based the classes I’ve picked for my second semester, I can easily get a 4.0 for my mid-semester report. I’m very good at writing essays (36 English score on ACT) and I will likely be able to get excellent recommendations.
ACT score of 33–This is because I choked during the Science section. I was scoring 34 on every practice test but ended up with a score of 30 on the actual test. I’m scheduled to retake in February so hopefully I will be able to superscore at the very least a 34.
White, male, lower class background (qualify for full Pell Grant as well as something called the Michigan Tuition Incentive Program that gifts grants to students whose families qualified for food stamps for a period of 6+ months during their secondary education).
Staff writer on the school paper. Lots of personal creative endeavors. In talks with critical thinking professor for starting a Debate group. Start volunteering at my local women’s resource center soon. If all goes well, hopefully up for a Northwestern Mutual internship. I also have a part-time job that I will most likely quit if I score the internship.
Prospective schools (I will narrow these down some, thank god I qualify for the Common App fee waiver):
Reaches: Columbia (dream school), Princeton, UPenn, Northwestern, Georgetown
Backups: NYU, Vassar, UCLA, USC, UMich, Boston College, Tufts, Johns Hopkins
Safeties: Sarah Lawrence, Colgate, Fordham, any other UC, MSU Villanova, Penn State, SUNY Binghamton
There’s just one problem: I did very badly in high school. I finished with a GPA of 1.96. I had no extracurriculars to speak of. I took a year off after graduation. At first, I thought this could be a talking point. The reason why it happened, though personal, is because I had severe depression, anxiety and agoraphobia; I felt hopeless and trapped in life. I was hospitalized over Spring Break of my senior year, failed all of my classes that semester, and had to finish them online the next school year. Failure and mental health is something I plan to talk about at length in my essay (maybe).
I figured that most places would almost see it as a good thing: I was in a very bad place in life but recovered, put initiative in and want to use their institutions as a platform for my future endeavors. But reading around, I’ve seen people say that just doing very well in your undergraduate studies so far doesn’t make up for poor performance in high school, and that the most likely candidates are the people who did very well in high school and only went to community college because of financial reasons. This is worrying, to say the least. I guess I’m just wondering how elite colleges view students who may be viable transfer candidates but performed poorly in high school.