Will marked improvement my last year help me?

Graduate School
1

<ul>
<li>For the first four years of college, I jumped from major to major and didn’t take school seriously-- the plan was to hover at 3.0 and get a software development job post graduation.</li>
<li>My transcript is littered with W’s, a few F’s</li>
<li>GPA for first 4 years: 3.05</li>
</ul>

<p>While at a software internship I had a change of heart and wanted to apply myself to something that truly interested me in ways other than pay, so I tried really hard at computational neuroscience and my:</p>

<ul>
<li>GPA 5th year: 3.9</li>
<li>I’ve also begun research at a computational neuroscience lab and have good working relationship with several professors</li>
</ul>

<p>I’m at a crossroads between going into software engineering which is high-paying but not as interesting as Neuroscience. That would depend on the likelihood of admission into a good program. Provided I score 90-95th percentile on my GRE and obtain good letters, will good graduate programs overlook my weak transcript?</p>

<p>Thank you!</p>

2

<p>You could go into software engineering and then come back and do neuroscience grad school, and you can find a way to integrate the two - maybe biomedical engineering or computational neuroscience or bioinformatics? There’s a need for computer applications to biomedical problems.</p>

<p>With that said, yes, the upward trend will help. That’s not to say that you absolutely will get in, but I think you could explain in a supplemental essay (or your personal statement) that once you found your passion, you hit your stride and really excelled. That doesn’t mean that they will completely overlook the rest of your transcript, but it can mitigate it. A 3.05 might be quite fine for a master’s program.</p>