How much will my unweighted gpa affect my application?Answered
I found out recently that when colleges calculate GPA they don't include your electives or easy classes, which brings my UW GPA from a 3.65 to a 3.4 (only including core academics). I'm really scared because this takes off a lot of colleges for me. My weighted is a 3.95, but people seem to be saying your unweighted is more important then your weighted. I'm a Junior in my second semester, so there is pretty much no chance of me being able to raise this gpa. My school is also quite competitive, and being a solid B+ student in almost all of my classes, I don't know if I stand a chance.
The rest of my application is pretty strong, I have a 33 ACT and some solid extracurriculars and leadership positions, but I think the GPA is going to really be an issue. Any advice is appreciated.
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2 answers
This only applies to certain colleges, especially public ones. Most colleges will evaluate you on your transcript as it is presented by your school counselor. If your counselor submits a 3.65/3.95 UW/W, then that is what college application readers will use.
I would use your summer time to do the following things to improve your chances of getting into a great college.
1. Continue to test prep for the ACT and use a service like supertutortv's online course to get your 33 ACT to a 35 ACT. That is what I did, and in 5-6 weeks I was able to achieve that because it isn't how smart you are, it's how efficient your take-taking skills are under a time constraint. So you need to learn that.
2. Get your HS recommenders lined up ahead of everyone at school. Why? Because then they know you are on their radar. Do not wait until September because there is a mad rush for the same teachers.
3. Start working on your essays. They need to be a 10/10, not a 7/10. They need to be as close to perfect as possible.
4. If you have time, take an online college course. Like from your community college or from outlier.org, something like that. That will show you have an innate love of learning which will help your intellectual vitality score.
5. Continue honing your ECs so they become more definitive in curating a spike narrative. Drop the ones that are not working for you and put more energy into the ones that matter to you.
Good luck.
There are certainly some colleges where your GPA doesn’t make a shred of difference. Community Colleges, and (typically) small local colleges. The community college, being government supported, has to admit anyone who can breathe and write his name. The small local colleges all need students, and are glad to have your tuition money. They also don’t much care about your GPA in their school, and Drift Boss they make it pretty easy to get at least a B in every course.
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Hi, thank you so much for replying! I actually planned on applying to mostly public schools so should I change that? Most of them are mid tier, ranging from NYU to Merced. Also my school uses a 6.0 gpa scale, I recalculated it on 4.0