High ACT, Low GPA?

call don at lax, he'll talk with you. i ran for him a long time ago. he's a great guy.

I'm sorry buddy but a 30 on the ACT is not considered high. It certainly is better than your 2.46 but it is not high. You better work on your essays. Being mexican helps.

the fact you're a minority will help. But I don't think you'll get into those schools with that kind of gpa. At least not Madison and Illinois.

2.46?!? Jesus!

What good is a high IQ if you can't apply it. No college is going to want your lazy ass.

I do know that GPA is subjective and that means it is influenced by the teacher. Oh, today teacher might not like your answer tomorrow maybe. So maybe it is not always application. And it will not necessarily be laundered by the other classes grades(grade laundering). Jesus may or may not have something to do with it.

2.46 GPA?

Dude, that's like running a 5k in 78 minutes!

You actually have to put in some effort to suck that bad. I'm not kidding.

While a 30 doesn't make him a top tier student, it still puts him in the 97th percentile which isn't bad at all. 2.46 is a pretty mediocre GPA though. Assuming your 30 wasn't some sort of fluke, it shows that you've got the ability to do well academically but have been too lazy to actually do it. If this is the case, you're going to have to change your ways in college if you plan to study anything challenging.

Apples Oranges wrote:

I do know that GPA is subjective and that means it is influenced by the teacher. Oh, today teacher might not like your answer tomorrow maybe. So maybe it is not always application. And it will not necessarily be laundered by the other classes grades(grade laundering). Jesus may or may not have something to do with it.

Might be a little subjective. But 2.46? Come on man. Did this guy even show up to class ever?

same guy again wrote:

2.46 GPA?

Dude, that's like running a 5k in 78 minutes!

You actually have to put in some effort to suck that bad. I'm not kidding.

I would tend to agree with you, but I would caution that what a GPA means really depends on the school. If a school grades the way it's supposed to, 2.0 is average. Of course schools are too scared to hurt a students feelings to actually use the grading scale the way it's supposed to be used, but I digress. My point is that a while a 2.46 isn't good by any means, it might not be quite as bad as it looks from our perspective. This is why more prestigious schools focus more on rank than GPA. Because they know that high schools like mine exist where a student can get a 4.0 and not be in the top 10% (you'd have to have at leat a 4.3 to be in the top 10%, whatever the f*** a 4.3 GPA is even supposed to mean).

I feel sorry for stupid people. I hate lazy people with a passion. Yeah, oh yeah, feel the hate.

Is a 30 really 97th percentile? Its out of 36, so that just doesn't seem right.

From his information we do not know how much he showed up to class. Perhaps he is not working to full potential maybe a little cultural adjustment, wow the possibilities are endless. I do not know this guy or the reason, but my grades never reflected my abilities either. Maybe because most of us are running twice a day and always thinking about running and being triple dead dog tired.

I have to admit I'm surprised, but the data is there. To answer the OP question, the 30 is going to be able to get you in most places based upon the percentile rank. Colleges place tremendous weight on standardized tests.

JMo wrote:

Is a 30 really 97th percentile? Its out of 36, so that just doesn't seem right.

It very well could be. I've never taken the ACT (it was SAT only in my days), but the MCAT (for medical school) is based on a maximum of 45 points. A 36 or 37 puts you right around the 96th or 97th percentile. There is a HUGE drop off the higher you get, as it's a standardized bell curve. After 38 you're really just splitting hairs as to whether you're 99 or 99.6 percentile, etc. So few people score that high.

30 is a pretty solid ACT score. I think the average at most decent to good schools like the ones you listed have an average of between 24 and 26. I say apply to the schools you want to go to. If you don't get in go to junior college for a year and get your grades up then apply again.

Harry Kooter wrote:

I would caution that what a GPA means really depends on the school.

I guess I was assuming he goes to an typical school with inflated GPAs. 2.46 is real bad when there are folks walking around with a 5.8

BEST EXAMPLE EVER!!! we've got a kid at our school who doesnt even show up at least one day out of the week, rarely ever does his homework and spends all his freetime on video games and gets like 3 hours of sleep a night. Im not posotive, but i wouldnt be surprised if he didnt have a 3.0 even, and he barely passed the AP tests he took last year, but somehow this kid managed a 35 on his ACT--the highest score ever in the 30 year history of a D1 HS with over 400 to a class. The kid is a genius and will get a free ride to whatever college he wants gaurenteed (especially since im pretty sure his family is well below the poverty level, but thats besides the point...) My point is, with a Decent ACT, nothing else matters. A 30 isnt a 35, but im sure theres plenny of colleges who will take you with that

A classmate was barely able to pull a C in calculus class. When other students were struggling with a problem, he would show them how to work out the problem to get the correct answer. He just never did any homework and screwed around in class. Got caught peeping into windows a couple years after high school.

Go to a specialist that will diagnose you with ADD or something that will give you an excuse for screwing around for four years. You will be able to skate into any college you want or threaten to take them to court under the disabilities act!!!

U of Minnesota isn't hard to get into. I honestly know mentally handicapped people that get into school there. No, I'm not mentally handicapped.