Colleges arrgh?

Question

There requirements are killing me. Ok, well, I had a 26 ACT score. Now, I need to be ranked so much in my school. Well, in my school a 4.0 makes you ranked like 10. I had a 3.0 pretty much through the whole thing. A lot of kids had higher than a 4.0 in my school, pretty much everyone had honors. I got jacked going to the school i did. But the question is, will colleges look at how good my high school was and have sympathy lol. I should have tried in school I screwed myself too. One more thing, I did gymnastics for 4 years but it wasn't with the school. Can i still say I did 4 years gymnastics? Also, I do a lot of my own hobbies do those count or do they have to be organized?

Answer 1

Absolutely include the gymnastics. There's very little you can do that's associated with the school that will be considered "special" by colleges. A few academic contests and that's about it. Being president of a club doesn't mean much anymore.

You can include your own hobbies, however, just realize that unless you did something special that other people recognized, it's not going to mean much. Having a knitting hobby is one thing. Turning that knitting hobby into an event to help the homeless or give at risk kids something to do is entirely different.

You say you got jacked, but in the end, you still got those grades. Unless you can get a letter saying every class was on a strict curve, there's not much you can do. If it really was a great school, the colleges should generally know about it.

However, there's another way to look at that tough school. Say you don't get into Harvard. Is that the end of the world? You've been severely tested at your school. If you go to a non-top 25 school, you'll likely find the competition much lower.

My school was like yours. It was the #1 academic public school in the state. My 3.2 GPA (I think that's what it was) put me into the bottom 10% of the class. So, I went to a state university (still ranked in the top 50 in the country). However, compared to my high school, college was easy. I was like a god there. I felt smart for the first time since elementary school. Without even having to try much. I was able to kick butt there and got into the same grad school as friends who went to Berkeley and other top schools like that.

My high school friend/college roommate was ranked right next to me in high school. He never went to grad school, but again, he got awesome grades in college which helped him get a great job afterwards.

In both cases, going to the lower ranked college actually helped us cuz we made the best of it. Think of college as a fresh start. You're still going to have to work your butt off though. I know colleges aren't going to give you too much of a break because of the competitiveness of your school because your ACT score doesn't give them a reason to think your school artificially lowered your GPA.

Answer 2

Yes, you can still mention gymnastics - extracurriculars are extracurriculars, after all. I'm not sure about the hobbies, I guess it would depend. If it's something that probably wouldn't count (like collecting something), maybe you could work it into your essay for the college. Especially if it's something you were passionate about, because being passionate in your essay is a really good thing - it makes you stand out. I have been told numerous times that while the grades and SAT (or in your case, ACT?) scores are, they're not the only thing considered. As for the ranking, there's usually a section in the applications where you can explain yourself for, say, a bad grade or something like that. You could explain the competitiveness of your school. I don't really know your situation lol (especially because my school didn't rank me...)