Please, help me......?

Question

Hi,

I have a question regarding college. I really want to go to Tufts University, and I plan on it. I had a major operation my freshman year, and missed almost 60 days of school that year. I ended up getting a 3.3 unweighted GPA, and 3.5 weighted GPA. I now feel like there is a lot of pressure for me to get a 4.0 every year until I graduate in order to get accepted. I know GPA isn't everything, but it's a big portion of it. I am also looking at Boston University, and Boston College, but my dream college is Tuft's.

Can you tell me if these colleges will make exceptions if my GPA isn't that same is everyone elses? I was thinking if I at least got it up to a 3.7 unweighted GPA by by the end of junior year, that would make me have over a 4.0 weighted because I am in 6 honor classes. I am going to study very hard for the SAT's.

Other than my GPA, so far this past year I have participated in Summer Health Corps program at teaching Hospital, in Boston. I had over 130 hours of volunteer hours in Oncology this summer. I am also in Habitat for Humanity, Math Club( I am a big math geek,lol), Marine Biology Club, and Key Club. I can never do a sport again because of my surgery =(. I am going to continue volunteering 6hrs a week in Oncology for the next year. Next summer I am studying at a biochemistry lab held at Tufts University. I also just started to learn how to play piano because of the whole sports issue.

How do you think I am doing so far?

Any suggestion I can take into consideration about getting into Tuft's?

Thanks sooo much!=)

Answer 1

Maybe it would help you to see some stats on admissions to Tufts (which, by the way, doesn't have an apostrophe in its name): http://taap.tufts.edu/news/funfacts.asp

Relax a bit. You will have a place on your application to explain about your surgery and how it affected your grades for that year. You can do an essay on how it felt to have an illness/injury, how it changed your life, adapting to no longer being able to do sports, etc. I'm not sure why you'd care about the unweighted GPA when you have a valid reason for them to look at the upward trend in your GPA and compare your other years to the one with the surgery.

I think your summer class at Tufts is excellent. It shows that you really are interested in Tufts (and that they're not just one of several schools you're applying to). You can use the class to develop relationships with some of the Tufts people, and maybe one of them will act as a reference for you. A reference from someone at Tufts can be very helpful.

Give yourself time to live a little now, too. You're only a teen once.