This is the national average GPA for high school students, but it may be slightly lower than the average GPA of high school students who plan on attending college.
Here's how a 3. To elaborate, the national average for GPA is around a 3. Keep in mind the 3. Here's more custom advice for you if you have a 3. Click your grade level to see our evaluation.
Having a 3. This GPA will still give you quite a few college options. However, you'll miss out on schools that are on the more selective side. You have time to raise your GPA before you apply to college, so try to work on bettering your study habits.
Ask for help if you need it! If you want to find out whether you stand a chance of acceptance at schools that interest you with your current GPA, try searching for them with our tool in the next section. As a sophomore, you still have a bit of time before college applications, although changing your GPA is more difficult at this point. You should try and work on improving your grades junior year so that you can raise your GPA a bit and give yourself more options. If you're interested in any schools at this stage, you can search for them in the next section to find out whether you're likely to be accepted with your current GPA.
Since you're in your junior year, your GPA is unlikely to change at all between now and college applications. While a 3. Use our search tool in the next section to check what your admissions chances are at schools that interest you.
This should help you to get a better sense of where to apply during your senior fall so that you give yourself a range of viable options. It's your senior year, so you've probably already started the college application process. Your GPA, though it's not especially low, is going to limit you quite a bit in the schools where you can expect admission.
If you've already applied to college or are in the process of applying, you might try searching for the schools you chose in the next section to see if you stand a good chance of being admitted.
You may decide to add another safety school to your list if you don't have any prospects that seem like sure bets. This is probably the biggest question on your mind. What colleges can you get into with a 3. What are your chances of admission at your top choice schools? We've built a custom admissions calculator that calculates your chances based on the 3 most important factors to determining your chance of admissions:.
Try to take your current SAT score and add points or take your ACT score and add 4 points to the calculator above. See how much your chances improve? This is important when you're considering your GPA. You probably know how hard it is to pull up your grades and GPA. Click to learn more about our program , or sign up for our 5-day free trial to check out PrepScholar for yourself:. The later you are in high school, the less your GPA will change before you apply to college.
For example, if you're currently a junior in high school, your grades in freshman and sophomore year will anchor your GPA so that your junior grades won't be able to change your total GPA much. Here's a calculator for you to see how much your GPA can improve in different cases. Choose your current grade level, and then choose your future grades up until college applications.
We'll show you how high or low your GPA can be, depending on your grades from now forward. Warning: Because you have no semesters left, your GPA won't change by the time college applications are due. You'll need to apply with a 3. From reading the rest of this article, you know that your current GPA is equivalent to the national average for a high schooler.
As a freshman, you still have a couple of years to raise your GPA and improve your chances of admission at selective schools. The bottom line is that your GPA isn't high enough at this point to get you into competitive college programs. If you can really work towards making positive changes in your study habits, you'll have a lot more options come senior year.
Don't resign yourself to your current situation - keep trying to meet more difficult challenges and reach your full potential. With some dedication, by senior year you'll have an even better chance than you do now of getting into a school that you really love. After going through the facts about your GPA in this article, you know that your grades are basically equivalent to those of the average high school student. Your GPA isn't particularly low, so you'll undoubtedly be able to get into some colleges, but it's also not high enough for you to make the cut at selective schools.
Next year is your last chance to work on raising your grades before you have to send in applications. You can still make changes in your GPA if you do very well as a junior, and even slight improvements will give you a better shot at being accepted to more colleges. It's a good idea to take standardized tests early on in your junior year so that you end up with more time to retake them if you're not satisfied with your scores.
High test scores can go a long way towards improving your application, so if you manage to get impressive results, you'll have all the more reason to be optimistic about the application process. Now that you've reviewed the facts, you can see that your GPA will give you decent odds of admission at less selective colleges.
It will be difficult to change your GPA after this point, so you should shift your focus a bit to standardized tests while maintaining your grades of course! Junior year is the best time to get your test dates out of the way so that you can focus solely on applications during senior fall. If you study diligently for the SAT or ACT and manage to get high scores, your chances of admission at many schools will be much higher.
Your GPA is inevitably going to limit you somewhat, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find schools that are a match if you have decent test scores and are challenging yourself in your classes. Based on the information in this article, your GPA will give you some options for college but will also limit you to less selective schools. Since you're a senior, you may be in the midst of applying to college. It's important to make sure your list of schools will provide you with options even in a worst-case scenario.
Provided you've done your research on admissions rates and average GPAs of accepted students, you shouldn't have much trouble finding schools that are good fits for you. This may make a big difference in your applications, and many colleges will allow you to submit scores from tests taken as late as February of your senior year.
Overall, you should be smart about where you apply and make sure you're presenting the best version of yourself to colleges. If you can do that, you'll end up with some good options in the spring.
Download our free guide on the top 5 strategies you must be using to improve your score. This guide was written by Harvard graduates and SAT perfect scorers. If you apply the strategies in this guide, you'll study smarter and make huge score improvements. This guide was written by Harvard graduates and ACT perfect scorers. We've picked out a set of schools that are within range. Click on each school to learn more about it.
These schools are hard for you to get into now, because their average GPA is higher than a 3. Source: College Board. The average high school GPA is around 3. This also happens to be the minimum requirement for many college scholarships , though a 3.
GPA plays a key role in college admissions. This is because your high school GPA is one of the few data-supported measurements of your academic abilities, lending objective evidence to a highly subjective admissions process. When researching colleges, look at first-year class data to find the average high school GPA of admitted applicants. This should help you figure out what GPA to aim for. For example, if the average first-year student had a 3.
Whether a GPA is considered good in high school also depends on your major. A student planning to major in engineering with only a 2. In this case, you may want to consult your high school guidance counselor on more suitable degree paths. What's considered a good GPA in high school might translate to lackluster performance in college.
Even within a university, GPA expectations can vary by major and department. When it comes to determining a good GPA, here's a useful trick: Ask yourself what GPA you'd be willing to report on your resume after college graduation. Unless you're in a notoriously difficult major, anything below a 3.
A good GPA in college can also be defined more broadly in terms of honors designations. Most commonly, students graduate cum laude Latin for "with praise" when they earn a 3. Finally, those planning to apply to graduate school should focus on maintaining a good college GPA.
Many grad programs require a minimum GPA of 3. GPA matters, but only to the extent determined by an admissions committee. Earning a 4. But for the Ivy League and other highly selective schools , a perfect GPA represents the minimum requirement most applicants must satisfy to warrant consideration.
Remember, though, that GPA is just one part of your academic record. Both colleges and grad schools also look at achievements like relevant work or volunteer experience, personal essays , and letters of recommendation. GPA can also be important depending on your professional goals. When applying for an entry-level job , include your GPA on your resume only if you think it'll raise your chances of getting the role.
For example, a recent art history grad applying for a museum curator position might choose to divulge their GPA if it's particularly high 3. That said, these days employers are paying less attention to candidates' educational history. Companies like Google and Netflix prioritize skills over academic credentials and accept a variety of applicants — some with a college degree, some with equivalent practical experience , and some who've completed in-house training programs.
Earning or maintaining a good GPA in college isn't easy. Here are some essential tips to keep in mind throughout your college career. Steady class attendance helps you better understand readings and assignments in addition to giving you more face-to-face time with instructors. It also makes it easier to hear last-minute announcements and build strong relationships with your peers and professors.
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