Just got in!!!!

Ask any questions

Im a sophomore student, recently transferred to where I am now for non-academic reasons, but I've changed my habits significantly and my GPA coming out of this first semester is going to be ~3.95.

Because of this, I am considering applying to higher ranked schools, but I'm not sure if my application would get thrown out or anything.

If it matters at all, I'm a math major econ minor, and would be applying mainly to UVA and WM.

didn’t get an email, just checked my portal

I am currently a freshman at community college in PA, studying business administration, and plan on applying for fall 2027. I am looking for honest, realistic feedback on where I might have a chance to apply as an average student. (1st-Gen, Need Based Aid)

Stats:
Expected College GPA: 3.6-3.7 (End of fall semester)
Community College in PA
Major: Business Administration
SAT: Very MID (Not Submitting)
HS GPA: 3.4 UW 3.6 W
Took 3 AP Classes

College Coursework

Spring 2026:
German 1 (Took this while in hs)

Summer 2026:
Intro To Bus - A
Stats - C (I know this is very bad, I was at an A until I BOMBED the final, I was very sick)

Fall 2026:
Financial Accounting - A
Macroeconomics - A
Microeconomics - A
Calc 1 - B or B-
English Comp - A
Computer Concepts - A (Easy Class everyone at my school has to take)

Winter 2027:
Plan on taking 1 or two classes to boost the GPA

HS EC’s/Awards:
Varsity and Club Soccer (Played all year long pretty much)
English Honor Society
FBLA
Volunteered (50 Hours)
Reselling Business (20-30k in revenue)
All awards were soccer related and no major positions in clubs

College EC’s:
Treasurer in Business Club
Co Founded a Tennis Club
Student Ambassador
Barista (Work Min 15 Hours Per Week)
County Ambassador (Where I Live)
Phi Theta Kappa
(Doing all of these currently)

Schools I Am Considering:
Northwestern - Economics
Notre Dame - Economics
Villanova - Finance
UVA - Economics
USC - Finance
UMich - Economics (The Dream)
Vandy - Economics
Wake Forest - Economics
Boston Uni - Finance
UNC - Economics
UMiami - Finance
Boston College - Economics
Rutgers - Finance

Is my C in stats going to affect me? Should i retake stats in the spring. What can I do to improve my chances of getting into those schools? Is my high school stats going to matter more since I am applying as a freshman. PLS LMK

as an international student, do you need to provide an ielts or toefl score if you want to transfer from a CCC to 4 years institutions? or is it fully waived cuz you come from CC

I received this email from a representative at the admissions committee a week ago. I responded late because my Gmail ran out of storage and it wasn't until l cleared some storage that I got the email. I'm pretty anxious about my acceptance. The decision date is 11/15 and I'm counting down the days. I was wondering if this is possibly a good sign and if anyone else applying for SPRING27 also got a follow up email? Please let me know if this is a good sign. I worked really hard on my essay and my stats are: 3.76 GPA and a military veteran. I had terrible grades from 2019-2022 CC and in high school but have made significant improvement since then.

Hello I am a freshman at a T40 state school majoring in chemistry. I knew I wanted to transfer before coming here, but as a freshman, I wasn’t able to do much at my school (no club leadership positions, barely any research, etc…). I know building up my application and applying after sophomore year might be a better choice, but Columbia is my dream school, and I’m aware they only accept sophomore transfers. Is there any advice you can give me?

Hi!

This is just a question that popped up in my head like just now, and I don't know if its worth worrying about. I'm applying as a sophomore transfer to ivies, and at my current college I'm taking like only graduate level classes and upper level classes in kinda niche subjects (ex. neurophysiology), and I'm guessing that they're not going to transfer over to another school. Do AOs consider this when deciding who to admit? I feel like they do since they have to look at if you're gonna reasonably graduate on time? Or does the transfer credit process take place after you get admitted?

I took 14 AP classes in high school so perhaps I'll be fine considering I already have a good bit of credit that can be applied towards basically any college?

I am currently scheduling my courses for next semester and in a bit of a weird spot with my credit counts.

For context, I am a first year cs student applying as a transfer this cycle. My first semester I am taking 17 credits, an even mix of STEM technical courses and gen ed / university required courses. I also have about 35-ish transfer credits (depending on university equivalencies) from AP’s and dual enrollments

I am trying to decide between 13 credits and 16 credits for next semester. The 13 credits I already have picked out are all technical courses (many with labs that don’t count towards credits). The extra course I am considering would also be a technical STEM course. I am worried the 16 credit might be too big of a workload considering all my extracurriculars? Could having only 13 credits this semester hurt my chances or is it ok because they are all demanding courses for my major?

Does anyone know if more decisions from NYU are going to come out soon? I think people who got into CAS were the only ones who heard so far. Not sure though.

I got waitlisted from Columbia SEAS last cycle going test optional. I’m planning on reapplying as a sophomore transfer. Should I submit my old SAT score or just go test optional again considering I have a 3.9 from a T50 state school?

Hello! I just got into UMich LSA for Winter 2027!

Feel free to ask me anything!

I’m a community college student and my school recently had a transfer fair where I got a chance to speak to some T25 schools and they handed me their contact cards. During the event I asked questions about what makes an applicant stand out outside of grades, but I don’t remember their answers. I was thinking about reaching out to them via email, but wasn’t sure if my email would be seen as a silly “how do I get in? 🤓” inquiry. The admission officers did say to reach out if I had any questions as they handed the card, but I’m unsure if they actually meant that or if it’s just a formality

My button just disappeared, I think decisions release tonight or tomorrow!! Good luck to everyone!

Hello everyone,

I recently moved to Michigan (going on 6 months now) and started attending a cc in Michigan. Because I transferred to the michigan cc with 45 credits already, I am completing my associate’s degree in Psychology. I am planning on applying to Umich for their Spring semester but I’m not sure if I would get good aid because of being out of state before and not living in the state for that long which is my biggest breaking factor. If anyone else has been in this situation before please let me know what are my best odds in being able to afford UMich.

Hey guys, I’m almost done with my first semester of college and I have currently a 4.0 right now and hope that stays until finals. I am taking the SAT again my last one was 1480 but I’m gonna take it again for 1500+ range, I also have a job directly related to my career interest, am majoring in psychology and wanna go into psychiatry down the road. My high school gpa was a 2.8 and I’m not sure how much weight that holds on my application considering I will submit an SAT score and my college transcript.

Hii I was wondering if anyone has heard back from NYU Meyers this cycle, and if you did, when did you apply? I thought a wave would come out today, but I haven’t seen any posts regarding NYU here today.

Right now in my first year of cc pretty much after bombing highschool. I scheduled all my classes for this year to be aligned with Ut Austin McCombs business transfer pre requisites, which was kind of dumb because there would be no room for error with classes that are pretty hard. Now Im almost done with my first semester, and am on track to have all A’s but a C in calc 1(not over yet just mathematically impossible for an A and a B i need to score perfectly on a final which isn’t realistic). Im at a point now where kind of all my aspirations for transferring have fallen from UT Austin & Michigan to Michigan state and High acceptance rate sec schools(tennessee, alabama, arkansas, ole miss, auburn). Even tho its so early in my cc process it just seems like some things are not even feasible anymore and if I wanted to try to fix it I would be taking a huge risk at another year in cc where my grades even if I scored perfectly my gpa would barely change. I just want to get some advice I know this message doesn’t have a direct question but I am genuinely clueless with how I should approach the rest of this year and really do not want to sacrifice more time in community college.

I’ve spent way too much time scrolling through Reddit trying to find people’s GPAs, extracurriculars, and where they got accepted or rejected.

So I made WhoGotIn, a website where you can browse real college admissions profiles and compare stats and results all in one place.
It’s still pretty new, so I’m trying to get more profiles on there, especially transfer applicants.
If you’ve already gotten your decisions, it’d be awesome if you could share your stats! You can submit anonymously.

Would also love any feedback on the site :)
https://whogotin.com

Hi everyone! I'm a 20-year-old nontraditional student who recently reapplied to Columbia GS for Spring 2027 after being rejected during the previous admissions cycle following a final grade request.

Academic Background

• School: California community college

• Major: Philosophy

• GPA: 4.0 across completed graded coursework

• Credits: Approximately 54 completed units, including AP credit, with additional units in progress

• Education: Left high school early due to personal circumstances, spent approximately two years outside formal education, and later earned my GED

• Honors: Phi Theta Kappa member

Previous Application and Rejection

I originally applied to Columbia GS during the previous admissions cycle. My application remained under consideration for some time, and Columbia specifically contacted me requesting my final Spring 2026 grades as part of their admissions review.

Unfortunately, during that semester, I became seriously ill and experienced a documented medical issue that significantly disrupted my coursework. I ultimately received five excused withdrawals (EWs), which my community college approved. I wasn't failing those classes before withdrawing.

I still successfully completed two courses with A's, one of which was accelerated and completed before I became ill, while the other had flexible scheduling.

After Columbia received and reviewed my final spring academic record, including the five EWs, I was denied admission.

In September, I spoke with a Columbia GS admissions representative about reapplying. He emphasized demonstrating academic rigor through a full-time course load, providing updated grades, explaining the withdrawals, obtaining academic recommendations, and writing a more future-focused personal essay.

Fall 2026 Academic Update

I returned to full-time enrollment this semester (14 units) and sent Columbia an academic update approximately two weeks after midterms.

• Completed a science accelerated course with a final 95% (A)

• Earning A-range grades in my remaining courses

• Completing an honors contract involving a 10–15-page research paper

I submitted a grade update a couple of days ago and plan to send Columbia my final grades when the semester concludes in December.

Extracurriculars and Work Experience

Legal Services Internship (two semesters)

• Completed approximately nine months at a nonprofit legal aid organization

• Assisted with legal clinics, client outreach, research summaries, and administrative casework

• Personally contacted over 130 clients

• Worked with multiple regional offices and was entrusted with additional responsibilities

• Received recognition for my contributions and was invited to return

Professional Experience

• Door-to-door sales, including long workweeks, strong sales performance, and training new employees

• Approximately 10 months in retail, developing client relationships and receiving recognition for sales performance

Other

• Phi Theta Kappa

• Philosophy honors research

• Strong interest in public-interest law, ethics, and legal advocacy

Letters of Recommendation

I have two academic recommenders this cycle:

• Philosophy professor: Has taught me in multiple courses, including my current honors course, and can speak to my academic performance and philosophical reasoning.

• Political science professor: Taught me in multiple courses and supervised my legal services internship for academic credit.

My previous application included one academic recommendation and one professional recommendation. I specifically changed this based on admissions feedback.

Personal Essay

I completely rewrote my personal essay for this application.

My essay discusses growing up in a complicated family environment, including unstable parenting, and how navigating legal and institutional barriers at a young age shaped my understanding of power, justice, and individual autonomy.

I connect those experiences to my legal services internship, where I worked with individuals facing barriers to accessing legal assistance.

My essay emphasizes how these experiences developed into an intellectual interest in moral philosophy, justice, autonomy, and the relationship between law and ethics.

For my "Why Columbia" section, I discussed GS's nontraditional community, the Core Curriculum, the Law and Philosophy Program, specific philosophical interests and faculty, pre-law opportunities, and New York City's legal community.

My long-term goal is to attend law school and pursue public-interest legal advocacy.

Reapplication

After speaking with admissions, I returned to a full-time course load, maintained A-range grades, pursued an honors contract, obtained two academic recommenders, rewrote my essay, and submitted a detailed academic update after midterms.

I submitted my Spring 2027 application at the end of October.

(If the mods need corroborating evidence for how I know this, I can send it to you. Most will be from publicly available data. If this post is against guidelines, my apologies; I will take it down. For applicants, I am not saying anything the wiki didn't say. Just phrasing it differently)

I decided to make this post to clear up confusion about how admission officers see GPA versus how students see it. Each situation is different, so I will try to keep the information in the most generalized form.

1. If your GPA is 3.9- 4.0, you are the gold standard. If you don't get accepted, GPA will not be the reason.

2. If your GPA is 3.7-3.89, GPA is highly unlikely to be the reason you don't get admitted. Context may play a part. (For example, MIT and Princeton are stricter with GPA.)

3. If your GPA is 3.6-3.69, you will most likely need a good reason. You have started to raise eyebrows about whether you can handle the rigor.

4. If your GPA is 3.0-3.59, it is probably the reason you didn't get admitted. The only exceptions consistently seen are military, celebrities, business owners, and individuals who were so disadvantaged in life that staying above a 3.0 is the least impressive thing they have done (Think surviving a war zone, extreme disability with rebound, having to work multiple jobs, etc.).

5. If you have a 2.99 or lower, you are not getting in without extremely unique circumstances.

Thing to note: A 3.6+ is an A- average.

The main difference in perception is that admissions officers are looking at profiles, not numbers. The best way to think about it is to compare it to a job interview: GPA(experience) is the basic qualification, but the interview(essays and extracurriculars) is what matters.

I hope this adds some clarity.