[ajwinn]

From a state school’s Admissions perspective, where the unit test resolves to admit/deny, there is nothing particularly outlying about your scores from what I recall.

I see 31 and think, “admit”. I see 3.18, I think “probably admit”. I check your math scores (which is where a lot of people trip up), and see you got mostly Bs- heck, you’re on Hacker Mews, probably As, and I think, “admit”. Now I do the normalizing math and yeah, Admit. Congratulations!

[wincy]

Ooh okay okay try me.

I had a 30 on my ACT my sophomore year then dropped out of high school my junior year. I was getting F’s my junior year because I couldn’t stay awake and had maybe like a 2.3 GPA before that. Would have reduced drastically if I’d stayed in school.

It was only that high because some teachers were always super annoyed with me, and a lot of them would try to bend the system to give me a better grade but some just were like “homework is the grade sorry” even though I’d ace tests. Also my stepdad was doing meth so that caused issues.

So am I an actual rarity?

[ajwinn]

You might be an outlier!

But it sounds like you did not graduate high school or apply to college. If that’s correct, I would not have the context to know since the baseline of inclusion into my experience is people who graduate high school in some form - GED included, AND who provide test scores.

I’m really sorry to hear about your stepdad, wincy. I hope things are ok for you now.

[wincy]

Things are great for me now. Thanks! I’ve got a wife and two kids and just got promoted to a SWE team lead. Mostly self taught. College just wasn’t for me.

[tristor]

I replied to you in another subthread, but I'm curious how you would have judged me (I'm assuming "deny"), I had a 36 on the ACT (a perfect score) and a 1.97 GPA.

[ajwinn]

I like to think I wasn't "judging" anyone, but I know what you mean. Because we used both GPA and test scores, yes, you almost certainly would have been a "deny" with a 36 ACT and a 1.97 GPA.

If I had seen your file, it would have been the talk of the day. "Can you believe this file!" I probably would have talked to the Dean, maybe called you and given you some advice. That advice would have been something like:

"Listen. Don't tell anyone I said this, but, this school is more expensive than it needs to be. Heck, who says you need college at all? But if you really want to go here, you've got two options. 1. See if you can get into the local community college for a semester or two and then transfer your credits - we won't care about your HS grades anymore. 2. AND REALLY DON'T TELL YOUR PARENTS/TEACHERS I SAID THIS You could, in theory... just get your GED. That's a loop hole around us caring about your GPA."

[tristor]

I pretty much did option 1. I attended a community college and then transferred to the state school that was in my home town. A lot of folks did this anyway because it was much cheaper, you could do all your general ed at community college first and get an AA and then move to another school for your major studies.