With all of the pressure that is put on high school students to perform well on all their standardized tests, it can make you feel like you don’t have any chance of getting into college if you don’t score well. Of course, test scores are very important and they do weigh very heavily when it comes to admissions, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to make up for the deficit. Not all schools are looking for students who simply test well. Many schools are looking for students who have an interesting edge, so you want to start by looking for those schools. Then once you find them, there are a few ways that you need to approach the challenge of increasing your chances of admission. Here is how to get accepted to college with bad test scores.
Focus on Your GPA
Having bad test scores is one thing, but having bad test scores and a bad GPA is a completely different story. That’s why you want to do everything in your power to keep your GPA up and find out if there’s any way that you can boost your grades in each class before the end of the semester. If one thing’s for certain, you do not have the luxury of indulging your senioritis, so don’t even think about it.
Write a Killer Essay
One of the best ways to combat your low test scores is by writing a jaw-dropping essay. There’s plenty of research you can do on how to structure your essay and how to approach it stylistically, but you also want to do a lot of research on the schools you’re applying to. You want to know exactly what they’re looking for in a student, and you want to emphasize in every way possible that you fit the bill. This is also a good opportunity for you to eloquently explain why your test scores are, ahem, less than impressive.
Get Some Glowing Letters of Recommendation
Each school should tell you the number of references or letters of recommendation they would like you to submit. Whatever it is that they want, you want to be sure that you find the right teachers and/or coaches to sing your praises. There’s the person that they can imagine by looking at all the raw quantitative data on your application, and then there’s the major details that are depicted in your essay and your letters of recommendation.
Request an Interview
A lot of people who aren’t great test takers happen to be great interviewers. If this is the case for you, then you will definitely want to do everything in your power to get an interview. These are most often administered when students are applying for scholarships, which means that you might actually be able to get into college and get a scholarship if you really know what you’re doing.
Get an Athletic Scholarship
Of course there isn’t an option for an athletic scholarship if you’re studying with a school like Case Western Online, but there are a lot of universities that aren’t known for their sports, but they have athletic teams nonetheless. You may have never considered playing college sports, but if you’re good enough to get on the team and get a scholarship, why not try?