ahlatsiawa

Game of thrones

I can only think of one other place than the face where mustaches grow.

watching/caring about professional sports

belowthree- good for you for making the situation as bearable as possible. I like the sense of humor.

gad- Sorry to say it, but the ad comms do value the GPA. Arguing that you are more than a number on a scale isn't going to matter to them much, unfortunately. You are obviously very sensitive about it. Try to take it easy, belowthree's outlook is much more healthy. S/he was obviously not trying to insult you, but rather make a joke about their own situation or the situation in general.

i'm too overqualified to be talking to you people on this forum

I smell YahooNews-esque BS.

You all make me laugh. I took the time to register this account, because I thought that I was looking at a thread of disasters. In-fact, almost all of you have decent GPA's. I dont think I saw anyone with below a 2.6....That's pretty good.
 
This isn't a here's my story, it's better than yours. Rather it's a true disaster which cannot be fixed in any way.
 
I finished my undergrad with a 2.41 in business. I was studying accounting, but if your GPA falls below 2.5 at the University of Colorado then you lose your emphasis. Mine was accounting. I read everywhere that with a 2.4 I can eliminate 98% of grad schools in the U.S.
 
In my entire college tenure, my best semester was a 3.29 and my worst was a 1.6
 
Between those two extremes I fit everywhere probably averaging around a constant 2.5 the entire time. But my backstory is what helped (which I don't encourage you to do). I was in Iraq where I was severely injured to the point where I now have seizures on a weekly basis. I'm a disabled veteran, and I found out that this doesn't play into anything when applying to grad school. Since I had saved money, I decided to take my 2.4 gpa and apply to every top school that I could think of. I don't have good grades, my professors won't write me letters of recommendations because of my grades and my work experience is non-relevant to accounting. Basically I have no help getting into grad school.
 
However, I was wrong. I spent two days creating applications, paying fee's and writing countless essays as to why I would be a good fit. I then picked the six schools that I *knew* wouldn't accept me because of my bad grades and applied to them. I spent over $1000 in application fee's and other items. My top six schools that I applied to for a masters in accounting: Stanford, Michigan, Cornell, Wisconsin,California and Harvard. Then I completed five applications to schools that I thought I had a moderate chance of getting into: Texas A&M, Texas, Ohio State University, Nebraska, and Auburn. After finishing those applications, I tried some other one's that I thought would be sympathetic to my veteran status and applied to five more: North Dakota, Western Michigan, University of Utah, and Boise State University.
 
I didn't think anything of these. At worst, I thought that I may have just submitted 16 applications which would end up in the trash can followed by a degrading rejection email that is sent to the auto rejected students.
 
However here is my current problem:
On my desk I currently have acceptance letters to every single school except Utah because of an application error which is supposed to be resolved soon. The first thought that came to my mind was "wow, I got into Stanford". The first idea was to immediately call/email all of the admissions staff to see what kind of marijuanna they were smoking because my acceptance likely ended the dream of a better qualified student at that particular school. To keep things short, I summed up the responses from all of the universities by displaying what Michigan wrote back. I did this because it generally follows what Stanford, Cornell and just about every other school said. Texas A&M said that my veteran status improved my rankings consideribly. But anyways:

Michigan: "Your undergraduate grades were horrible, and frankly I cannot believe that you are applying knowing that the GPA floor is 3.3 for minimal consideration to the accounting program. After looking through your packet, I saw nothing which indicated that you would have the ability to complete a graduate level degree. Furthermore, after our interview it became very clear to me that you have no relevant experience in accounting outside of academia. I left the interview perplexed because nothing statistically showed my staff or myself that you belong at Michigan. However, I did enjoy reading your essay and listening to your thoughts on the Enron scandal. For having such a low GPA, I am interested in how you learned so much. While I am grateful for your service and terribly sorry for your injury I cannot simply put that in front of your academic performance. You got into Michigan because you can communicate well. It's not too often that a student will present themselves as a problem solver and a situational thinker yet not be able to test well. I think you will bring something profound to our program and that is the ability to hear and speak."

So just so all of you know, having a 2.4 doesn't help but if you can overcome with something else then you can definitely go places.

It is possible! I graduated with a B+ average. My undergrad university does a 1-9 system. Mine was 7.25 or something. Anyways, I made it in! Anything is possible! I think it comes down to your statement of interest, your passion for the subject and what you plan to achieve with the degree, references, professional and volunteer experience,

Potatoes.  They bake in the microwave in just a few minutes and can be topped with anything.... veggies, cheese, tomato sauce, curry, fresh herbs, chili, tikka masala, salad dressing, etc.

Actual conversation I had with a doctor during a fairly....umm, uncomfortable, part of my physical:
 
Doctor: "So what are you studying?"
Me: "Astronomy, specifically, the planets!"
Doctor: "Oh, I have always been really interested in that field."
Me: "Cool."
Doctor: "Yeah, I think Jupiter is in retrograde right now, and that's the reason for all of the Arab Spring events." [This was in 2012]. 
Me: "Oh...yeah......." 
 

Or you could uh... you know, try to lose weight? I don't know your situation at all and don't mean to be judgmental... but if you have to rest after every 20-30 paces you are definitely not getting the exercise you need and should be more concerned about becoming healthier than finding a campus that have seats with no armrests.
 
Edit: oh and to answer your original question...stay away from Colorado I guess. Lots of active health nuts here.

I don't know if this is true for graduate schools, but undergrad programs will sometimes reject a student with high stats on the assumption that the student will not accept a place at the lower ranked school even if it's offered, because they'll be offered slots at many higher ranking institutions. It's one of the reasons schools ask you to list where else you're applying on your applications. Some schools would rather take a student who will definitely attend that school, even if their stats are a little lower, than take a higher ranking student who will go someplace else.  If they take the higher ranking student, they have to put other students on the wait list, and potentially lose both the wait-listed students and the high ranking student to other schools.   
 
Also, every school is looking to round out their program, so it can sometimes be a simple factor of intangible statistics.  They only want so many students in a particular discipline, from a particular geographic area, with a particular background, etc.  So in some cases, the lower ranked program may not be looking for your specific attributes, even if you have good grades. 

It is actually quite common. Lower ranked schools , a lot of the times, screen students purely on numbers. Your application may not get reviewed beyond the GRE scores in some cases and if you get lucky may be your GPA maybe looked at. With high ranked schools, they may be willing to take the risk in students even if their GRE or GPA lower than their average applicants as long as they deem the students will excel in their program. Do bear in mind, this isn't a standard operating procedure for all high ranked or low ranked schools.