Spessartine

My story has a similar start to Happington's. I had a pretty bad two years at community college for medical reasons, but met the bare minimum requirements to transfer to a four-year school. Once I got to that university, my grades steadily improved .. but I was still at a 2.8, because they counted everything equally despite graduating with honors for my BA. I had multiple schools reject me for that outright without seemingly even taking the time to read my SOP (they were VERY fast rejections). But I interview well, my GRE was ... well, V164, Q147, AW6. Which is two near-perfect scores and ... a 28% on the quantitative. That doesn't look too fantastic either; I got lucky in that I had As in relevant statistics courses and a statistics professor writing a LOR. I'm not going to say those two high GREs didn't help, though, I definitely think they did. What also helped: Research experience. Work experience (I'm doing MPH, and have 3 years as an EMT plus a medical coding certification). Strong SOP. I was given a regular matriculated acceptance, not conditional -- but everyone at the school is expected to maintain a minimum of 3.0 once you're in, so I'm not sure they even do conditional acceptances. I'm not going to an Ivy or anything, just a public school, and just for a Masters. I was also accepted to GWU, but opted not to attend because I'm not in a financial place to handle private school or moving. Honestly, I'm perfectly fine with that -- even six months ago, if you told me I'd be posting in the sub 3.0 acceptance thread telling other people what things helped me get there I'd be totally shocked. I didn't expect to get in my first round of applications. For the record, Jo, I'm in NYC. It's not all about GPA, really. I thought it was too. But it's not to every school.