financeiscooll

Hi everyone! I'm currently in my third year at university studying economics and possibly adding a computational data science minor! Although right now I'm torn between working straight out of school or going into a graduate program, I'm definitely looking to apply next year. My main question is with my GPA and academic performance, what tier schools should I be looking at? When researching programs, the only real statistic I see is a minimum 3.0/4 to apply, but not a lot of programs give insights as to the scores of their incoming class. Additionally, I'm not really sure what constitutes a "good GPA" in an undergrad economics program. I currently have a 3.43 cumulative (3.33 within my major) HOWEVER, I started out as a nursing major and basically failed out my first semester of college and ended up transferring schools 3 times because of financial issues resulting in my 1.6 GPA my first semester (long story short I found out I lost my scholarship 2 weeks before school started my sophomore year, couldn't afford out of state tuition, transferred last minute to a safety school I was accepted to in HS that allowed me to apply last minute, then transferred AGAIN into my junior year into an actually solid economics department at another school because I was unhappy with the academics of the school I had to transfer into last minute). Basically, my applications are gonna make me look like a crazy person for transferring, and that 1.6 my first semester drops my cum GPA down to a 3.01 (not counting that first sem I have a 3.43 as an econ major ever since). My major GPA is a 3.4 which I ~think~ is OK for econ, I've gotten all As in math and nothing lower than B in my ECON classes. Based on that though, I'm not sure what would be a target school for my GPA. I have yet to take the GRE but my professional experiences I think highlight my strengths well as I have had great internships in the finance and tech world which I am hoping can offset the fact I "failed out almost" my first semester freshman year (lol). Is there a range of schools that anyone suggests I should look into? Specifically masters programs in applied economics? Ex. I would LOVE to get into George Washington but I doubt my grades are good enough, should I be targeting schools like George Mason, U of MD, etc? I know this post is super long so I apologize!!