Brooke Elkjer May 8, 2023 6 Academics,Grades and GPA

Is a 3.2 GPA Good? Colleges that Accept a 3.2 GPA

What’s Covered:

• Is a 3.2 GPA Good?
• How Do Colleges Evaluate GPAs?
• Which Colleges Accept a 3.2 GPA?
• How to Improve Your GPA
• What if You Don’t Have Time to Increase Your GPA?

While college applications ask for a lot of information about applicants, your GPA is one of the more important data points. Each college has an average high school GPA for accepted students that prospective applicants can use as a gauge for whether their grades are high enough to meet the university’s standards.

This post will help you find schools where the average unweighted high school GPA of enrolled students is 3.2. We will also go over how you can improve your GPA to increase your chances of acceptance. 

Not sure what your unweighted GPA is on a 4.0 scale? Use our GPA converter.

Is a 3.2 GPA Good?

The answer to this question is largely a matter of perspective. Generally, a student’s GPA is good if it is competitive at the colleges they hope to attend. If your high school GPA is at or above your desired college’s average, that’s good! If your high school GPA is below the average, you will need to get it higher to have the best chances of admission.

If you have a 3.2 GPA, you’ve probably gotten, on average, a mixture of B’s and B+’s in your high school courses. According to a 2016 study, a 3.2 GPA is below the national average for SAT test takers, a 3.38 (B+), so it will limit your college choices. 

There are colleges in the US that will accept you; however, if you’re looking to apply to more highly ranked and prestigious schools, a 3.2 GPA may pose an issue for you. 

To see how your GPA stacks up at your dream schools, put your information into our free chancing engine. The engine will also take your GPA, test scores, extracurriculars, and course rigor into account to help you improve your application profile.

If you find that your dream schools are all long reaches, then you may want to consider going to community college first, getting your grades up, and then transferring to a 4-year school.

How Do Colleges Evaluate GPAs?

Grades are an important component of the admissions process—after all, your GPA is often the first thing an admission committee sees and can affect whether or not your application is even read by admissions officers.

Many colleges use a screening tool called the Academic Index (AI) to quickly evaluate thousands of applications and screen out academically unqualified applications. A student’s AI is a calculation that boils their overall academic performance—GPA and test scores—down to a single numerical score, which is compared against a school’s average admissions profile to determine whether their application is read.

That said, college admissions committees know that GPA varies from high school to high school. Because of this variance, before computing a student’s AI, admissions committees will recalculate applicant GPAs using their own systems. 

Some colleges give more weight to honors and AP classes, while others count only core courses like English, math, science, history, and foreign languages, eliminating electives from GPA. Admissions committees may also take a high school’s difficulty into account, such as whether a school is known for grade deflation or inflation.

Which Colleges Accept a 3.2 GPA?

Below are the top colleges that have first-year classes with an average high school GPA of 3.2. 

It’s worth noting that the schools on this list aren’t the only institutions that students with this grade point average should consider. Many universities neglect to publish average GPAs due to high school variations, so do your research before ruling a school in or out.

How to Improve Your GPA

If the colleges that interest you have a higher average high school GPA than a 3.2, you may want to consider increasing your GPA. In fact, we recommend trying to get your GPA as high as possible regardless as it will give you more of a competitive edge on your college application. 

Here are some ways for you to raise your GPA:  

1. Lighten Your Course Load

If you feel like you can master course material just fine but don’t have the time to do so, you could be taking too many time-consuming or advanced classes. Perhaps if you lightened your course load a bit, you would be able to devote the proper amount of time to each course and have more time to study overall. Don’t worry–colleges won’t penalize you a bunch for taking 3 advanced classes instead of 5. 

2. Switch Up Your Courses

Perhaps your course load is fine, but you’re just not interested in the classes that you are taking. You should listen to what your grades are telling you. Take classes that you are truly interested in and have a passion for, and you’ll find that good grades come more naturally.

3. Take Something Extracurricular Off Your Plate

Maybe you’re taking all the right classes at the right level of difficulty, but you don’t have time to study due to other commitments. This could be a lot of extracurricular activities, a demanding job, or even family responsibilities that you can’t ignore. If this sounds like you, see if you can lessen the amount of non-academic activities you are pursuing to use that time to focus on studying. 

4. Phone a Friend

There are many ways that you can get extra help if you are struggling in a class. You can reach out to your teacher and try to arrange a time for one-on-one help with the material. You can seek out a tutor, preferably someone who took the class recently and with the same instructor. You can look online to see if the topics that you are struggling with have been covered by someone else in a way that makes sense to you.

There are plenty of resources out there that can help you understand the material better. You simply have to commit to seeking them out yourself.

What if You Don’t Have Time to Increase Your GPA?

If you are in your last year of high school or are planning on applying to college without taking any more classes, you should turn your attention to aspects of your application that are still in your control like your essays, test scores, and letters of recommendation. 

Because of the importance of the Academic Index, we recommend you focus on performing exceptionally well on your standardized tests to ensure that your application is read by admissions officers.

Keep in mind that, if your GPA is low because of extenuating circumstances, colleges will take that into account. Just make sure to include it in the Additional Information section of the Common App.

Finally, if your transcript shows an upward grade trend, make sure you highlight that in your application. Colleges love to see that a student’s grade performance has improved over time.