College admissions use a high school’s profile to understand the grading rubric and determine where an applicant stands in relation to peers at that school.
In the case of the New England boarding schools, for instance, the rigor is well understood but, every year, parents expect colleges to accept a lower GPA from their boarding school over a higher GPA from a less rigorous school. What they fail to understand is that colleges aren’t evaluating their student against those from a high school they didn’t attend. Instead, their student is being evaluated only against their peers at that particular BS, and SOME of those peers ARE getting top GPAs, so there is no leniency when the school’s profile reveals exactly how that applicant stacks up against peers.
So, yes, adcoms understand the difference from HS to HS but there is no adjustment to be made as each student’s GPA is evaluated within the context of their particular high school. Most college admissions processes assign a score to each applicant file where GPA, evaluated within the context of the given HS, is just one piece of the overall score.
Every year on the prep forum we beat the drum: If preserving a 4.0 GPA is your primary goal, boarding school may not be for you. You may have a better shot at that from your LPS.