<p>yabeyabe2, Everybody who has spent their entire life in NC like DH and me knows who David Thompson is. His glory days were before our time (college wise) though. DH is NCSU '81.</p>
<p>Thanks for the explaining Packmom. Funny how we associate words with our own region. Though…</p>
<p>Can I safely assume GO PACK GO would be just as appropriate for cheering on the Wolfpack as it is in Green Bay? (sorry don’t know how to do the smiley face)</p>
<p>pwm…Yep, we say “go Pack” all the time :)</p>
<p>If you type a colon followed by the right end parenthesis sign, you get a :)</p>
<p>I was hoping you or DH had actually met him. I gather he has conquered his addiction and now works for NC State</p>
<p>I think there is a lot of talk about schools in the mid-atlantic states because we HAVE a lot of schools here. I live in a small town but there are 6 four year colleges - Lehigh, Muhlenberg, Lafayette, Moravian, DeSales, Cedar Crest and PSU - Lehigh Valley within 20 minutes of my house. Just in PA, we have so many (very good) four year colleges that you literally cannot drive an hour in any direction without hitting one or more. That said, the majority of the schools on my son’s list are not in PA. Two of them are in NC and his best friend is intent on going to NC State.</p>
<p>"I don’t see any posts of students with B averages in regular classes. Is there a thread for that? "</p>
<p>My current search is for my D (who still falls pretty much into this group…3.2/3.4 but with AP), but my S was solidly in this group two years ago - 1 AP that he failed!..but helped him decide what NOT to major in 
</p>
<p>So, I might be able to give some insight into options in the Southeast where he (and she) looked. I think many CCers forget that some of these smaller state schools have some really well known/respected programs. D has switched her plan of major from music to geography (I know!) so we had to shift focus. I spoke with someone we know with a Masters in Geog and told him she wanted to stay in the SE and he immediately listed about 4 schools - all were small tier 2/3/4 state schools - that he knew had great programs and would give her a lot more research opportunities than the state flagships.</p>
<p>I also know someone with very high stats who gave up some really great schools to attend university of West Georgia primarily because they are well known for the specific type of Psychology program they offer.</p>
<p>Out of state students at Evergreen State College can receive a merit award (based solely on having a GPA of 3.0) of around $3000. In-state students, with the same GPA get $900. At least that’s the way it was when my daughter applied for admission in 2009.</p>
<p>S is an underachiever who has a 3.38W, only in top 50% of class and 2010 SAT (CR780; M600). He is NMSF and NASF, also will have 5 APs by the end of graduation. Got 4s on the AP tests. We have been receiving letters from lots of good schools encouraging him to apply but GC says they are reach. At same time GC says he is a male AA with high standardized scores and she does not have any experience with that “kind of profile.”
He really liked WashU, UNC and GA Tech but GC thinks those are stretch. We don’t qualify for FA based on the calculators but don’t have a lot of money saved for college so MERIT MONEY is A MUST. Anyone with similar background that can give advice on where to apply and can share experience on what they got and where they were accepted.</p>
<p>Sayz, it sounds like your GC may not know enough to be helpful in your situation. </p>
<p>Given the gap in your son’s M vs. CR, is GA Tech really a fit?</p>
<p>Do you mean WashU/STL or in WA state?</p>
<p>If you your son is an underachiever, would a small LAC where he would get a lot of attention be better than large schools? I also think MANY LACs would offer lots of merit money to help diversify. I recall a CC poster, Plainsman, whose D received very generous offers from Oberlin and Muhlenberg.</p>
<p>What does he want to study? What else does he seek in a school?</p>
<p>Perhaps ther is an AA thread on Cc which could offer additional help?</p>
<p>^^SayzwhoATL
My son is remotely similar, but we have no experience yet to share. D did fine in class of '08, but had a much higher GPA.Your son is a senior?</p>
<p>sayz,</p>
<p>I recall reading many posts by a parent who is a gonho University of Alabama enthusiast whose son attends there tuition free as an OOS student.</p>
<p>I remember her saying something to the effect that SAT 1400 and up will give an OOS student a full tuition waiver. I am not sure whether I am recalling this with100% accuracy. You might want to check it out.</p>
<p>Your son is very close to 1400 (CR+M). There are still a few more SAT rounds left. May not be a bad idea to take another SAT (after doing some studying on the Math portion). </p>
<p>I do think there is some value in crossing that 1400 threshold.</p>
<p>My son’s SAT is 2040 (CR: 750, M: 590 W:700). His GPA is bit higher than your son’s. I consider my son a lop sided candidate (his GPA is not on par with his SAT). I think this is the case with yours (perhaps more so). In a case like this, I believe it’s worth it to help him get a higher score on SAT. At this point, cumulative GPA is very hard to change, but SAT can still improve meaningfully. Though ours kids have lower GPA than other kids, very high SAT might catch the attention of the adcoms, and “encourage” them to give them a second look. Besides, your son is an URM. A very high SAT URM candidate may be attractive enough for the colleges even with a bit lower GPA. (by the way, I was also told that W is quite easy to improve. Your son’s W is 630 - this may easily improve. I heard that sometimes kids who score high on CR don’t score high on W because they did not know what the reader (essay reader) was looking for, and did not writhe the essay the way the testing agency wanted to see). </p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>(I signed my son up for a private SAT tutoring on just math. If anything, given that he is at 590, it may not be THAT difficult to improve 60 points or so to make it 650+, while it would be very difficult to improve his CR from 750 to 770, for example. If that happens, his CR+M is in the 1400 range, and CR+M+W will be in the 2100 range. That puts him at the top 3-4% range. Colleges get ranked by the average SAT scores of their incoming freshman (5-6% of the USNWR ranking derives from SAT or ACT average). High SAT students help them “look good”. )</p>
<p>Sayz, I disagree w/ your GC about the top schools being a reach - - AA-males that score hight enough to make NMSF are a pretty hot commody (even with 600M). </p>
<p>But if you don’t think you’ll qualify for need-based aid, the top schools are out of play, since they rarely offer merit money. Still, with some research, your S could do very well in terms of both admission and merit awards. Highly-regarded school just below the top tier are far more likely to offer merit money that the top schools. Also, consider test-opt schools that require scores for merit awards - - Goucher immed comes to mind (and he’d get a boost b/c Goucher, like many of the former women’s colleges, is struggling for gender parity). And there’s a CC thread about schools known for good merit aid.</p>
<p>(I do recall College of Wooster having a couple of scholarships earmarked for URM students.)</p>
<p>(Agree w/ lizmane generally about breaking the 1400 threshold, but I don’t think that’s really an issue/barrier for an AA male).</p>
<p>Guys,
Thanks for all the responses and the info that you provided.
We did visit smaller LACs but he thought they were too small for his taste, prefd midsized schools in or close to large cities (that’s why WUSTL and Tech were such big hits). Two exceptions were Elon and Rhodes.
These are the answers to your Qs.
Yabe2: “Given the gap in your son’s M vs. CR, is GA Tech really a fit?”
You are right about that but it is local and would be really low cost. Also if he got in there he would be go for a business major - Marketing. He got A in Math last year and has A- so far this semester at a rigorous HS so anticipate he can handle the business math.
“Do you mean WashU/STL or in WA state?”
WashU St Louis. They have been sending us mail almost weekly but GC says they have a huge mailing budget so don’t read too much into it.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap, Yes S is a senior. Doesn’t know what he wants to major in - all over the place - marketing, environmental studies, history and journalism. So definitely and UnDec major.
Lizmane, You’re so right with the GPA, even if he gets all As this semester he won’t be higher than 3.5. He will be taking the SAT next weekend. He is taking a M prep and we hope his SAT scores are more in line with the PSAT to give him a boost. Did not bother with the CW because lots of schools seem to focus on CR+M only.
Thanks also for info on AL. He did a summer prog. there and won 2 prizes for performance but to be honest we were worried about how isolated he might be as an AA at AL.</p>
<p>foolishpleasure, thx for the info. Goucher was on his list a while back, will have to revisit it now.</p>
<p>sayz,</p>
<p>I am glad that your son is getting help for the math portion. I would still consider doing some prep for the W portion. After all, many good colleges are reporting total SAT ranges out of 2400. If they are reporting it, it means that they do look at it. I saw the press announcement from my S’s #1 choice school touting that this fall’s incoming freshmen’s average SAT score (out of 2400) went up by 50 points. They made a bid ado about it as a sign that the schools is attracting better qualified students and on a path to join the rank of tippy top schools. I believe that to the degree that your son can “help” them make this kind of statement, he will be in a better position.</p>
<p>Since your son’s CR score is so high, I have every reason to believe that all he needs is couple of hours worth of familiarizing himself with the way the essay readers score the W part. If a couple of hours result in another 30-40 points in total SAT out of 2400, that’s a very cheap investment. </p>
<p>For instance, my son’s PSAT W score was below 60. (equivalent to W=600). He spent a couple of hours reading about “how” he was supposed to organize his arguments and present his views. In the actual SAT, he scored 700. </p>
<p>I believe that a lopsided kid whose GPA is falling short, every little bit that “compensates” for it helps.</p>
<p>I have a reasonable expectation that my S’s SAT will break 2100 mark which puts it past the 75% marker at the colleges he is applying to, and I think that will at least encourage the adcoms to give his application a second look before tossing it into the “reject file” automatically on account of the GPA that falls below the 50% mark at the kind of schools he is applying to. My S is a completely unhooked applicant, so I am assuming that even with the SAT past the 75% range, his GPA below the 50% range is toxic. Your son is an URM, so your mileage may be better. </p>
<p>Just my two cents. </p>
<p>Good luck. I hope things work out wonderfully for your son.</p>
<p>sayz, sounds like a solid plan. Midsize near a city is a rare options, but Tufts, Brandeis, Villanova, Notheastern, Case Western, Tulane, GW,Miami? your son’s stats are compatible with a URM friend of my son who was accepted by Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon hope to diversify further.</p>
<p>You also have geographic diversity on your side. Best of luck</p>
<p>Here is some good news for you all:</p>
<hr>
<p>Your student with a GPA challenge may not be as challenged as you might think just looking at the GPA and SAT middle ranges reported by the colleges/universities, especially if s/he is a lopsided student with a lower GPA/high SAT profile.</p>
<hr>
<p>Here is the reason why.</p>
<p>Unlike SAT/ACT, comparing GPA apples to apples is difficult. Not only there is such a thing as pretty meaningful grade inflation in some schools, just in the process of converting letter grades into GPA, one can come up with meaningfully different GPA depending on the method.</p>
<p>For instance, my S’s weighted GPA is 3.95 out of 4.5. If you just “linearly” convert it to a 4.0 scale, it becomes weighted 3.51. His unweighted GPA converted linearly from a 4.5 scale to a 4.0 scale is 3.2. </p>
<p>However, if I use their “new” GPA calculation method to be used from next year on, using the same grades he earned, his weighted GPA on a “4.0” scale becomes 3.9, and his unweighted GPA becomes 3.44. This is because, till now, the additional weight given to AP courses is very low, and some other ways they treat A+, A, B+, B differently.</p>
<p>On top of this, we all know by now that class ranking information provided the the colleges about their admitted students is fairly inflated. More and more competitive high schools choose not to report the class ranking information, or provide only when a student/parent requests it. In many competitive colleges, when you read a fine print, they show less than 50% of their admitted students reported class ranking. </p>
<p>You can easily guess which high schools choose to report class ranking: more likely than not, under performing schools that want to “help” their star students who may still score well below their counterparts on SAT/ACT etc. As such, class ranking statistics the colleges produce for their admitted or enrolled students are much likely to be inflated and better than the “real” picture. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, we all know also that when hisg schools do choose to provide class ranking information, it’s not apples to apples - one schools 10% level performance may not even come close to 20% level performance in another school.</p>
<p>TO MAKE IT EVEN MORE DIFFICULT to gauge where our GPA challenged kids should apply, the GPA range and average colleges/universities are reporting on their admitted/enrolled students are also inflated. </p>
<p>Today, I went to a college fair, and I asked adcoms of several colleges/universities how they calculated their admitted/enrolled students’ average GPA or middle 50% GPA range, they said, they use the number the high schools provided with NO adjustment or recalculation. </p>
<p>Note that some high schools report unweighted, some high schools report weighted. Some high schools uses 4.0 scale. Some high schools use 4.5 or even 5.0 scale. My son’s HS reports weighted GPA only (on a 4.5 scale). According to this, when my S’s GPA will be included into average GPA for a college he is admitted to, the number going into this calculation will be 3.95, while I was thus far was thinking 3.2 (unweighted, linearly converted to 4.0 using a rather “unflattering” conversion method) when I was looking the college/university GPA range and and trying to see whether he is “in range” or not.</p>
<p>Furthermore, when you decide whether your student’s GPA or SAT is in range or not for a college/universities, you need to look at the statistics provided by the colleges/universities carefully. Did they provide middle 50% for the “admitted” or “enrolled” students? In the top 30-80 range schools, I believe there is about 50-70 SAT score different (especially in the 75% range) between the range of the admitted students vs. enrolled students. </p>
<p>The reason being, admitted students whose scores are at the upper end will have more options, and majority of them will not enrolled in that school (other than tippy top schools, most school’s yield is well below 40%), while students for who the school was a low match or reach will be much more likely to stay “PUT” happily and enroll in that school. </p>
<p>As such, the actual “enrolled” students’ SAT range and GPA range are both meaningfully lower than the actual “enrolled” students’. </p>
<p>Needless to say, if you kid is going for ED, s/he will further benefit, as in, they will further “accommodate” a bit lower GPA or SAT. </p>
<p>So, moral of the story::::: Your student with a GPA challenge may not be as challenged as you might think just looking at the GPA and SAT middle ranges reported by the colleges/universities. This is especially more so for the lopsided kids with lower GPA and high SAT and kids gunning for ED.</p>
<p>This is not to say, my kid (3.95 W out of 4.5. SAT 2040, aiming to cross the 2100 line in the Oct SAT) should suddenly shoot for a top 10 school. But, this makes me think we should reconsider some schools that we ruled out because of the GPA issue. For instance, I had my S’s GPA as 3.2 as discussed above when I saw Penn State’s claim that 2/3 of their admissions decision is based on GPA, and their average GPA is 3.7. Hmmmmmmmm, perhaps this school should consider to be “in play” now.</p>
<p>That is all very interesting and helpful, thank you! I think you’ve said some really important things.</p>
<p>I’m one who believes that this process is an art, not a science. As long as there is a likely/safety school where you can either be guaranteed an acceptance or get one early in the process, I don’t see why you shouldn’t apply to schools where the numbers are “fuzzy.” </p>
<p>My D1 goes to a school where supposedly “everyone” had a 4.0 in HS. Well, she’s certainly seen a lot of variety - met people who didn’t for sure, people who did but aren’t particularly capable in college, people who truly ARE geniuses, regardless of their HS GPA, people who went to top HS’s where their preparation puts them far beyond everyone else, people who have transferred from lower-tiered schools and either are struggling or have found their true home at last, and many, many more. She certainly couldn’t tell you from walking around or being in class who was in the “bottom 25% of admitted students.”</p>
<p>Apply and see what happens. My D2 is trying for a kind of artistic auditioned program that has absolutely no statistical way to predict admission. There are places that accept a higher or lower percentage of applicants, but that’s about all we have to go on, besides having confidence and trying to honestly assess her ability, dedication and educational needs. While there is some statistical basis for picking a regular admission school, I do feel that there are always outliers, that it’s important to remember that there is a “bottom” 25% for a reason, and that if you don’t try, you’ll never know.</p>
<p>We all know our kids - some blossom in college and can thrive where they are working hard to keep up, and some will be discouraged and turned off (or they’ll succeed and still be turned off). One of the great things about this thread is that the “3.X” kids are all there for different reasons, and we can discuss the breadth of qualities and needs of a not-quite-perfect HS kid. </p>
<p>So if someone wants to push him/herself, we’ll cheer for you, and if someone just wants a supportive place to be, we’ll also cheer. And who knows, maybe it’ll even be at the same school.</p>
<p>Stupid question here, but I honestly don’t know: When the application asks for your gpa, and it doesn’t say anything about whether they want weighted or unweighted, which do you use?</p>
<p>Use the official GPA your HS has calculated. The college will look at your transcript and decide how they will deal with weighting and all that, and if it’s not a huge difference, then it isn’t going be that big a deal. If your HS weights or doesn’t weight on the official GPA, they’ll figure that out. If you have both officially, then decide which one represents you properly - if your HS is very generous with weighting, you aren’t going to fool anyone (like if it turns every B into an A+); if your HS just gives a little bit on AP grades, for example, it’ll make sense. </p>
<p>If the transcript shows plenty of rigor, then give the UW GPA. They’ll know what to do.</p>
<p>Big oops in our house–occurred two weeks ago but discovered yesterday. My S went back on the Common App to try and check the status of his SUNY Purchase application since he had not received any sort of confirmation from them… and realized that when he filled it out and hit “submit” two weeks ago, the application did not go through. It was his very first common application and I don’t think he knew what to expect in terms of the little orange box saying “in process” or the green triangle saying “submitted.” He is abject about the whole misunderstanding saying that no school would accept a kid who couldn’t even figure out how to apply…</p>
<p>At the same time I paid the application fee and received confirmation for it, and the next day his transcript and SAT scores were sent to the school. He went ahead and re-submitted his application yesterday (after an anxiety attack the likes of which I hope none of you ever have to experience) and checked that it DID in fact go through this time. He followed up with a brief explanatory email to admissions. </p>
<p>My question: is this really a crisis, or do things now seem under control. He intends to call the admissions office if he deosn’t get some sort of response from them by Wednesday. What would you do?</p>