<p>Or mistaken data entry. Like I said, best to consider this as slightly bettee than a big results thread.</p>
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Yeah, but there were some very strong profiles there that were not admitted. Obviosuly, stats don’t tell the whole story. Some high-stats students were denied, some were waitlisted.</p>
<p>@mihcal1 - thanks for the spreadsheet data…I’m a huge data junkie and just exported the 2011 data to excel…have a great pivot table going which has been great to sort through all of this. Just an interesting data point…39.7% of the class has a > 4.0 weighted. :P</p>
<p>Is the weighting formula +1 for AP or honors without limitation? Some of the weighted GPAs look too high to be weighted-for-UC/CSU GPAs.</p>
<p>Wharton-I don’t think this necessarily includes the entire class. But you don’t need these spreadsheets to find gpa distribution at this school. They have the full profile on the school main page. That’s surely more accurate.</p>
<p>Ucb- I think you can find the info on the school profile. Its public and not hard to find. I think the highest gpa is 5.0.</p>
<p>thanks bovertine I thought this represented the whole class…you are right this only represents ~75% of the senior class based on the latest school profile…and the distribution is crazier…41% of the class with unweighted GPA >4.0…talk about grade inflation. </p>
<p>[Palos</a> Verdes Peninsula High School - School Profile](<a href=“http://www.pvphs.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7&Itemid=17]Palos”>http://www.pvphs.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7&Itemid=17)</p>
<p>One of the studies my DH did with the PVPHS data is analyze outcomes for the top ventile (upper 5%) of students from the classes of 2009-2011. </p>
<p>What are the stats for the top students?
For the class of 2011, the 24 students with the highest weighted GPA that represented the top 5% all had weighted GPA’s above 4.80. Their unweighted GPAs were all above 3.85, with fourteen students obtaining perfect 4.00 unweighted GPA. Their scores on SAT CR, M, and W sections were all above 700. Each of these students reported at least two SAT subject scores above 700, and many reported multiple 800s. These are very strong students.</p>
<p>Where did these kids apply?
The topmost 5% of the PVPHS classes of 2009, 2010, and 2011 comprised 69 kids.<br>
Almost all of these kids applied to the UCs, with 65 apps to UCLA, 63 to Berkeley, and 46 to UCSD. Stanford received 50 applications. Harvard and Yale each got 38, and Princeton got 27. The other Ivies collectively received 78 apps. MIT received 22 applications and Caltech received 11. In all, these kids sent 667 applications to 73 colleges.</p>
<p>How did these exceptionally strong students fare in the admissions lottery?
Those 667 apps resulted in 427 accepts, for an overall acceptance rate of 67%.<br>
There were 69 matriculations, for an overall yield of 16%.</p>
<p>HYPSMC and the other Ivies and the Claremont Colleges were a bloodbath, but these kids were admitted everywhere else almost without exception. There were three denials to Berkeley (but we believe one is a transcription error), and one denial to UCLA. There were no denials whatsoever to any other UCs. There were also no denials whatsoever to the University of Southern California.</p>
<p>Acceptance rates and yields, broken down for each college, are detailed in this Google Docs spreadsheet:
[PVPHS</a> top ventile by college](<a href=“PVPHS top ventile by college - Google Sheets”>PVPHS top ventile by college - Google Sheets)</p>
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<p>I think you mean weighted. The average unweighted GPA at the school is 3.35. Highewr than the 2.0 back in my day, but that’s the way grades go these days at many schools. I assure you, my kid did his best to keep the mean at a less celestial level when he went there ;)</p>
<p>A significant number of kids take a lot of AP courses, driving their weighted grades up. They do reasonably well on the tests, with 57% of examinees getting 4 or 5, and 81% getting 3. Hence the high weighted GPA. THirty three separate subjects for the AP tests, although I don’t know if the school offers that many AP classes. So the culprit in the bloated GPA is the AP system.</p>
<p>It does seem to have a lot of 4.0 UW kids, but it is a competitive public school. Not Choate or Harker, but a competitive public school. Whether the grades are considered inflated or not by admissions officers, I don’t know. I’m sure they look at the school profile and evaluate it as a whole, just like they do with every school. </p>
<p>But I’m sure your typical adcom doesn’t perform the detailed analysis that is being performed on this thread. 
I’m anxiously awaiting the ANOVA testing.</p>
<p>^ sorry typo yes meant weighted! </p>
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</p>
<p>haha…definitely not…:)</p>
<p>@mihcal1</p>
<p>Thank you for the google docs link! I downloaded in Excel to create a scatterplot of GPA vs. combined SAT. The correlation is so linear, makes me feel these these “bad test taker” arguments are moot.</p>
<p>QUESTION: In this weighted system is 5.0 the top weighted score for and A in IB/AP? If so, how is it possible to get a 5.0 over 4 years? Is this only the academic core classes? Don’t the students have to take, PE, Health, some tech ed or equivalent? Are even low level language classes and the arts weighted? At our school, even with the most rigorous schedule of academic classes possible, those state/district graduation basics like PE, health, computer applications and one year of fine arts aren’t weighted. IB music may be, but that still gives a kid 2 years of 4.0 scale music.</p>
<p>This made me feel MUCH better about my son’s match/safety, and hopeless about his reach. Good reality check.</p>
<p>OK, I figured it out based on the school profile information (thanks for posting!). I take back everything I ever said about grade inflation in other threads 
This system is nuts!</p>
<p>The cumulative weighted GPA is the unweighted plus .2 added for each weighted class. We now have a new definition of grade inflation. They also calculate GPAs which do not include the non-weighted electives. Under this system, any kid with a full IB schedule and a 4.0 would have a 5.0. They only allow .2 x 5 classes so D, with full IB, would have 5.2 under this system if they allowed it (assuming TOK isn’t weighted) instead of a measly 4.6ish.</p>
<p>Our school weights for rank only but reported GPA on transcript is basic 4.0 unweighted. Their philosophy is that colleges will parse and weigh based on their own system, so report as is without all the doctoring and let them do what they will.</p>
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<p>Interesting point. I believe that. Probably there are not many bright slackers, either. Glancing it briefly, the lottery admissions do not seem so random to me, either.</p>
<p>Cross-admit comparisons may also be interesting.</p>
<p>For example, if I counted correctly, USC had an 8-6 edge over UCLA among students admitted to both and attending one of them.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there seems to be a fairly significant number of USC admits who did not get into UCLA.</p>
<p>I think this is a very interesting set of data. My school is similarly affluent, yet I think there are probably two or three people at the most applying to Harvard.</p>
<p>More data points, enjoy… GPA vs.SAT I between 2003-2008 for another CA HS in an affluent area.</p>
<p>[AHS</a> c/o 2008](<a href=“http://www.arcadiachineseparents.org/college.html]AHS”>http://www.arcadiachineseparents.org/college.html)</p>
<p>StillGreen – Thanks for posting the ArcadiaHS data!<br>
The Arcadia scattergrams show unweighted GPA, which can be hard to parse because it doesn’t take into account rigor of curriculum. I’d love to see scatterplots for weighted GPA. Also, is there data available for more recent years?</p>
<p>Re #13
Brandeis may have been the safety for this student (#185) - especially if there was a legacy involved. We considered it a match for my B+ student/relatively high SAT student and according to our Naviance it would have been a safety for my older son. As long as you have one safe school that’s all you need.</p>