<p>So I've been looking at colleges and making my college list. In the process I looked at the admissions scattergrams for several colleges, including my dream school Duke. I was pretty shocked when I saw how very, very few people got in with less than a 3.8, and those that did were probably recruited athletes. I'm also shocked at how much more important gpa seems than sat/act scores, people with a 2100 got in because they had a 4.0. Does anyone know how accurate these scattergrams are? Like is the data self-reported, and how do they even get the data?</p>
<p>I assume you are looking at the CollegeData site. Just looking at the data for Duke 2017, it seems that these are self-reported data from students using the site (there are only 329 profiles in their database). If the data were reported by the university, there would be many more applications on the plot and there would not be so many blue and grey dots for previous years, they would all be admitted, denied, or waitlisted. The</p>
<p>no im actually referring to the cappex scatterplots, is the data submitted by the most qualified students only?</p>
<p>It’s not necessarily the “most qualified”, although it is a self-selected, self-reported group without any verification or validation of data.</p>
<p>xraymancs is right about these sites. I’ve tracked our Ds stats and chances on Parchment. The problem with that site is self reporting. What seems to happen is a student applies to ten colleges and when they get the acceptance from the school they wanted, they stop using the site. What you find are incomplete results and skewed data.</p>
<p>For example, if student’s first choice in Harvard and they applied to seven other Ivys and Stanford, as soon as the Harvard decision comes in, they leave the remaining schools in a pending state. If Harvard in this example were the fifth school to report a decision, you would have four updates, the fifth would be Harvard, and the rest would be in a pending state. </p>
<p>This isn’t a behavior for every student account but I’ve seen it enough to know that the data is a definitive predictor of admission success.</p>
<p>I’m not familiar with cappex. Is that one better or worse than collegedata and parchment?</p>
<p>wherezwallace, I do not have a cappex acount, but I can still see the scatterplots, the dots are either accepted(attending), accepted(not attending), waitlisted, and denied. Cappex scatterplots seem a bit clearer than the collegedata and parchment plots, but I think cappex has less features, also cappex only has self-reported data.</p>
<p>If enough people from your school are applying and your school participates, I think naviance would be more reliable since it is not opt-in or self-reported. Check that out, if you can. It will also be individualized for your particular school.</p>
<p>sprite123: not addressing the scattergrams per se, however the clear and major emphasis on GPA is, I believe, both correct and a rather long-standing Duke principle.</p>
<p>But are those GPAs all calculated on the same scale? Because at my school an A- is a 3.7 and an A/A+ is a 4.0, whereas in many schools, any A is a 4.0. I have a 3.8 GPA uw in all honors and AP classes, which is top 10% at my school (very challenging, no one has a 4.0 even with easy classes) but I am concerned about how this will look compared to other applicants to Duke.</p>
<p>sprite123: I cannot discuss other universities, but Duke maintains “indices” (of some sort) that are designed to provide Admissions with insight regrading specific secondary school grading patterns, etc. Further, I do not if this quantitative system extends to all secondary schools, or only to those with larger numbers of applicants. Nevertheless, sprite123, a data-oriented procedure exists to resolve the very type of issues your most recent question addresses.</p>
<p>sprite123, don’t worry about the difference from school to school on gpas. Colleges understand that and they require the school’s profile for every applicant. If you haven’t seen yours, ask your guidance counselor. It shows how the gpa is calculated and what percentage of the students have a specific gpa. For example, at my D’s school, 5% of the student body maintain a 4.3 or higher GPA. So the college will be able to look at her 4.3 and the school’s profile and deduce that she is in the top 5% of the student body.</p>