As you all know, the college application process has officially started! Most people have grades or a GPA to judge what caliber of school they should think about applying to. I go to an alternative high school where we get narratives instead of grades. As such, I have no letter grades or calculated GPA. Now, my evaluations are generally very good but I have no way of knowing what colleges will interpret them as. Stanford and Haverford are two of my top choices right now. I have no idea whether or not those are reasonable. I have ok ACT scores (29) but I’m taking it again soon and have been studying pretty hard so I’m not too concerned. I got a perfect reading score and almost perfect english score. I just have to study my math and science which is doable. Any thoughts about this? Thanks in advance.
OK, you’re new to the process.
But your guidance counselor is NOT! He/she deals with this problem every single year. Make an appointment with him/her as soon as the school year starts.
And if your school uses Naviance there’s a tool there you can use: they’ll give you your school’s history of applications with colleges. So take a look at Stanford and Haverford-- if a reasonable number of kids from your school have applied there, they can tell you how those kids did.
Good luck!
My D went to an Alternative program in her HS with no grades. In my D’s case they did have ranges from excellent to poor that the teacher checked off in addition to their written comments so we could try to guesstimate her GPA although it was not on her transcript. It was no issue at all and people in her program got into all kinds of schools from large state U’s to small LACs. I agree that talking to your GC about past experiences from students in your school is a good start.