I am helping my DS through his application process for colleges in 2025. I wanted to know what schools we should be realistic in aiming for. He’s in the median of the class.
From experience, what GPAs are usually good enough for those schools coming out of Andover?
Arguably, Andover has the best college counseling office in the nation, with all sorts of data on past applicants. They are well-versed on guiding students to build an appropriate college list. And they can answer your questions better than anonymous people on the Internet, even if any of these people has Andover experience
Of course Skieurope is correct, but even Andover’s own people likely don’t know what to expect with college admissions going forward, given the recent Supreme Court decision on race and college admissions.
For what it’s worth, at my child’s school (not Andover but a peer school), U. Chicago is more the top 25% on GPA, while Georgetown may go a bit lower than that. However, it always depends on what else the applicant brings to the table.
Your son will be given great college counseling who will advise him and help create a college list, strategy, plan, etc. He’s lucky he attends such a wonderful school. Don’t fret it right now… he’ll get all the data and advice he needs to approach the process with confidence.
Look at GT and UChicago common data sets, as that will give you the best information straight from the horse’s mouth. A simple Google search will get you the documents. Be advised GT and MIT are the only schools requiring the SAT/ACT so plan accordingly.
There are many schools that require SAT/ACT. OP didn’t ask about MIT
I actually disagree with looking at the common data set. Andover is anything but common. Testing-wise, sure, but as I previously mentioned, the school-specific data sets that Andover’s college counseling will provide will be the best indicator and guide for the OPs son’s college list.
May be worth perusing this:
Again, don’t sweat it. Trust the school. It’s ranked #4 on Niche for a reason.
This. Your CC at Andover can help you through the nuances of this.
And yes, ignore CDS info. My kid went to a different BS and I will be forever grateful that we relied on our school’s CC and didn’t discover this site until after applications were submitted. Crowd-sourced answers will not be better in this case than those from folks who have been doing this at your school.
The Andover Profile Data is a good information tool
UChicago takes students from top boarding schools like Andover each year. But surprisingly those students are not necessarily the top of the class.
In my son’s class at Lawrenceville, about 10 students were accepted to UChicago in the early rounds. None of them were in the top 10%. My guess is that they were in the middle deciles. In RD I think a few other students were accepted.
I think they do this to protect yield. Also helps to apply ED1 or ED2.
This is common with U Chicago. The top 10% will often REA/ED at an Ivy type. The kids just bellow ED to Chicago. From what I have seen, Chicago also likes full pay students and accept disproportionately from top privates.
Not surprising to me at all
Particularly for ED, the top students, with some exceptions, were not using their one early application on UChicago
In my opinion, this is not the right way to approach college admissions. Don’t let any source define your child or his/her ambitions & goals. Use Andover’s College Counseling team as a resource, not as gospel.
I mostly agree with this, but I think UChicago is a little beyond yield management these days - perhaps it was protecting yield 5-10 years ago. It knows how well 20-40th percentile class rank prep school kids perform academically, and if they show interest in UC, including through its lengthy and quirky Common App essays, it can be a great match. Where we’ve seen it not be a great match is for those kids who have chosen it mostly for prestige but few other compelling personal reasons.
Regardless of your high school, colleges are admitting students not gpa’s. Your CC will know what types of schools kids with your child’s profile have been admitted to. As an anecdote of one, a good friend’s child attended uchicago from
Andover — he applied ed2 after being rejected from his ED/REA Ivy. He was a very strong student — above the median—but unhooked.
Andover’s Class of 2023 admissions:
(338 students including 27 PGs)
21 to U Chicago
12 to Harvard
12 to Yale
11 to Stanford
10 to Boston University
10 to Brown
10 to N’eastern
8 to Columbia
8 to Georgetown
8 to NYU
7 to MIT
7 to Northwestern
7 to U Penn
7 to U Virginia
6 to Cornell
6 to U Mass-Amherst
5 to Boston College
5 to Carnegie Mellon (CMU)
5 to Williams College
5 to Villanova
4 to Emory, UNC-Chapel Hill, Tufts, Tulane, U St. Andrews (Scotland), Wesley College, & Wesleyan University
3 to Princeton, Middlebury, McGill (Canada), Dartmouth, Amherst, Colorado College, Holy Cross, Colgate, Colby, Bates, Babson, Skidmore, Rutgers, WashUStL, Vanderbilt, USC, U Michigan, UC-San Diego, U Texas at Austin, & SMU
2 to Case Western Reserve, Dickinson, Duke, Wm. & Mary, U Miami, U Edinburgh (Scotland), U Denver, UCLA, UC-Berkeley, Union College, Trinity College, & Temple.
1 to a large number of schools including Swarthmore, ASU, Bard, Barnard, Baylor, SUNY-Bing, Brandeis, CalTech, Clemson, Cooper Union, Emerson, Georgia Tech, GWU,Imperial London, Johns Hopkins, Penn State, Pepperdine, U Toronto, U Rhode Island, U Minnesota, U Florida, U Illinois, U Conn, U Delaware, CU-Boulder, TCU, Rice, Purdue and several others.
I literally posted a link to the data.
Yes and I arranged the data into a more readable format.