<p>@DanAdmiss, so I’m not totally ruled out yet, correct? Although I go to a private school and the max GPA we can get is a 4.0.</p>
<p>Why would you be ruled out?</p>
<p>Dan, so do you take into consideration when the school only has unweighted GPA. My daughter is in a magnet school. All classes are either honors, AP or IB. And the maximum GPA is 4.0.</p>
<p>Of course. My own high school didn’t weight GPAs (though, it uses a 100 point scale, not a 4.0), and neither did the single largest school, by applicants to Tufts, I was responsible for last year. The curriculum still counts, a lot, and a student with a 4.0 and a weak curriculum (and there was several of those) stood a much worse chance of admission than a student with a 3.5 and a highly demanding one, for instance.</p>
<p>We use whatever GPA the school gives us, and we put that in context of the school itself, the grades that are typical for that school, and the curriculum of the student. For schools that offer a weighted GPA, generally a good blending of curricular strength and grades, we’ll use that. Though, even then, there are caveats - I’ve read schools that “weight” GPA but do so with a lightness of weighting that means that a stronger GPA doesn’t necessarily imply a stronger high school transcript (does that make sense?) and as the admissions officer responsible for that school it’s my obligation to understand the school well enough to see that, evaluate the application accordingly, and explain it to others in my office when that student comes up for a decision.</p>
<p>I have a 3.5 UW GPA and honors are barely weighted at my school.</p>
<p>DAN! We miss you on Twitter!!!</p>
<p>We are at a school where honors and AP have the same weighting and it isn’t much and only appears in the weighted GPA which is used for ranking. The transcripts show all the unweighted grades. My son looked was a B+/A- student, but almost in the top 5% rank. I think the fact that the school ranked was enormously helpful in putting those grades in context. I believe that even schools that don’t rank usually give the colleges enough information that they can get an idea of what sort of a student you are dealing with. (And of course a rank of 25% at an academic magnet, or a very selective private high school is different from a 25% at my kids’ huge suburban public.)</p>
<p>^^^ Written like an admissions officer.</p>
<p>Her school doesn’t rank. It doesn’t have valedictorians either. These kids are all so smart quarter of the class would probably be valedictorians. Not sure how the administration communicates this info to colleges. The kids usually get in great colleges, so I’m sure they know what they’re doing.</p>
<p>The school I go to is a private, Jesuit school, and is regarded as one of the most prestigious high schools in my city. Does that shine a better light on my grades than if, say, I went to the local public school?</p>