For first semester senior year, I only have one A, the rest of my grades are A-. In my school, an A- is 90-93%, an A is 93-97%, and an A+ is 97%+.
My question is, are A minus grades good enough for elite schools? My transcript is full of mostly A- grades. I have 800 on SAT Subject Tests and an ACT of 33 (34 superscored), so my test scores are good.
What do you think?
Depends on your course rigor.
Yes. It is enough to be considered.
My course load is quite rigorous, I’m taking 5 AP classes.
It depends upon how others are scoring.
Yes, an A- is a “A range” grade. The extent to which a college views a grade as high enough depends upon the entire application-what classes, how rigorous, how the classes at your school are viewed by the college. Along with that, it depends upon what else you were involved with. Are you fully involved in activities outside the class or did you devote all your time and energy to getting the grades.
Some schools like Berkeley and UCLA won’t care, since +/- are ignored in the GPA calculation.
Michigan too.
I’ll provide more details. I’m taking the following classes:
AP Biology
AP Physics 2
AP Calculus BC
AP European History
AP Lit
Accounting
My class rank is in the top 9% (barely). In addition, my extracurriculars are great. Most notably, I’m a skilled programmer who developed an app that has 250,000 downloads. The fact that I have mostly B+ and A- grades is what concerns me. I think my UW GPA is around 3.71.
The top 9% rank will hurt you at elite schools, which are looking for top 1-2% students (maybe top 5-10% at very competitive high schools).
@goldenbear2020 I think you’re wrong. I think at 10% they stop looking at class rank and start looking at other parts of your application. I was accepted to a top 10 school with a rank in the top 10% of my class.
I’m guessing you had some hook to distinguish you otherwise? Most top schools select their classes from top 2% crowd.
Does your school take +/- into account when calculating your GPA (eg A = 4, A- = 3.7) or are they considered the same?
A- grades are good enough, but also may depend on the overall rigor/perception/rank of your high school
Yet you may ask yourself why a “transcript full of A- grades” qualifies you for an “elite” school.
Im in the same boat
Some very elite schools look at other parts of your app when you’re outside the top 10% too. D was not in the top 10%, no significant hook and had great college options. I wouldn’t worry about rank too much, most schools don’t provide one, and many colleges don’t care much about it since it’s basically a function of your high school’s unique GPA weighting formula. In any case, there’s nothing a HS senior can really do about it.
@OHMomof2 she must have written a heck of an essay or won awards or had an interesting and unique resume or her SATs were perfect and her teachers wrote amazing recommendations that indicated her work up until now was not reflective of who she was. Can I ask what schools?
I think you are in range and every school will still review you but assuming there are classmates who have straight As or almost straight As (there are schools where #1 does not have straight As), generally for the typical applicant I do not think A-s will hurt you for the Emorys and Hamiltons. I think they will hurt you at Columbia, UPenn and Duke. As the ^ they can be overcome but I personally think you would need to have something unique, either in general or for that school. For example, one school that really values essays, D talked about something unique to the school that she wanted to do that fit with her overall resume and was unique to her resume. So there was a real “reason” they accepted her.
Hooks and legacy are also a reason sometimes.
@seekingpam I PM’ed you.
I’m the same, very good at doing the bare minimum for an A-. All of my grades were between 90-92, so at least I can take pride in my consistency lol. Luckily, my school doesn’t factor in +/-, so on my transcript, it just says “A” with “4.0” beside it. OP, your rigor is great (far more than I could ever manage), and if your extracurriculars are great, I don’t think A minuses will kill your chances. Good luck.