<p>OP, all colleges want students taking rigorous courses. That doesn’t translate to using the scores on the exams in admissions. They don’t use it because it would be unfair. Colleges don’t factor something into admissions if there is a large part of the population who don’t have access to something and may not even have the funds to do something. It’s not considered in admissions. They will look at your son in context of his high school. But I can hardly imagine a 3.4 being anywhere near the top to a class. The will look at his GPA and see that he didn’t excel in class and they will question why. Once questions start going into admissions officers heads, they lean towards deny because it’s their name on the line. Because of how competitive the admissions pool usually is for top schools, there are probably 100 students with a better GPA and test scores than your son. I don’t think UVA is really comparable to schools like Stanford or MIT. It’s a great school, but not nearly as selective and hard to get into. Your son could very well get in, but the GPA is going to give him a huge setback from the get go. Especially seeing that more than 90% of admits have GPAs over 3.75.</p>
<p>I thought UVA is more GPA centric than other colleges. There are lots of top CS programs that may not be as selective but they are still very good, UIUC, Georgia Tech for example. I think these schools are much stronger than UVA.</p>
<p>Applications to Illinois to major in CS have evidently increased dramatically. For a long-time, it was definitely an under-valued find (not that hard to get in but with really good alumni results).</p>
<p>In any case, admissions is holistic and some schools value test scores more than others.</p>
<p>I agree with AnnieBeats–nothing can really make up for “undistinguished” GPA at very selective colleges (occasional exceptions at essay-happy schools like UChi exist, however).</p>
<p>Tufts is another “essay happy” school that will make occasional exceptions. The culture is quite different than an MIT, CMU or a large public. Smaller, more diverse, less structured, more interdisciplinary environment. There is an emphasis on teaching, but with lots of undergrad research opportunities. This may or may not be a better fit for your son. </p>
<p><a href=“Prospective Students | Department of Computer Science”>Prospective Students | Department of Computer Science;
<p>@Ynotgo that is a great idea. He has a ton of extra computer science experience. </p>
<p>@AnnieBeats I probably haven’t shared the full picture very well either. A big factor missing from his GPA is the 4 math courses that he completed outside of the school district so they don’t show on his transcript. These would undoubtedly count if the school district didn’t have an “all or nothing” attitude towards homeschooling. Those will be documented separately. Additionally, it’s a couple of low grades in English that are dragging his GPA down. We are going to meet with both the principal and department chair because we discovered that the 9th and 10th grade teachers violated no fewer than 4 official district policies and bylaws in how they graded him. Honors 9th and 10th English to him was equivalent to taking a kid who reads Harry Potter making them sit and play with blocks to learn the alphabet- and accusing the student of lying, and repeatedly punishing them because they are getting bored. His 9th grade teacher couldn’t believe that he wasn’t learning new vocabulary words in the reading, nor that he could read Homer’s Odyssey in a few hours. </p>
<p>As far as the ranking versus other students in the high school, that’s exactly the point. He took more AP courses earlier than any other student in his school’s history. Of course his unweighted GPA is not as high as some other kids because other kids don’t do 9 AP tests when they are 15. He didn’t do poorly, As in some courses and Bs in others. If you consider the workload and the fact that he was programming 30 hours a week outside of school for robotics (and has NASA engineers who will write recommendations for him to this regard) then getting Bs in AP English and AP US History when you are planning on majoring in CS is hardly the end of the world. Fortunately he has no interest in Yale or Harvard. He knows that MIT is a crapshoot even if you have multiple patents in your name. Stanford is even more unpredictable as we have a lot of family history with them and plenty of insider info; my sister just graduated Cum Laude from a masters program there. I’m just trying to find the best CS program that is a fit and will accept him. </p>
<p>And when I say Stanford is unpredictable, I don’t mean unpredictable for us in particular as family legacy applicants, I mean unpredictable in general. </p>
<p>@DrGoogle you are absolutely right, and Georgia Tech is arguably better than UVA in CS to begin with. Once my son visits some schools other than UVA he won’t have his heart set on just one school or two schools. My concern about UVA, besides admission, is that their class sizes stink: 200-300 students in CS classes even when you get into upper division courses. </p>
<p>@Mastadon thanks for the information on Tufts! I hadn’t even considered them. I’m a west coast guy and I didn’t major in CS myself so there are many hidden gems that I’m unaware of. </p>
<p>@jkeil911 I know that he sounds like a TJ kid but he’s not. Still FCPS but a different school. thanks for the tips!</p>
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<p>I would advise against this.
Stanford asks for letter from teachers of core subjects. Letters from people with name recognition is hardly an egg in the basket. This should be supplementary if even submitted at all. It’s likely that your son thinks he is close to them, while in private, he’s just another kid. Stanford recommends two from core subject teachers and It would hardly be a good idea to deviate from that. </p>
<p>Reading the stuff about his GPA does give a slightly better picture about why it is so low. But even still, these colleges get the cream of the crop, so they will most likely take a student with higher grades than a student with lower grades and an excuse especially as an unhooked student. Now, this isn’t in anyway an indictment against your son. It wasn’t his fault. He is clearly very very bright. But still, for every bright student, there are many who are much smarter. </p>
<p>Has he had an upward trend in GPA after leaving those teachers?</p>
<p>@AnnieBeats yes, he does, and here is a different picture: if you take his Math & Science GPA, it’s very different: 6 As and 2 Bs (and the Bs were in a couple of his AP courses where he scored a 5 on the exam), 4.25 Weighted, and that is missing the 4 math courses done outside of his high school. 25 years ago in the UC system they used to take applicants for their engineering program and rank based on their Math+Science GPA. Do schools do that anymore? </p>
<p>@AnnieBeats I want so share some other data about Stanford as well as data from the College Board that is useful for the side dialogue here -now that I have a ton of great suggestions on CS programs to look at- thanks to everyone! </p>
<p>There were ~2,000 College Bound Seniors that tied or beat his 2360 SAT score last year (out of 1.66 Million) -while he was a grade skipped Junior a full two (and in some cases 3) years younger than that pool of students. Hopkins pegged his scores from a couple of years ago as 1 in 10,000. </p>
<p>Compare 2,000 kids with 2360 or above on the SAT with the total application pool at Stanford for Fall 2014: 42,167 applicants. </p>
<p>How common is an above 4.0 GPA: Very- there are over 40,000 high schools in the US and every one has a valedictorian and many have dozens of kids with over a 4.0 (and my son does if all coursework is counted, inside and outside the school). Over 4.0 is really common. </p>
<p>Perfect SAT’s- far less common. </p>
<p>Does it matter? Let’s look at Stanford’s own published data. Statistically a kid with perfect 800 on any section of the SAT has significantly higher chance of being admitted than a student with over a 4.0 GPA. </p>
<p>For Fall of 2014, from Stanford’s own website: </p>
<p>GPA and Admit Rates: </p>
<p>4.0 and above Admit Rate: 6%
Percent of Admitted Class: 73%</p>
<p>3.70 - 3.99 Admit Rate: 4%<br>
Percent of Admitted Class: 22%</p>
<p>SAT Scores and Admit Rates: </p>
<p>SAT Critical Reading Score: </p>
<p>800 Admit Rate: 13%
Percent of Admitted Class: 24%</p>
<p>SAT Math Score:</p>
<p>800 Admit Rate: 9%
Percent of Admitted Class: 26%</p>
<p>SAT Writing</p>
<p>800 Admit Rate: 14%
Percent of Admitted Class: 23%</p>
<p><a href=“Page Not Found : Stanford University”>Page Not Found : Stanford University;
<p>Even if every top SAT scoring student in the US applied to Stanford his level of score would come up less than 5% of the time, or only once every 20 or 21 applications. And that’s at Stanford, not CMU or UVA which are much easier as you pointed out. </p>
<p>He fortunately doesn’t have his heart set on Stanford or really any school for that matter. A 4% chance is low (based on GPA), and so is the 13% chance based on his 800 CR score, or the 9% for his 800 M score. I wouldn’t jump out of a plane if my parachute only had a 4% chance of opening and a 13% chance wouldn’t be of much comfort either. </p>
<p>And of course, we have no way of knowing how many of the admitted kids with 800’s were above versus below the 4.0 line. We do know that under a 4.0 is not a death sentence by any stretch. So he will apply to lots of schools.</p>
<p>I do want to point out that SAT scores do matter, and that your point of there being a ton of kids ahead of him in line- in terms of smarts (or test taking ability)- well - the data proves otherwise. I spend quite a bit of time in an advocacy group for gifted youth, founded and staffed by multiple Ivy League grads (though I am not). There is a big spread between the 99th percentile cutoff and the 99.99th percentile cutoff. It’s huge. Only a couple hundred kids in the US have tied or beat his SAT scores at an earlier age with no test prep. I just want to set the record straight because the data has been collected for over 20 years by Hopkins SMPY (now CTY) and by Vanderbilt who has taken over the SMPY. </p>
<p>Hence his struggle when he reads and does math a post-doctorate pace and makes his teachers (and parents) feel like idiots. It is a huge blow to one’s ego when they encounter a student who reads 10x faster than them, learns new computer languages over the weekend and makes commercially viable software for fun- and they are suppossed to be teaching them. It’s especially hard to teach a student who takes a practice AP test before even taking a course and scores a 5 and sets a school record. Even more bizarre is that he speaks Spanish like he was born in Mexico City even though he just started studying a few years ago. His accent freaks people out because it’s so real. My wife and I are both from California and know the difference between native and non-natives like us who will never sound like natives. Maybe he can work for the UN or something. </p>
<p>I hope the OP will keep the board posted with how his son fares admissions-wise next spring. If I had to place my bets I’d say he will do very well despite the GPA. Why? His profile suggests he’s the kind of iconoclastic brilliant thinker who could end up making significant contributions to his field–and when the accolades start rolling in many of these schools will want his bio to note that he is a graduate of their institution. That is a lot of what goes on in elite-school admissions–they are placing bets. They are at least as interested in what a student like this can do for them as they are in what they can do for him. (Call me cynical?) I do think, however, that the GPA issue needs to be addressed–maybe through his LORs. Because when they are placing their bet these schools are going to wonder whether this kid has the maturity and stability to harness his brilliance.</p>
<p>OP, I do appreciate you posting data to support your view point. However, like you said, there is a small pool of students who have SAT scores that high. If there is a small pool of students applying with it, obviously, the acceptance rate will be higher. That’s hardly an egg in his basket. And it’s likely that the kids with that SAT Score aren’t going to be applying with a 3.3. The fact of the matter is, GPA matters a whole lot more than test scores. There are several reasons why:</p>
<p>1) It is a culmination of 4 years of work.</p>
<p>2) You can’t “practice” a GPA over and over again, and then get it to be high like you can with an exam. It’s one, and done. </p>
<p>3) It speaks to how you perform in a classroom setting. Colleges don’t want students who won’t contribute classroom discussions and ideas, but will get a 100 on a final. Colleges want their students to grow intellectually, and socially, and that doesn’t happen when you only care about your studies 3-4 weeks out of an entire year.</p>
<p>I understand that your son went through some hardship with really bad teachers. But he will be compared to his classmates. If they see that he doesn’t fall within the top 15% or is barely in the top 25%, they will question the impact these teachers really had on his GPA seeing that other students were able to thrive despite the fact. Luckily, he has some time to improve his GPA even more. His overall GPA may not increase much, but if he has a positive trend in GPA, that could show how really serious he is about his studies. For the schools he is aiming for, high math+science grades won’t be enough. With the exception of English in this case, he’s going to need his Social Studies grades to be high as well. When he gets to college, he will realize that English is needed in every class and social studies overlaps with STEM when he conducts research. So it all does matter.</p>
<p>I do really hope you continue to update us on your sons progress. I will bookmark this 
I do really hope for the best for him. He clearly has huge potential.</p>
<p>@AnnieBeats and @fondmemories I will post more down the road. Thanks. A couple more data points on the GPA, I think it’s somewhere between 3.4 and 3.5 unweighted but I have to run the numbers myself since his school reports only the weighted. Also, he was not challenged enough by the 23 AP course offerings at his school so he did four math courses and an English Course outside of school, which will be notes on his app, especially since he took AP tests for two of them. These do not count in his GPA but show intellectual drive. And to Annies point , his GPA, weighted and unweighted rose significantly his junior year when he could take all AP courses. </p>
<p>What do you mean he wasn’t challenged enough? Lol, if he didn’t take them, he couldn’t possibly know. I do hope your son gets into these schools. Don’t get me wrong. He’s clearly a driven student. But GPA is the most important at most, if not all schools. If his GPA pales in comparison to his classmates, his intellectual curiousity might not make up for it. Do you think you can get your hands on a high school profile? I think that would give both you, your son, and the posters here (if you choose to share it) some clarity regarding what his school is like.
Also, I feel like your son is the perfect candidate for the Additional Info section on his applications. If he could put together maybe three or four sentences to explain his GPA and why it isn’t a reflection of him as a student, I think that could go a long way :)</p>
<p>@AnnieBeats we have a naviance profile and he’s a match for all of the VA schools, Georgia Tech and CMU based on gpa and he’s way over on SAT, based on past applications for his high school. Great tips! Thanks! On APs, he is on track to be the first student to complete 15 of the 23 APs offered at his school. It is impossible to do all of the 23 courses based on slots on the school schedule constraints. He did all of the most rigorous courses that scare most students in his school, based on course and teacher reputation ( as far as what the kids tell each other:) AP Chem, AP Physics C, AP Comp Sci and did them one to two years younger than any student in school history. All 5s but but one four in Spanish where he skipped the Spanish 4 course entirely and went straight to AP. He said that they (AP offerings) were underwhelming compared to the CTY courses that he took. His CTY courses have provided more stimulation because they offer true college level material, taught at a college pace according to him. He came home disappointed at the AP English Lang and the APUSH being too easy. He wanted a challenge like a new video game. He’s a strange kid I know.</p>
<p>In short, he did take them, the AP courses that his school offered, and made National AP Scholar as a junior with three extra Tests to spare. at least all that are possible in a 7 course per year schedule where band, PE, health and other state required classes fill up slots. </p>