<p>My highschool in CT is one of the top in the state, if not the country, but how do colleges actually compare these. A 2.8 in my school is like a 4.0 in a neighboring city where the high schools do not even compare. </p>
<p>Also in my school, when report cards are given, only unweighted grades are shown- so kids base their GPAs off the report card and a kid in all average classes says he has a 3.9, while a kid in all honors says he has a 3.5, while the latter kid is much smarter-- will colleges realize this, even if the honors student's weighted gpa is only 3.7.
In my school, i could have a C in say honors biology, drop down to regular biology, and then get an A+. It just does not seem fair, and how do colleges accurately measure a student's grades this way.</p>
<p>Lastly, teachers always makes a big difference. In my school, for Chemistry Honors, there are 4 classes taught by 4 different teachers. The teachers' difficulty are extremely varied, and an A is easy to obtain with the easy teacher, while a B+ is excellent with the harder teacher, but it is the same exact course. How is that fair? Or is it not?</p>
<p>Many schools use a ranking system even if your school does not rank. What they do is look at all the applicants from your school for that year, and then see who's at the top and they go from there. They will also sometimes look at the GPAs of past applicants from your school and compare. In some cases, at small schools especially, they may know how well a person from your school is performing at that university, and so they can judge what level of person will do well. The courses you are taking is also given to the university, so they can see that all the honors/AP people are struggling that much more than the non-honors/AP students. It is almost impossible to measure discrepancies between teachers, but unless a student is very lucky, they will get a mix or good and bad teachers (and top students will still do well in a "bad" teacher's class), and that helps average things out. Lastly, they look at SAT scores - if people are getting 2.8 GPAs but they are scoring in the 2350 range, then obviously there is severe grade deflation.</p>
<p>That is absolutely not true. I believe that the "neighboring city" that you are referring to is Bridgeport, CT. Let me tell you, smcnair21, that Bridgeport sends a plethora of students to top, elite programs. e.g. University of Bridgeport and Nassau Community College. You really should not make those kind of uneducated assumptions. It's just wrong.</p>
<p>adcoms of schools that your HS regularly feeds to will be familiar with the rigorous nature of your school. Since you speak of its reputation, I'm sure it's not lost on the adcoms, whose job it is to bring in the best -- not just look at a set of numbers. HS school profiles are an essential tool for adcoms with holistic approaches. The 3.9 with the creampuff schedule at the less than challenging HS isn't going to upend the 3.5 at your school I would venture to say.</p>
<p>Yeah, even for UCs which are known to be taking only the top 4% of each high school. Last year D's school sent in tons of kids to top UCs, exceed the to 4-12%. Somehow, only 1/4 of them attended top UCs, most decided to go to local CC,not sure the reason, maybe because this area is kind of laid back. I don't hear of a lot of kids walking around saying this and that is my dream school, not even my own daughter.</p>