<p>We're starting to make a list of schools for daughter to research to make a list of schools to visit to make a list of schools to apply to (Got that?) and I have a couple of questions. (Wasn't it great for me that I didn't overthink with the first kid?) I'm going to ask in very black and white terms so I can understand, this doesn't specifically relate to my daughter's situation -- I'm trying to create a background of information going forward.</p>
<p>GPA: How do colleges (generally of course) view GPA versus rank? In other words, if a student has, say a 3.4 unweighted but is in the top 1% or 5% or such of a class, would that be viewed differently than a student with a 3.4 unweighted who is in the 50%?</p>
<p>Is it true that some colleges take the unweighted GPA and actually re-weight it in some fashion? If so, how would that work?</p>
<p>Here's the potential list so far of schools that she is planning to learn more about this summer:</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr
Mt. Holyoke
Rhodes
Syracuse
Case Western
Villanova
Hunter
Stonybrook
Binghamton
Buffalo
Drew
Gettysburg
Franklin & Marshall
George Washington University
Seton Hall</p>
<p>Hi zoosermom,
I think that colleges will look at GPA in terms of rank. A 3.4 in the top 1-5% will be more impressive than a 3.4 in the top 50%. The HS should be providing the college with a profile of your D's class so that the college understands the grading "spread" within the high school. I think that the opposite than what you posit is true-I have heard that some schools "unweight" a weighted GPA.</p>
<p>I just wanted to say that that is a very nice, balanced list complete with safeties for a New York State resident! (I know it's not actually a list yet.) </p>
<p>As far as redoing GPAs, I think that the UCs and the University of Michigan in particular are upfront about their formulas. You may want to check those out, just to give you an idea.</p>
<p>Thank you very much. I'm going to check out the UCs and Michigan. Great tip. It seemed so much easier with the first kid when I didn't know what I didn't know.</p>
<p>How do colleges (generally of course) view GPA versus rank? In other words, if a student has, say a 3.4 unweighted but is in the top 1% or 5% or such of a class, would that be viewed differently than a student with a 3.4 unweighted who is in the 50%?
YES.
Student's applications are first evaluated in the context of their school - So a 3.4 student who is in the 50% range is viewed very differently than a top % student with the same GPA [ the school profile would probably verify that the HS has a unforgiving grading curve]. However, a 3.4 GPA/top 1 % student would also be unusual, so that is why the SAT is also very important, as it gives AD-mins a way to compare students from other HS's .</p>
<p>"I'm going to check out the UCs"</p>
<p>If you do not live in Calif, then you should know that the UC's only accept about 10% of OOS students. As their admissions criteria are very #'s driven, an OOS student with a 3.4 gpa has little chance of acceptance at any campuses but Riverside or Merced.</p>
<p>^^^ I meant to check out how the UCs redo GPAs.</p>
<p>This weighted/unweighted and ranking business is so complicated! It really depends on the school. At my D's school, one can have absolutely no IB/AP/honors classes and still end up in the top 1-3% because the school gives relatively little weight to the advanced classes and weighs grades for the sole purpose of ranking, but only the unweigted grades are reported on the transcript. If a particular college is familiar with a given high school, and kids from that high school usually do well at that college, it will be a huge plus.</p>
<p>Just as the UCs, many state schools allocate 60-80% of their freshman slots for the in-state applicants, so out of state admissions are much more competitive at good publics like our state flagship.</p>
<p>"^^^ I meant to check out how the UCs redo GPAs."</p>
<p>Me too.</p>
<p>"However, a 3.4 GPA/top 1 % student would also be unusual"</p>
<p>I getcha. I just phrased the question in the extreme so there would be no gray areas to confuse me!</p>
<p>" At my D's school, one can have absolutely no IB/AP/honors classes and still end up in the top 1-3% because the school gives relatively little weight to the advanced "</p>
<p>My daughter's school gives very little weight to the IB/AP classes, but being an inner city school where the vast majority of students don't go to college at all, the ranking stuff is weird. Or I'm a moron. Or both. The GPAs at the top don't seem that high compared to what we see on CC, but there's a bunching at the tippity top of the IB kids and a few others, with kids not in those programs falling off precipitously. Daughter is ranked in about the 8-ish% coming off a hellacious grade in one class last semester, but her GPA is only 3.6 unweighted. She does have all AP and pre-IB classes, though, so I think rigor is ok.</p>
<p>Re post #8 - Some state schools also WANT the OOS kids and their tuition checks. SUNYS do (there are hardly any OOS students) And the UConn rep at the info session I attended said they wanted a higher percentage of OOS (that makes them look like a better public school overall, I guess, if they have a high OOS number enrolled). So you really have to research each public college to see how they treat OOS.</p>
<p>" UConn rep at the info session I attended said they wanted a higher percentage of OOS (that makes them look like a better public school overall, I guess, if they have a high OOS number enrolled). "</p>
<p>That is really good info. UConn has an art museum, so it did cross her radar.</p>
<p>zoosermom, I know when we visited Emory last year, they told us that they strip all high school transcripts of any weighting and then re-weight them according to their own formula. I would not be surprised if a lot of colleges do something like this because the weighting system can vary so much from high school to high school.</p>
<p>zoosermom, your D should be just fine with those grades. Your D's situation sounds very familiar. My D had a little setback in one class (she was not told that honors math which she was put into by her GC in fact had a pre-requisite which her Jr. high did not offer, so D ended up skipping a whole year of algebra :eek:!!!), and that killed her gpa to the point of no recovery to be over 3.8-ish and her chances of being in the top 5% were doomed. Her school is really weird - they have a ton of kids taking honors/AP/IBs, but rankwise these kids are scattered throughout the upper 30-40%.</p>
<p>Re: public colleges. Our state flagship would love to get the tuition money from the out of staters, but it has to play by the state rules (ca. 70% of admits have to be in-state).</p>
<p>"My D had a little setback in one class"</p>
<p>My daughter had a major setback in math at the end of last semester. Major. Tragic, in fact. Don't read any further if you shock easily.</p>
<p>Aliens. They came right to my house. In the night (you've heard of these things, right?) and they STOLE the last eight homework assignments. Just stole them. Gone. THEN the aliens wiped her memory completely clean so she forgot that she didn't hand in those assignments. Those aliens were so skillful that she actually answered "yes" when asked if she had handed in her assignments, even though she hadn't. I'll tell you, our whole family is STILL recovering.</p>
<p>^^Holy cow! I've heard of pets eating homework assignments, but aliens!.. Can that story get your D on Oprah or some other show?</p>
<p>In my house, D has a tendency to scatter her papers on the floor in her room, and our cats have a tendency to cough up hairballs. Put the two together, and there is one homework story to tell the teacher "Sorry, my cat puked all over the homework"! It actually happened a couple of times. Thank god for the web submissions!</p>
<p>I always knew aliens had descended on Staten Island!!</p>
<p>"^^Holy cow! I've heard of pets eating homework assignments, but aliens!.. Can that story get your D on Oprah or some other show?"</p>
<p>Would that be a hook?</p>
<p>Web submissions? Really?</p>
<p>BTW, ZM, does your D's HS have decent GCs??</p>