<p>Whenever colleges release their stats like the average gpa or the average SAT score, do you have to beat it to have a good chance or is getting the average gpa sufficient enough?</p>
<p>This question is probably too broad to have an easy answer. The problem is, in a whole lot of cases it’s just about impossible to say what “colleges” will do, because “colleges” are not all alike. Harvard and Stanford are both intensely competitive, but they don’t operate the same as each other, and neither of them operates the same as, say, Wichita State.</p>
<p>At Wichita State, or any other large public institution that isn’t terribly competitive, matching the numbers is probably just fine.</p>
<p>At Harvard, where the admission rate for freshman applicants is around 8%, beating the averages isn’t enough to give an applicant a good chance of being admitted. After you toss out the relative handful of applicants who applied on a lark “because it’s Harvard,” but really had no business applying, the credentials of the rejected applicants look just about exactly like the credentials of the admitted ones. But the rejected applicants far outnumber the accepted ones. And the same is true at Yale, Stanford, Duke, MIT, Amherst…</p>
<p>For competitive colleges, if your gpa is equal to the the average gpa or lower,does that lower your chance then?</p>
<p>If you’re looking for a shorter answer than the one above: yes, being exactly in the middle-range of applicants, or below that, lowers your chances of admission to a highly selective college.</p>
<p>If it is the average GPA or score, then there are plenty of people admitted that are at or below that average. So you still have a chance of acceptance.</p>
<p>Do you have other qualities that will make you attractive? How are your EC’s? Is there anything unique about you that would make the admissions people see you as an asset to the school?</p>
<p>You really don’t have a chance at acceptance if it’s a highly selective school and your grades and test scores below the median unless you have a hook. I taking about schools that take about 20-30% of applicants and less</p>
<p>@cortana431 Are you sure? Some people with gpas 0.8-0.1 below the average gpa along with average ecs still got into a highly selective college.</p>
<p>I was a little unclear; those who get in with stats under the median are generally those with hooks (minorities, athletes, legacies, etc). If you do not have a hook and your stats are below the schools median it is much much more difficult to get in (but yes unhooked candidates do get in)</p>
<p>Since half the class at highly selective colleges have hooks, hookless candidates want o e at or above the 75th percentile for a decent shot.</p>