Hi, So I attend an extremely rigorous private school in the Bay Area, am not sure if it is super well known, and am worried how this will affect me. By super rigorous I mean there are 32 NMSFs in my class of 350, and not a single one of them has straight As. My school is the kind of school where kids get Cs in their APs but get 5s on their tests even when they try. At least for state schools, do they take into account our rigor, as my GPA at first glance looks bad, but when you look at my test scores and everything else, they’re great! I know private schools try to consider grade inflation/deflation, but state schools normally use a formula.
Most schools should have some sort of profile that indicates their rigor/deciles of student GPA/rank. Also Naviance (if your school has it) should show what GPA/SAT score of accepted students.
Your school sounds a lot like some of the top rated public schools in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley where some AP class grades are deflated but kids end up getting a 5 on the AP.
My son’s school sounds similar. He barely got a B- in Calc BC but got a 5 on the AP test and 800 on SAT 1 math and SAT Subject Math 2. The AP Chem class had kids getting 60-70 percent on their midterm averages and probably 90 percent of the kids got a 5 on the AP Chem test.
^ To tack onto what the poster above said, colleges will look at your grades in the context of your own school. Since there is no standardized GPA system, it’s impossible to compare prospective students’ GPAs across the board.
As long as you’re doing well compared to most of the other students in your school and are taking a rigorous curriculum, I think you’ll have a strong academic profile in AOs’s eyes.