I’ve heard that a 4.0 at a horrible public high school holds the same weight as a 4.0 from a rigorous private high school. Is this true?
I understand that some top private high schools may have connections with good colleges. In other words, they have relationships with feeder schools. But, how could a small private university in Pennsylvania know the level of prestige of every single high school in the country? They couldn’t possibly assign a weight to each school, so does the college admission officer arbitrary assess a high schools level of rigor?
They know. That is their job. My oldest works in the admissions office and when the state rep visited his old hs, she described it to a T. They are reading applications for 4 months. The other 8 months are recruiting.
You really think college admission officer from a schools of 2,000 students like Allegheny College knows the in-and-outs of over 37,000 high schools. That’s simply not possible. And knowing a bit about the school is one thing.
That would be possible for a few hundred high schools - maybe even a few thousand. But being able to compare them to one another is an absurd feat.
Guidance counselors send in school profiles when students apply to colleges. These include enough information that experienced adcoms can come to conclusions about the strength and rigor of the high school.
Allegheny college has 10 admissions counselors, so that cuts the number of schools that need to be know per counselor down significantly. They are getting 0 applications from most of these schools since Allegheny College only has 3,800 applicants. This is their job. Assume they are good at it.
^This. The school profiles include info like grading policies, honors/college prep courses offered, % seniors going onto 2yr/4yr colleges, % kids eligible for free/reduced lunch (informs poverty information). Other info like ACT/SAT averages or % of 9th graders graduating in 4 years can also be included.
Any college official worth his/her salt armed with this info will immediately be able to level the playing field between the 4.0GPA at the rural, under-resourced HS and the 3.8GPA kid at the posh suburban HS. This data is very revealing and allows meaningful comparisons.
Is it perfect? Of course not – no one is arguing this.
If a valedictorian of an under-resourced school scores a 26ACT and her personal essay is poorly drafted – as a whole, this diminishes the 4.0 GPA.
Whereas the 3.8 GPA student, taking 10 AP classes and achieves a 2300 SAT, yet ranked 10th in her graduating class – will be assumed to be extremely strong.
There are lots of colleges that don’t receive applications from certain high schools. I was the only applicant from my high school to one of the universities that accepted me last year.
Comment on school profile is dead on. If you still have doubt about whether the high school you go to makes a difference take a look at the best high school in your area. If you live near a big city like Chicago or NYC or LA this is easier. If you live in a rural area look at the best school in your state, probably private could be public. I did this for the Chicago area. Best public school is probably New Trier and the best private high school is Chicago Latin School. When I compared where students matriculated and compared it to my D’s high school, I was very surprised. D’s high school is not shabby, USNWR top 300 or so. Fully 4 percent of Latin students got into Northwestern. About 12 students got into Ivy League schools out of a class less than 200. Are the kids at Latin just smarter? Maybe, but tuition is over $30k/year so perhaps they have access to more resources
I don’t think so. If he/she achieved 4.0 GPA with the most rigorous curriculum offered at his/her school, this student will have same chances of admission as other 4.0 GPA students.
^ Adcoms look to correlate GPA with curricular rigor and test scores. A 4.0 with poor test scores suggests grade inflation, regardless of whether the curriculum meets that particular school’s definition of “most rigorous”.
Like others say, they look at the school profile. How many AP classes, how many go to 4 year colleges, etc.
Also they look at your SAT/ACT score…that is an equalizer.
Looking at an ACT/SAT score as an equalizer makes the high school reputation irrelevant then. If there are two students with the same GPA and ACT score, but the schools are vastly different in reputations, then what do you do? It’s possible that an average public schools offers more APs than a small elite private school.
Most of the points mentioned support my argument: If the GPAs are the same then they look to other metrics. I’m talking about the school’s reputation being a metric in and of itself. Some schools are much harder than others. And getting a good ACT score can mean you busted your butt for a few months, while a GPA can mean you busted your butt for 4 years.
And let’s take two schools in Los Angeles as a case study: Palisades Charter High School vs. Brentwood School. Let’s assume the two students both had the same exact applications. Which candidate gets in? It has to be based on the rigor of their high school.
Generally, yes. Not every school has a “reputation”. Some do. Good colleges still evaluate each student individually. If they have questions, they use the guidance counselor report. I’m sure that, once in a while, they consider “reputation”.
People sure seem to be in a hurry to distill the selection process down to a manageable factor or two.
A 4.0 from 2 different high schools can mean very different things. The rigor of the high school as well as rigor of the schedule are very important factors for top colleges. An an honors class at a highly regarded high school means more than one at a mediocre one. That is why you will sometimes hear an adcom say “an A at ____ school really means an A.” They know where grade inflation exists and where is does not.
Are the kids at Latin smarter?
They probably are, because at private schools they test in, so lower performing kids are screened out. There will be a much tighter range of academic performance at a school like Latin, so avg scores will be higher and there will be fewer lower performing kids.
Don’t know if it’s the case for Latin, but in NYC, you can hire consultants to train your kids to do better on the tests needed to place in to the kindergartens of the top private schools. Do you really think the tests are so accurate that SES isn’t a major confounder of test scores of a 5 year old? The preparation gap only widens as the kids get older.
It’s not just the school profile the GC sends. There are various reporting systems on hs around the country and local demographics. Adcoms can learn on their own.
You really can’t get a read on this by focusing on stats. Any holistic school will be looking at academics, stats, and then more. And it’s not as simple as pointing a finger at grade inflation (certainly, there is a lot of that at some private hs.) It can be the rest of the holistic bar.