Emory/Oxford Admissions Chances

Hi everyone!
I just recently submitted my application for Emory (regular decision)
My GPA was 3.6 (unweighted)
Ranked top in my class
Submitted two teacher recs
I submitted my application with a 1390 new SAT score. My essay was pretty strong and so were my extracurriculars. I just wanted to know my chances and if anyone has heard of people with my GPA and SAT score getting accepted. Emory is one of my top choice schools. I also wanted to know my chances at a Scholars program. Please get back to me…,

@tylerssoares : The rank is clearly what matters in your case, but how large is your graduating cohort? Also, how many AP/IB/Dual Enrollment courses have you taken and how well did you do in them? With a 1390 and no ideas of your ECs, one can not know your shot at scholars, but unless the ECs and performance in dual enrollment or AP/IB was super strong/standout, it isn’t very good (in fact it isn’t particularly great for those who look perfect on paper).

@tylerssoares
Ranked 1 with a 3.6? This is hard to believe even if your school was extremely difficult. What is the back story? And no you have no chance at Scholars with your current stats.

@VANDEMORY1342 : Is that extremely difficult? I don’t know. At my HS’s magnet program. Usually the very top students got some raw Bs or B+s so if you only had an unweighted GPA (with the more difficult AP and honors, first quarter and semester grades would start low even for the best and then increase), I see a 3.6 or 3.7 (most of the very top students would get some mixture of A,A-,B+ and they would do very well in admissions, including elite admissions) as possible because grading was pretty harsh in APs and some were pretty much run like college courses with only tests and quizzes so if they made them difficult, the top raw scores in the course would be a B or B+ and that just was what it was. I think because HS leniency (like high weighting of HW and non-high stakes assignments) and inflation with the raw scores is so common, it may appear surprising at first, but I think there are some programs where the unweighted GPAs just don’t go but so high unless you have a really lucky cohort (where maybe 3.8+ would be a ceiling/the valedictorian). I know my year at my school, the highest was like a weighted 97 or 96 (those between 1 and 4 were basically between 96 and 97) and when I was going, they had a silly system where honors and APs were weighted evenly with a 5 point addition. If you unweight the top GPAs, you are talking roughly a 91-92 average and this includes all their non-academic courses which were of course much easier. I feel like unweighted 3.6-3.85 makes far more since than all these 4.0 unweighted people I see on these boards and then all these ridiculous 4.0+ weighted GPAs. It doesn’t make any sense. These high schools are basically lying to their their students and filling their heads with non-sense expectations that follow them to college, which even in easier courses is often less forgiving.

Either way, regardless of that, OP doesn’t look like a promising candidate for scholars at all and have basically given us no information. I don’t even say that statistically good candidates are great candidates until I know more (and most still won’t be).

@bernie12
yes, a 3.6 is an 88% AT BEST. For the Val to have a 3.6 is astonishing, makes me believe they were home schooled (nothing wrong with that by the way).
OP you still have a decent chance at an acceptance.

@VANDEMORY1342 : That makes sense, at least for academic courses, assuming that APs, IBs, and honors are as hard as they are supposed to be. I don’t find it particularly astonishing. I find 3.9+ and not valedictorian astonishing. 3.6-3.8 sounds about right with a rigorous curriculum. But let us keep it real and recognize that most do not get that in HS. You get challenged in a sort of “ooh, but don’t hurt the cohort’s GPA sort of way”. It is so clear that elite publics and most privates (elite or not) are adding a pragmatic component to the grading scheme and it may be more so the design of the syllabus that makes keeping a high grade average easy (as in lower the weight and difficulty of the exams, and move right along in APs/IBs. At the end of the day, they can just keep grades high and teach to the test so that most students pass the test). But schools with those ridiculously high grades seem more about tying those grades to self-esteem (and thus keeping the self-esteem of the students, especially the high achievers, high) at the end of the day, because if the school reported class rank post-weighting, the raw GPA would not matter at all.

@VANDEMORY1342 @bernie12 I was just accepted to both ECAS and Oxford (my GPA is 3.7 btw, I typed it in wrong when I originally posted)

@tylerssoares Good, but you also asked about Scholars, were you interviewed or given a smaller merit scholarship? I don’t remember.

Also, your raw unweighted GPA never mattered. Period.

@bernie12 I wasn’t interviewed and I don’t think I’ve been awarded a merit scholarship. Now waiting on need-based aid, which should come out today.