@WorryHurry411 I think there is some misunderstanding. I think what people are trying to express is that your kid shouldn’t do things because he or you think it will help him get into a specific school. Each of these schools have different things they are looking for from year to year, and you likely won’t know what they are. My kid was a bit different because of the recruiting process. He knew before he was ready to apply which schools valued his particular mix of skills. But absent the recruiting process, I think the best advice is keep killing it academically and do some things your kid enjoys and can excel at. Then come junior year, do your best to identify which schools seem to value that type of kid. I think you do that by reading what you can about specific schools, visiting the campus, etc. then let him take his best shot at the schools where he feels most comfortable. It is likely the schools he feels most comfortable with will also be the schools most likely to value the kind of applicant he or she is. Does that make sense?
It makes perfect sense and I appreciate good advice and tips given by all posters. It’s just that people totally disregard the question that one is asking and stick to unsolicited opinions. I respect that they are volunteering their time to reply but I don’t see no harm in adding their kid’s freshman GPA.
Offering unsolicited advice is one of the things CC does best. It’s like a force of nature.
If anyone had asked me five years ago where my DDs would likely attend college, I’d have said DD1 was headed to a small liberal arts college with a killer arts/photography program and DD2 would attend a large public U with a top engineering program.
DD1 just graduated from a state college with her BSN and has her dream job lined up in an ICU. DD2 attends a small LAC, is a biochem major, and is in France, taking an immersion French language and culture course. She wants to be a MD.
Lots happens in 5 years and none of the above was on my radar–or theirs–when DD1 was a high school freshman.
@OP: Try to help your son keep up with his grades while taking a rigorous curriculum throughout high school. Ace the standard tests. If he doesn’t have “major hooks”, the high stats is pretty much what will get him in the game, so to speak. Even if he has the hook(s), top stats can only help. I know it’s early in the process, but if you want to be really effective, find a way to access his school’s Naviance, where you can check where the grades and SATs of previously admitted students from HIS school fall for the colleges you are targeting, and have an idea where he needs to be to stay in the competitive range. The numbers don’t tell you what classes those students took, so you want to make sure he’s taking reasonably rigorous if not the most rigorous classes his school offers because you bet top colleges will look at his transcript not just grades very closely. And the ranges of those numbers can be huge, but you should safely ignore those below the mean. Typically those are from the ones with major hooks.
Extracurricular activities are important, but picking up a sport at this point is probably not going to help, as others pointed out. Balance the breath and depth of his extracurricular involvement. Ideally, he should focus on a few but not many and do some substantial work in them, but he also shouldn’t give up all the others too soon. By junior year, he should know on what he has become the “shining star” and how much he could keep up with as the classes are getting harder.
It’s a little too early to ask him to focus on college. Many kids wouldn’t listen to you anyway, and some may listen but you run the risk of burning him out too soon. But it’s not too early for you as the parent to start learning the ropes and providing guidance to your kid. This is a good starting point. Good luck!
Sounds like you have a terrific, smart kid who is also a motivated student. But he is, after all, only 14 (15?). So long as nothing changes, might be a good idea to chill out and see how things develop.
“Is there anyone who can answer the question about what sort of freshman scores and GPA their ivy leaguer or valedictorian kid has?”
No, because my kid didn’t take the SAT until junior year. You really need to lighten up. And from the posts I’ve seen on this site, SAT scores vary considerably, and improvements made vary wildly. There is no way to predict. If your kid has been coming home since grade school with standardized test scores in the 99th+ percentile, they are likely to do similarly on the college tests. Of course, it’s a good idea to prep for these tests. They are important and prep does help.
As far as GPA, it’s meaningless. Even within schools, teachers of the same course grade differently. Different schools have different grading systems. There is no way to compare and you really should stop worrying about this. The only thing to think about is whether your child is taking a program that is appropriately challenging to him and supports his interests.
@mathyone Sir, I only asked for Freshman GPA. People usually know that by the end of 9th grade.
@panpacific Thank you.
The name J__ may mean nothing to you. It does to some of us. Please do NOT use it as a curse word. You may not realize it, but it is extremely offensive to some.
That’s the question you initially asked. I answered it. So did other posters.
Unless you are using 2 screen names, you didn’t ask
Ithinkpink did.
I’m sure you realize that your S’s grades are extremely high and it is therefore highly probable that some students were admitted to top colleges with worse grades. As others have said, every high school is different, so knowing the grades of other students who were admitted wouldn’t be the least bit useful.
ithinkpink says her S “only” has a 4.3 because her S’s school only allows 9th graders to take one AP. If that’s the case, her S is not going to be penalized in the least because other high schools allow 9th graders to take other APs.( Some of the best, most rigorous high schools in the nation don’t offer any APs. )
I certainly don’t remember what my “Ivy” kid’s gpa was as a freshman. Each college calculates the gpa a little differently, anyway. I do remember my son received a couple of Bs along the way.
Did you know that Princeton doesn’t use freshman grades in their gpa calculations? Neither do Berkeley or UCLA and the other UCs.
Both of my kids took the SAT as juniors one time, and that was it, so no freshman scores.
Just for the records, I did mention our freshman’s GPA. It is 4.3. Our school doesn’t rank either or let freshman take more than one AP. All top 10 students are called co-valedictorians.
If you find any statistics about 9th grade GPAs of Ivy students then let me know. My son wants to know. I guess you aren’t getting many answers because not many posters have Ivy students but they gave some good advice that my kid found useful and he is making his own account on CC.
I PM’d you some grade info just now but I really think this fixation on grades, especially freshman grades, is not productive. Your child should take an appropriately challenging schedule and get good grades. Comparing grades to other students at other schools is meaningless because schools vary so much in their grading schemes and in their weighting schemes. The colleges will be looking at how well your child performed in the context of his school. A 94 at your school could well be like a 99 at another school so why waste your time worrying about this?
I also don’t think colleges will care if your child got a 96 or a 99. But they will care about what the teacher had to say about him.
Thank you @mathyone
“If you find any statistics about 9th grade GPAs of Ivy students then let me know.” SIgh. You two are barking up the wrong tree.
OK, I had to work it out because it’s just not a big deal and it certainly wasn’t something I looked at at the time. I didn’t even see my child’s GPA or understand how it was calculated until the fall of senior year. But I can see that you won’t listen to anyone who tells you this isn’t what you should be focusing on. So–weighted GPA by end of freshman year of my kid with Ivy admittances: 4.64. Unweighted 4.0 Two AP classes. 5 on both AP exams.
You do realize that schools have different methods for calculating GPA, and different methods for weighting classes, so what I told you is completely meaningless for any GPA comparison to your child?
I just have to add, because your children are apparently reading this, that your parents aren’t grasping what is important. You should not look at any other student’s numbers and think, "“I have no chance because my numbers are lower.” Neither should you look at an admitted student’s numbers and think “I am a shoe-in because my numbers are better”. That’s not how it works. Yes, the numbers need to be high, but the most important thing is that they be high in the context of your individual school. I see kids on here with GPA’s over 5.0 That’s impossible at our school, and of course the colleges know this. So please enjoy your high school experience, do things that you want to do, not things just to “look good”. Take challenging classes that will prepare you for the kind of college program you want and stop worrying so much about the competition.
What scores makes one eligible for perfect unweighted GPA? Our district gives 4.0 for 97 or more but most neighboring districts give 5.0 for 95 or above. GPA is confusing.
My son worries that it’s not fair that those schools give higher GPA for lower grades AND let their students take up to 3 APs. I think it’s better that our district doesn’t burden 15 year olds with 3 college level courses and he’ll be compared against kids in our district.
This is exactly why your question is misguided. Every school has different grading schemes and different weighting schemes and different credits taken and different rules about AP classes. It does not make sense for you to try to make comparisons.
It’s not “unfair” to your son in any way. He will be judged according to the standards of your school, which evidently are lower. I think you all need to lay this bean counting to rest. If your kid is an academic standout at your school, that should be apparent to him, to you, to the teachers, and to the GC. If not, no amount of “they get a 4.0 for a 93 and we need a 97” is going to matter.
If you are asking for GPAs of top students as underclassmen and -women, it really depends on each school. My daughter’s school calculates class rank by weighted GPA and summa cum laude by unweighted GPA. But other high schools within the district do it differently. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason. Having said that, in my daughter’s 10th grade class the top student is a boy from her middle school and has an unweighted GPA of 4.0 and a weighted GPA of 4.5. Just read that in an article about him in the school newspaper. Otherwise, I would not have any means of knowing other than asking parents I know. How did he get there: 2 APs as freshman, 2 APs as sophomore plus all or mostly honors classes. Not all mandatory classes are offered in an Honors version though, so everybody has to take some that are not Honors. But then, our school doesn’t have a valedictorian or salutatorian. The speaker at graduation is peer-voted from among the summa cum laudes.
Every high school sends a school profile letter to the colleges that your child applies to, along with the guidance counselor letter and the child’s transcript. Go into the guidance office and ask them for a copy of the letter so that you can see what it includes. It will show how they calculate grades.
Each high school has its own way of calculating, and the colleges understand this. Your son will not be disadvantaged in any way in the process.
His stellar grades will earn him serious consideration at the Ivies, along with the tens of thousands of other students with equally excellent, or even somewhat less stellar, grades.
I think a better way to think about this is to ask yourself, am I among the top 2 or 3 students in all my classes? That would be more meaningful than trying to make GPA comparisons.