I’ve been looking through unweighted admit stats for colleges. UCLA posts UW GPA stats here:
1 B will put you below the median, and 2 will put you below the lower quartile. This just blows my mind: does this imply you essentially need a 4.0? What about those from difficult schools?
Additionally, looking through common datasets, this website compiles all of them:
It shows so much variation in the top schools in percent 4.0 admits: 70% for Harvard, 95% for Stanford, 58% for Princeton. How could it possibly vary so much if they’re all UW GPA’s, and is it really believable that only 1 in 20 stanford admits would have earned a B in their high school career?
As far back as 2001 half of Stanford’s 20,000 applicants had 4.0, and they could have filled their class completely with valedictorians. It’s far more rejective now. So yes, it’s very believable.
Far too many students apply to far too few schools, mistakenly believing it’s the only way to success. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Not all students who attend highly rejective schools have extremely successful careers and plenty who went to random schools have wildly successful ones. I know three Fortune 500 CEOs. All three went to random, no name schools.
There are lots of great schools out there that are east admits. Seek them out.
I can’t speak to UCLA specifically, but it is a public university. It is reasonable to infer that the majority of their enrolled students graduated from California public high schools. It is not uncommon in high schools with a high proportion of college bound students to inflate grading policies to ensure that multiple students in a given graduating class will have 4.0 GPAs. This will only be true for the top few students in the class, and these are the students that will be accepted by big name colleges. This can be found in private schools, too.
If a student is at a high school with only one student that graduates with a 4.0, that does leave the next few students after that student in the ranking at a relative GPA disadvantage, but that does not mean that they won’t get admitted to an excellent college. They just need to look beyond the big names that you have linked to in your post.
Bigger picture as I’ve posted elsewhere, there is no set way for schools to calculate CDS GPA, and many don’t even try.
Some schools recalculate GPA in their own way, some schools don’t. Some schools recalculate only using some subset of classes, others use all classes. Some institutional reporting depts calculate GPAs differently than is done for admission purposes. And on and on.
Bottom line, unless you know exactly how the CDS GPA is calculated, don’t use it.
As noted by @Mwfan1921, UCLA posts their Unweighted UC GPA and Fully Weighted UC GPA in their profile. The UC GPA uses only grades from the A-G course requirements from the summer after 9th to the summer prior to 12th grades. So really only 2 years worth of grades are considered in the GPA calculation however, 9th grades are reviewed for A-G course completion and HS rigor. Senior year grades are not included and only 12th grade courses are listed to ensure completion of the A-G course requirements and continuation of HS course rigor.
The UC’s overall are very GPA focused vs other schools.
For the CDS data, the GPA data is listed for enrolled students and in general, admitted students have a higher GPA range.
I don’t think that any person who posts here thinks that every single person who goes to Princeton becomes a multimillionaire. I don’t think that any person who posts here thinks it is impossible to be a huge success if you go to a “no name school” as you say.
However, your chances for success are better if you attend a “highly rejective school” as you say, and to suggest otherwise isn’t being honest with people. Since you brought up Fortune 500 CEOs, the schools that produce the most Fortune 500 CEOs are:
I don’t think it needs to be pinned at the top. It gets posted 5 times a day on this site, often in threads where it is wildly unrelated to the original topic.
That list, from a website called Academic Influence, includes advanced degrees, not just undergraduate.
@Mwfan1921 referenced Dale and Krueger. Their foundational work, that has subsequently been replicated, essentially said the success cake is baked at the time one graduates high school.
The following is a link to that includes the original DK, Hoxby’s retort, and finally DK’s rebuttal. This is well established, old news.
“People who attend more selective colleges make more money after graduation. But students impressive enough to win admission to selective colleges probably would have been relatively successful even if they’d attended a less prestigious institution. That’s ability bias for you.”
I think the “probably” is throw in there because the professional network you build by attending Stanford and Princeton is more valuable than that gained from attending Marshall or Boise State. And many other factors as well.
If where someone goes to receive their Bachelors degree didn’t matter, there wouldn’t be consultants making crazy money to advise applicants, there would never have been a college admissions scandal and this site wouldn’t exist.
From my own career, I know for a fact that only applicants with degrees from particular institutions are considered for certain lucrative positions. The door is otherwise closed. This may be upsetting to you but it is the truth.
There are a LOT of reasons that could explain this. The one I prefer is that there are many people that buy into the myth that it’s the school that creates the opportunity and not the individual.
There are undeniably certain sectors and specific companies that favor specific schools, but those tend to be narrow areas within finance or upper east coast law firms.
On the whole merit is what most hiring managers care about and there’s little correlation between that and the undergraduate institution.
Again, as @Mwfan1921 asked, if you have data, I’d be all ears.
yes, but Stanford’s CDS is probably weighted because there’s no way 95% have 4.0, considering hooks. also it doesnt make sense because its so different from harvard and princeton so they must he reporting differently
Do you not think the network that you build during your undergraduate years can be beneficial? In your life, have you not seen people (maybe even yourself) benefiting because of who they (or you) know? Are you open to the idea that someone who attends Stanford or UPenn could have very valuable contacts that will never exist for someone who attends Texas Tech or Florida Gulf Coast?
I’m not saying there’s no value to networks, but they are hard to quantify back to the undergraduate level. The network build through strong work is far more powerful.
I teach high school and have taught in public, public charter, and private schools. I can’t speak for all schools nor all teachers though. Based on my observation, earning A in public school is very easy. It takes some decent work in some public charter schools and stronger work ethic in private schools. In a public high school with over half of the students qualifying for free lunch (aka not competitive), over 10% have equivalent of 4.0 GPA. In another public high school in the same district with 20% free lunch population (moderately competitive), over 20% have equivalent of 4.0 GPA. In a private school claiming “academic rigor”, about 20% students have 4.0 GPA.