<p>It’s meant to be a simple sort of parable on what could happen to deferred students. The numbers chosen are meaningless without referring to a specific school, since every school is different. In some schools, top 10% is a good gauge of academic competitiveness, in others, it is not. In either event, I’d encourage you not to read into the percentages, they were chosen more to illustrate a point than to talk about where the “line” is for an admit. Besides, that line doesn’t exist in our process.</p>
<p>We do our best to admit smart and interesting people (though, the unfortunate reality of space precludes admitting all of those smart and interesting people). As the folks on this board will attest, there are many many ways to demonstrate that; not all of those ways include straight As.</p>
<p>Thanks–that was the discussion I was remembering.</p>
<p>But you know, what you posted helps and doesn’t help.
It emphasizes that a class rank of top 15th percentile is, indeed, something that needs to be “disregarded.” That’s fine; obviously you get plenty of kids from the top decile. It’s just good to know what a kid’s realistic chances are.</p>
<p>Realistically: yes, At many schools, ranking at the 15% mark puts up significant hurdles. This is how it should be in a selective admissions process. </p>
<p>But, for the boards at large and the sake of clarity, that is not the case for every school. There are ample schools where students who rank at that point are highly competitive. Grades and rankings don’t have the same meaning in every school; we take the time to get to know schools well enough to understand what rank/grades mean.</p>
<p>I’m a junior looking into Tufts University. I checked out the campus in October, and absolutely loved it. My favorite part had to have been the extremely enthusiastic information session given by an admissions officer named Dan (in a blazer and corduroys if that helps). If this was in fact you, I was wondering if I could shoot you a private email as I have a few questions about college essays. If you’d rather that I don’t, that’s absolutely fine, I just came across this post and could not help but wonder if this was THAT Dan.</p>
<p>I had to laugh at caliparent’s posting. “Sad and disturbing”?? Come on. I think that fifty percent of the postings wouldn’t be on college confidential if parents or their students didn’t! post their “assets.” I am new here, but I have been reading a lot of blogging specifically asking for applicants’ stats and qualifications and the responses.</p>
<p>I have a junior son who is very interested in Tufts, maybe too interested, I don’t want him to be disappointed if he doesn’t get in. He is a very fine student - sorry, caliparent - but I am learning that it takes so much more to get in nowadays. I actually printed up SWHarbor’s posting and gave it to my son. We have heard so much about Tufts and how the admissions people are looking for something beyond grades and test scores, so I read the post feeling more educated about applying to Tufts and to college in general. Gracious, the essays have become all important - a big shift since my college applying days.</p>
<p>I also had to laugh about the species eating their young comment. Isn’t that the truth. Teens can be tough.</p>
<p>To GRAPE1 since he or she is the one who started this thread. You have nothing to lose by applying but everything to lose if you don’t apply at all.</p>
<p>To Dan from Tufts - bless you for being so generous with your advice.</p>
<p>Dan, that’s helpful and a good reality check.</p>
<p>To press this point just a bit further, and really just for my own edification and to make sure we direct our daughter’s application energies appropriately, how would Tufts view an applicant with, hypothetically, a 3.75 unweighted GPA from a school that DID NOT RANK vs a school that informed you this student was second decile? I know you have plenty of 4.0’s to choose from, I’m really just trying to get a handle on the role of class rank in sorting out the kids in the next stratum, if you will.</p>
<p>Suppose the hypothetical student presented strong standardized test scores? (These are not my daughter’s numbers–she hasn’t taken the SAT yet–but let’s say for argument’s sake, 2300/2400.)</p>
<p>I just find the emphasis on relative place within the class somewhat perplexing because it is out of the individual student’s control. In an environment where students take gym and health in summer school in order to leave room for an extra honors class during the school year to boost GPA/rank, the whole enterprise devolves into something quite distorted.</p>
<p>I must say, the game has changed so much since my own school days that it’s like buying a ticket to see a game at Yankee Stadium and finding they are playing cricket. A bat and a ball, two teams…but not the same game anymore. I went to literally one of the best public high schools in the country (at the time) and my school offered five (count 'em) AP courses, and you really could only take four, because no one studied both French AND Spanish. Times have sure changed.</p>
<p>Apologies if I sounded over the top. I think parents should encourage their children to do their best and find the right “fit” w/o parents trying to overpackage their child. It all works out in the end and they end up where they are suppose to be.</p>
This was my point with the last post. We don’t treat every school the same. The context of academic performance is important and GPAs don’t take on real meaning unless you understand what classes count and which don’t (is this a school that includes the PE grade?), how the school weights it grades (or doesn’t), what classes the student took, and what classes the school offers. </p>
<p>This goes back to why we don’t recalculate GPA. Recalculating GPA washes out a lot of the nuance from school to school, and the logic behind recalculating allows for a belief that grades are similar everywhere. And that couldn’t be further from the truth in my opinion. We know that an ‘A’ at one school is different from an ‘A’ at another; some schools grade inflate, others deflate. Recalculation eliminates a part of the contextual approach to academic evaluation that we use; it puts everyone in the same boat academically and assumes that everyone has the same options, the same opportunities, and the same circumstances. But they don’t, so we don’t.</p>
<p>
Some things have definitely changed, but this isn’t really one of them. Many schools fit the mold of your old high school today without that signifying a weaker caliber school. My own high school (which is pretty fantastic, IMHO) offers no APs.</p>