<p>I've just joined College Confidential so bear with me as I ask this question as many other students/parents may have already asked this before.
I was reading one of the questions on the forum today and I read someone say that their daughter had a 3.6 unweighted GPA and was top 7% of the class. This shocked me because in my school, if someone has a 3.6 GPA, his/her rank would be about 16-18%. There are some colleges where I am applying where they have GPA cutoffs for automatic admissions. So my question is, do college admissions look at how your high school is ranked in the nation along with your GPA and rank as well or no? Thank you!</p>
<p>If your question is, do colleges realize that some schools grade harder than others, the answer is yes, but not all of them necessarily do anything about it. The smaller and more elite colleges pay close attention to this, realizing that some schools are full of easy As and others are B factories, which is why no one can tell you much based on just a GPA, though they pretend to. Also, GPA doesn’t take curriculum into account and that means everything at the higher level schools.</p>
<p>I think the larger state schools tend to be more formulaic, and that seems to be what you’re asking about. If you don’t automatically get in under their formula, which generally takes GPA and test scores into account, they’ll take a closer look at the transcript and take the high school reputation into account. Also, the best guide to how a college looks at your particular school and GPA is Naviance if your school has it. Just pull up the scattergram for the college in question and you’ll see how you stack up based on your high school’s past history with that college.</p>
<p>Alright, that makes sense. And no, my school doesn’t have Naviance but I just googled what it is and now I wish my school had it!</p>
<p>It’s a very useful tool, but maybe you have friends at another school that has it. It won’t be perfect, as it will be their school’s data, but it should give you a pretty good idea. Or maybe you’ll link up here with someone that can do it with a school that’s similar to yours. Just go to the school-in-question’s discussion page and ask.</p>