GPA for Ivy, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Chicago, Berkeley, UCLA & Selective Schools:

Applying to College
21

The article says 767 for Asian and 745 for White. 767 - 745 = 22 points per section, like I listed in my earlier post.

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22

The bigger issue is that this whole list adds little value as there is no indication how grades are weighted if they are weighted. Some high schools weight grades, others do not. Some universities accept the weighted grades, others take only the unweighted and still others recalculate their own. Because there is no indication, the reader can’t take useful info away from this. Do your really think the UW GPA of those applying to Princeton is almost a 1/2 point less than those applying to UVA? It’s in how they calculate, so these numbers don’t really indicate anything.

23

You can’t compare things that lack even the most basic standardization:

  • Different high schools grade differently with different levels of rigor for their courses.

  • Some courses are naturally more rigorous than some other courses from the same high school, and GPA, by definition, is an average that doesn’t capture course rigor.

  • If GPAs are weighted to capture course rigor to some degree, it’s still impossible to do so for any high school across all its course offerings (e.g. the rigor of AP Human Geography isn’t at nearly the same level as that of AB Physics C E&M). Additionally, different high schools have different weighting scales that make comparison even more problematic.

  • Colleges, if they recalculate GPAs, apply their own different scales to weight courses, and they often do so only for a subset of courses that are determined differently by each college.

  • Colleges publish GPA data (if they do so) often without specifying the sources of, and/or the methods they use to recalculate, their data. Some of them are clearly trying to present the data in a way that reflect more positively on them than they really deserve.

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24

I do appreciate that your personal intention is to share a helpful resource.

Unfortunately, for the reasons stated by everyone else, this “Prepscholar” list will not accomplish what you strive for. I suspect that site might have produced that list (despite knowing quite well it being useless) with commercial intent because it makes good click-bait, specially internationally.

Let me use an example:

  • Student at has a WEIGHTED GPA of 3.92 - so they look at the list and see Princeton, Columbia, Berkley
 but their UNweighted GPA is that of a “B” student.

  • Student has an UNweighted GPA of 3.98 (so a very solid A student). They look at the list and learn that UVA, Amherst, Barnard, Williams, Northwestern, Swarthmore are out of reach - when in reality, their GPA might fall perfectly within the range of 50% of admitted students at most of those schools.

So this Prepscholar list is not just “not helpful”, it’s outright misleading - especially if it’s “targeting” the people who are not well-informed and tend to rely on such "scholar"ly advice.

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25

I’m not sure how any of those universities determines which GPA thresholds they consider, however, a key piece of information they will have is the transcript. That will give the GPA some context. It will tell them which courses were taken and the comparative difficulty. It will give them some insight into how the HS weights grades. The GPA alone doesn’t really tell you too much about the student but the transcript will be more informative.

26


and the “school profile” - which tells admissions officers how to “read” the transcript in the first place, e.g., what letter and percent grades, what weighting scheme is used for honors/IB/AP, etc. If will list which IP/AP classes and honor classes are offered, possibly even what honor societies, and the distribution of GPAs for a class.

Some universities might interprete the GPA in the context of that school profile - others will pick the unweighted grades for specific core subject areas and then apply their own weighting for different class levels to calculate GPAs that will be comparable across all high schools.

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27

how does every admission department develop an accurate “school profile” of the high school of every applicant?

28

your case is a good one for a student from afar who has a GPA of 3.98. This puts him/her into the 3.9+ zip code of all these schools, and makes him/her generally eligible to apply. The overall application maybe a stretch for some schools, but it’s conceivable to apply, and there is a chance for admission, as opposed to a student with a 3.0 GPA. That was really the purpose of this list, as a general indicator of feasibility.

29

The school profile is developed by the HS. Here’s an example

Note that this is one of the few that lists grades by course

30

Princeton reports a 3.93.

University of Maryland reports a 4.34

Consider that when evaluating the meaning of CDS GPAs.

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31

High schools send it to them as part of the standard Common App application packet.

32

is this publicly available for every school, or just selectively communicated by the high school counselors?

33

Many are publicly available. But it varies by HS.

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34

And also Chicago’s 4.48 - which means the entire list!?
A student with an unweighted GPA of 3.98 out of 4 doesn’t need anyone’s list.

Using this list is analog to someone inquiring for a suitable cage for their farm animal that has a size of “4”. Then he downloads a list with all available cage sizes, ranging from 2 to 400.

The only problem: neither the list nor his measuring device tells him if the unit is mm, cm, dm, m, inches, yards or feet.

Is the list accurate? Yes! Can you compare “zip codes” 4 less than 40? Sure?
But will the 4 foot animal fit into the 40 cm cage they ordered?
:wink:

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35

It means you’re comparing :apple:s to :tangerine:s.

36

Ours is available on student portal which parents have parents access to, don’t see it posted on our school’s website. The report is very detailed- it tells what the avg SAT in previous year, how many NMFs the schools has, what APs it has available, just a lot of very detailed info so that colleges can compare the applicant to rest of the school’s pool.

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37

thanks, will ask the same for schools where I am a parent

38

I think this is right. A student who is taking a rigorous course load and getting all (or mostly) A’s doesn’t need a “cheat sheet” to tell them that their gpa puts them in the running at every school. It would be more helpful for them to understand that this threshold means very little when it comes to actual acceptance. Many kids with perfect (or near perfect) GPAs, rigor and high test scores are rejected from top schools every year.

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