My OOS senior was on the fence about applying to VT because of an average GPA and lower than expected SAT.
The stats: 3.25 GPA - 1140 SAT - Class rank = 85/512
He’s scheduled to retake the SAT in a week and current grades would raise the GPA slightly.
He wouldn’t be applying for science or engineering related programs.
When I consulted the Common Data Set for VT for 2016-2017 I was surprised to find the following:
41.81% of enrolled freshmen scored 500-599 on SAT Reading = 2,475 students
32.35% of enrolled freshman scored 500-599 on SAT Math = 1,915 students
78% of enrolled freshman graduated in the top 25% of their class
When I see those stats I feel like my son is in pretty good shape regarding admission. THEN, I looked at the GPA stat.
4.22% of the enrolled freshman had GPA's between 3.25 - 3.49 = 250 students out of 5921 enrolled
92.40% enrolled had a GPA of 3.50+ = 5,471 students
In fact, only 7.61% of enrolled students had a GPA below 3.5. That’s only 450 of 5921 enrolled students.
Maybe it’s because we’re from the Northeast and schools are quite strong locally that the GPA numbers are so completely out of whack? It sure seems like there’s a great deal of GPA inflation going on somewhere. If it weren’t for GPA I’d feel pretty comfortable with him being accepted. As it stands, though, I’m not comfortable saying that at all.
there are all different types of crazy ways high schools weight grades. if you search the admissions part of the website they never really mention a gpa for that reason i bet.
my S18 has a 3.45 unweighted and a 4.35 weighted. He has a 1350 SAT (690 math 660 verbal). Doesn’t seem like there is grade inflation at our school (in NC). Every school and kid is different I guess?!
Just an FYI, for almost a decade now, Virginia Tech has been using the 5-point gpa scale that a lot of schools in Virginia have. This is why the average GPA is a 4.0 yet more than half aren’t even in the top 10% of their class, even top 25%!
The average GPA is skewed higher by the northern Virginia schools, who inflate grades heavily. Because all the children are above average. And I can say this because I live in NoVA.
Of course someone from NoVA would try to consider everyone there “above average”. It’s got more to do with their weird five or even 6 point grading scales that they use. As someone who went to the Statewide governor’s school, there were alot of people from there with gpas above 4.2+ who wouldn’t even have a 3.7 in our district without their extra weighting.
The largest school district in VA weights 0.5 for honors and 1.0 for AP. I don’t think this is that unusual for a public school system. What may be unusual is that the school district only puts the weighted GPA on the transcript. It does appear that VA Tech’s GPAs are probably based on this scale. You might try recalculating your kid’s GPA using this type of weighting for his honors and AP classes to see what you get.
At my son’s HS (where as many as 200 kids apply), the average admitted VA Tech applicant has a weighted 4.0 and a 1380 SAT but plenty of kids get accepted between 3.8 and 4.0 and with SATs in the 1200s. Some of them may have unweighted GPAs in the 3.3 range if they took a course load with a lot of APs.
Just as a comparison, we live in Virginia Beach / Hampton Roads area and the public schools do not weight honors classes at all or do they add 1.0 for each AP classes.
VT definitlely compares you with other kids in your school. They know the rigor of the Va schools and know which schools pad stats (no fail policies etc). Hopefully they see beyond the GPA and class rank which can be so misleading. Ranks are especially misleading if a student aces all college prep classes and sits above those that have challenged themselves with Honors and AP work.
