<p>I didn’t know the SAT was recentered in the 1990s. So I looked it up and my 1240 in 1978 is about a 1310 today. Who knew? lol</p>
<p>Barrons, I wasn’t talking about population-wide scores. I was talking about the scores at each college. Places like GW, Tulane, Richmond, NYU, etc. that used to be considered ultra safeties at my high school now have score ranges I can barely believe. Even Harvard’s scores are higher than they were 15 years ago.</p>
<p>Annasdad- I agree with Vinceh on the classifications of the price tiers. While there are exceptions to say that the render his observations meaningless is kind of mean no less :)! I use those price tiers when talking to people all the time. Then it’s a matter of looking for the loop holes. Maybe it’s a northeast experience (I dont know where vince h is from).</p>
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<p>They still are ultra safeties, though (with the exception of NYU Tisch/Stern). Places like GW and co. pump money into laser light shows during freshman orientation ($6k per show minute * ~ 6.5 min show * 5 orientations, or $195k for flashing lights), over the top and underused administration spaces, and “pretty” buildings. They charge exorbitant tuition to fund scholarships to try to attract top students (who usually ignore them in favor of places like HYPSM), and then refuse to admit even higher caliber students with excellent SAT scores/GPAs/ECs to preserve yield. </p>
<p>SAT scores are going up because places like these draw na</p>
<p>GW, Tulane, Richmond, and NYU all admit one-third or fewer of their applicants. I would caution anybody who thinks they are ultra safeties.</p>
<p>Haven’t scoring scale for ACT and scoring system for SAT both been rejiggled since 70s to increase average scores? Coupled w/grading inflation at most schools, it’s no wonder that it seems schools have become far more selective. Would be interesting to compare median scores/GPAs w/inflation factor considered.</p>
<p>Our son has done little test prep priming, but has taken SAT twice since PSAT, and I’m surprised by the dramatic jump in scores. I’ve noticed that our local prep schools are all offering an expensive in-school non-Kaplan test-prep class for additional fee. Familiarity, whether by repeat testing and/or test-prep seems to result in notable score improvement.</p>
<p>Lots of Pennsylvania parents who haven’t had contact with recent trends in college admission believe that Penn State University Park and University of Pittsburgh main campus are almost “open admissions.” Small wonder - back when I graduated from high school, few among the crowd in honors/AP classes even considered these schools. </p>
<p>They come in for a rude awakening when their own children reach high school and start thinking about college. Many satisfied graduates of schools such as the University of Pennsylvania reluctantly realize that the credentials that allowed them to enter Penn would be iffy for Penn State University Park these days, even after adjusting for recentering and grade inflation.</p>
<p>“They still are ultra safeties, though”</p>
<p>It’s a terrible mistake to believe this any more. Kids from my prep school get rejected right and left. It was completely different in the 90s.</p>
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<p>I guess it varies by location/time period. At my school, even kids with GPAs in the 2.7 - 2.9 (UW) range get in; it’s been that way as long as I can remember.</p>
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<p>I doubt it’s because 1/3 is qualified and 2/3 isn’t. Like every other college, the marketing is really good to attract kids who honestly wouldn’t have a chance, reject them, and then boost USNWR rankings to appear to be ‘selective’. Besides, with the new surge of people applying to college just for the sake of it, the applicant pool has gotten larger yet incoming class sizes have remained the same.</p>
<p>^ smorgasboard, I have no idea where you go to school that students with 2.7 - 2.9 get into those schools. I know for a fact (the school’s Naviance) that in our local HS kids with less than a 4.0 (w) do NOT get admitted into NYU. I don’t know about Richmond, but GW and Tulane are similar.</p>
<p>Seems to me that perhaps you simply don’t like these schools.</p>
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<p>It seems to me you’re both somewhat overstating your positions. According to the information posted on CC’s College Search, the average unweighted GPA at NYU is 3.7. So it is possible to get in with well under a 4.0, but exceedingly unlikely that there is any real chance for a student with less than a 3.0.</p>
<p>annasdad - I happen to agree with you, but I was merely telling what it was for the students at a particular HS. I’m sure that students from OTHER HS’s were admitted to NYU with less than 4.0 GPA’s , but 2.7 seems somewhat of a stretch.</p>
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<p>I graduated from HS, but we did our Naviance by weighted GPA, too. I never looked at Tulane or Richmond, but NYU was across the board for admits (since we had a 1 - 2 people go to Tisch every year, and they usually weren’t top of the class, but there were exceptions). I do know that when I looked at the DC area schools, I was pretty surprised by GW: kids with weighted GPAs of 3.0 (so they’d need a significantly lower UW GPA) and SATs in the 1100/1600 range were getting in. No one got into Georgetown without a 4.0 weighted and an SAT score of less than 2150.</p>
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<p>I know that a ~3.7 weighted GPA is about a 3.2 unweighted, at least where I went. Since it’s a .5 difference, to have a weighted GPA of 3.0 would imply that you have ~2.5 unweighted GPA. Of course, your weighted GPA is largely dependent on the number of AP and honors that you took, so you could have a 4.0 weighted by taking all AP classes and having straight B’s. So it could have been a 3.0 without any AP classes taken whatsoever. I just based my assumption on the little dots.</p>
<p>I will say this – everyone who applied to GW got in.</p>
<p>First of all, NYU Tisch has different admissions standards than the other NYU schools, as 50% of admission is based on audition or portfolio. As for GWU, looking at our school’s unweighted Naviance statistics, no one is admitted there with a GPA below 3.5 and our HS is the top school in CT.</p>
<p>In addition, smorgasbord, you have contradicted yourself by saying above that “everyone who applied to GW got in” since on an earlier posting of yours on another thread you told a story about a girl in your school who got into Columbia, but was rejected at GW. I hate for people reading these threads to be given misinformation that they may rely on to put together their college lists.</p>
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<p>I agree with Smorgasbord and think it’s important for kids to know their weighted AND unweighted GPAs if they go to a school that reports only weighted GPAs. This was discussed a few years ago in some of the “where did your 3.6 GPA kid get in” and the “3.3 thread.” There are an awful lot of kids tossing out 3.8 weighted GPAs which are probably in reality a 3.5 or possibly even lower. I remember 2 years ago when S2 noticed one of the colleges where he was applying “gave” him a 4.something…the college had weighted his unweighted GPA that was reported on the transcript by probably giving him extra “points” for his AP classes. It’s to the benefit of the colleges to “supersize” these GPAs which also leads to this “prestige” aura of reporting high GPAs for accepted students. I appreciate common data sets that tell you the GPAs of the kids are on a 4 point scale.</p>
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<p>I know; that’s why I said NYU admissions was the “across the board” since Tisch kids usually had slightly lower GPAs/scores, but there were definite exceptions to that.</p>
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<p>Yes, that’s true. She was in the year that graduated before me. However, I believe she got rejected because, as I said earlier:</p>
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<p>HYPSM girl, with her resume, was clearly using the school as a safety and they knew it. If you look at GW results threads, others are in her position on CC.</p>
<p>In my graduating class, though, everyone got in. I agree with you there, Researchcmaven – I should have made the distinction between class years.</p>
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Do colleges recalculate GPAs for the Common Data Set or do they take them as given on the transcript? I looked at one right now, and the highest GPA category it gives is “percent who had GPA of 3.75 and higher.”</p>
<p>^^I think they are supposed to report on a 4.0 scale…but who knows if they actually take the time or they just estimate…it’s not that difficult to look at a transcript and calculate the GPA unweighted…you can pretty much do it in your head for a college bound kid with A a 4, B a 3, and C a 2…</p>
<p>One thing I have noticed is that it has become increasingly more difficult to get into flagship state schools. In my time, they were pretty much a given, especially for those who had legacy connections. No more. Also many of the most selective schools were heavily populated by selective independent high schools, and many of those kids had stats that the school would even discourage applying to such colleges these days. </p>
<p>However, those who go to certain high schools known for their rigor, preselection, grade deflation and being comprised of very academic students, still do get recognition of these factors when applying to colleges who are aware of the situation. That makes sense. But gone are the days when it was a near auto admit to certain highly selective colleges from certain prep schools. </p>
<p>The reported GPAs from colleges are not complete, either, from what I have been told. Some high schools do not report a class rank or a gpa, and some colleges will not recompute and report that way. I know that GW has accepted many students with 3.0 GPAs from rigorous preparatory schools. I’ve seen the data points from some such high schools my self.</p>
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<p>Back in the early-mid-'90s…GW was regarded as a backup school for well-off bottom-tiered kids at my HS who failed to get into NYU and didn’t want to attend the state schools. </p>
<p>Remarkable considering NYU(CAS & Stern) admitted around 1/3 of my graduating class with most of the CAS students ranking somewhere between the middle-bottom GPA-wise. Not only were -B students being admitted…especially to CAS…some of them were even offered scholarships. One Asian-American HS friend was offered a scholly to NYU CAS with a -B average and SATs a few points short of 1100.</p>