<p>What’s his class rank?</p>
<p>As of now he is in the top 5 percent of his class. To be exact he is number 20 out of 450 kids.</p>
<p>Judging by your description of your school, it’s probably a relatively weak high school. With that in mind, the GC might be realistic in his/her analysis of your friends chances.</p>
<p>Being #20 out of 450 in a weak high school and then crashing first semester of junior year doesn’t seem that impressive to me. The GC may be correctly assessing your friend, but if your friend is interested in the colleges that you mentioned, he’ll have no chance at all unless he applies.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t call our high school weak per se. We are in the bay area and surprisingly enough have a remotely respectable reputation with the UCs. Our ranking system goes by Weighted GPA but I am not sure if that really changes much. I may be a bit off on his exact rank but I know it is in the 4th to 7th percentile range. He used to be in the top 3 percentile but as is shown, his junior year brought him down ( 5 APs two of which were offered at different high schools). Either way thanks for all the feed back. If there are any more takes on the situation Id love to hear them.</p>
<p>Perhaps the GC wants your friend to make sure he looks at and applies to some true safeties, rather than assuming UCLA and UCB are matches? Also, I don’t know how the class rank thing works in California for the state universities; does a student still have to be in the top 5 percent to have a shot at UCB or UCLA, or has that changed? With your friend’s recent GPA slide, the GC could be concerned that the student will no longer be in the top 10 percent of his class when applications go out.</p>
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<p>If your school offers ~7 APs and you’re in California, then yes, I would consider your school weak.</p>
<p>You can explore four more sources of data for better guidance, if you want to double-check the GC’s conclusions:
- Naviance data for your school
- UC Statfinder. Go to the table with information for your school, and you can check last year’s stats for applicants from your high school to every UC campus. You can then check to see how the admitted students from your school compared to the whole admitted pool for each UC campus.
- UCLA has the admitted freshman profile available by class on their website. The data is broken out in meaningful ways, like “number of academic semesters”, etc, that give a more nuanced view than just the UC GPA number.
- Somewhere on CC is the rubric for “comprehensive review” that UC San Diego uses. It’s very interesting to note the categories worth bonus points, like low family income, first generation college student or significant challenges overcome.</p>
<p>Unfortunately California public schools are terrible. I know because I live here. We are fortunate to be able to afford a private school for our kids. I’ve heard that colleges just don’t see CA HS’s as strong so you have to be so tippy top to get admitted, even to the UC’S… especially now that the state needs money and will be courting heavily OOS students who can pay full freight. I don’t think your guidance counselor is too far off base based on outcomes of my niece and nephew who graduated last year. My Niece… 4.7 GPA tons of AP’S and honors, 2100 SAT. rejected from all UC’S. She is happily at USD, a private university in San Diego, and she got a full ride there. My Nephew… class president, 4.6 GPA, 2280 SAT, rejected everywhere except CAL State school close to home. Sorry for the bad news but you better start looking at some great privates. I think financially it may be a bargain compared to the UC’s and their 6 to 7 year graduation rate and increased tuitions.</p>
<p>*My Niece… 4.7 GPA tons of AP’S and honors, 2100 SAT. rejected from all UC’S. She is happily at USD, a private university in San Diego, and she got a full ride there. </p>
<p>My Nephew… class president, 4.6 GPA, 2280 SAT, rejected everywhere except CAL State school close to home.*</p>
<p>There is something wrong with this story…either these kids didn’t have all the UC required courses or they cherry picked and only applied to UCB and/or UCLA, it’s highly doubtful that they would be rejected from “every” UC…certainly not UCMerced or UCRiverside.</p>
<p>Also, if these kids were top 4% of their schools, wouldn’t they have had guaranteed admission to a UC.</p>
<p>^ Yea 5boys story definitely sounds faulty.</p>
<p>5boys relatives would have had guaranteed acceptance through the ELC program for Riverside, Irvine, and probably Santa Barbara if they had those grades.</p>
<p>Yes. my mistake. I meant to say that they got rejected from every UC they applied to. Not the auto admit schools. They of course wanted to go to Berkley, Davis, LA. The thing is that even with those high GPA’s the weren’t in the top 10%. Grades come so easily at their high school that A LOT of kids have these same GPA’s. Unless you live in San Diego and see how bad these school are it’s hard to understand.</p>
<p>To OP …</p>
<p>Your friend is pulling your leg, or you’ve decided to pull ours.</p>
<p>the school offers over 10 APs but for him only 7 are actually “takeable” ( classes like AP lit, AP econ can only be taken by seniors. He could not take calc AB because he went directly to calc BC and classes like AP art and AP music composition are not exactly the average AP course). For clarity’s sake assume that the school is indeed competitive. I know for a fact that we are in an extremely competitive district [for those of you who are familiar with the bay area we are in the same district as Monta Vista High School and we are ranked very closely to them on the national and state “rankings”].</p>
<p>I emailed my counselor today and he essentially said the same thing to me. He was a little bit less harsh for me but the message was essentially the same. I dont particularly see what I would have to gain from “pulling your leg” or what my best friend would gain from doing that to me. I just wanted to know your take on the situation. I know a lot of kids in my school with a 3.9+ and a 2250+ and was just starting to think that mayb I had fooled myself into thinking that a 3.8 and 2200 was enough to be competitive when applying to berkeley and la if I had some significant ECs. Thanks for the input guys.</p>
<p>Ponderingturtle, a 3.8 and 2200 ARE competitive. Just look at the accepted profiles.</p>