Do admissions committees read high school profiles and/or have a good sense of academic policies from school to school?
My son is a senior at one of the well known all boys schools in NJ. AVG GPA of grads is about 3.2 but average SAT scores are 1930 and average ACT is a 27 - 28. You don’t see this relationship at other schools. Also the grades for AP classes are preweighted.
The school has a very restrictive policy on AP classes where there is a formal application procedure and GPA minimums for the prior class. So for example, unless you had a 93 in Honors pre calc you cannot take AP Calc.
Are peculiarities like this known by colleges because other schools in the area have inflated grades and all you need is a heartbeat to register for AP classes.
Yes - adcom at selective colleges are familar with the differences between high schools and know that an A at some schools really means an A, where at other schools they may be aware of grade inlfation. Same with APs, taking 2-3 APS at certain schools can be looked at as tougher than taking 5 APs at other schools, do to the rigor of the curriculum.
So the rigor at your son’s school will help collges know that he can do the work in college. But you should also know that there are going to be well regarded high schools out there where the avg ACT and SAT are much higher than at your son’s school
You must not know what national averages are or even that boarding schools are not materially higher. How many schools have averages of the 91st percentile? Answer: not many.
Sorry - did not mean to disparage your son’s school. Certainly the test score numbers are impressive and well above average. But many private and/or boarding schools do post their school profiles so you can find many with very high averages. My d’s school, for instance has much higher scores than what you posted and her school while very strong academically, would likely not fall in the top 100 schools. Have a friend with a child at private NY school where the avg ACT is 32 and SAT is 2150, so they are not all that uncommon
Yes I am familiar with the schools in NY like HM and Dalton but that is a handful of students in schools that are highly competitive to get in. We have magnet schools like those, still not many students and admission criteria that are different.
Lawrenceville has an ACT average of 29 and highly inflated GPA’s. That is my concern. Actually I am not that concerned, his SAT and ACT are 98th percentile.
No. LOL Didn’t you say your son’s " a senior at one of the well known all boys schools in NJ. "? Is he in Lawrenceville? Anyway, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say the school has a “highly inflated GPA”. For schools practicing selective admissions, the students tend to be more motivated and academic, so if grades are not given to differentiate “winners and losers” but rather to evaluate whether the students have or how well they have met the requirements of the classes, the grades should be naturally higher. Of course, this debate has been going on in highly selective colleges as well.
Sorry to disagree but they do. It’s not a secret. When parents pay 250k for high school the grades come. The argument that the students are so good you expect that those grades is nonsense. Brighter kids go to the magnet schools and GPAs are much lower.
Does Lawrenceville have a policy where A grades are limited?
Schools usually report the number of students who fall within certain gpa ranges, so colleges get a good sense of whether there is grade inflation or deflation from that info coupled with other stats. I don’t have first hand knowledge of Lawrenceville, but do know a mom with a son there and a daughter at an all girls private day school, and she has said that the grading is easier at Lawrenceville. But to imply that all schools who charge tuition have grade inflation to satisfy parents is a sweeping generalization that would be false. Plenty of publics with grade inflation and plenty of privates with stingy grades and vice versa. But in general adcoms are aware.
“Lawrenceville has an ACT average of 29 and highly inflated GPA’s. That is my concern.” Look at it this way. In schools with grade inflation it’s difficult for top students to stand out. At least your son will not have his grades reported to be the exact same as students you know are not nearly as good as he is.
Just a note: Adcoms may know schools but computers don’t. At a large flagship (in our case anyway) a computer will first go through applications and adjust grades to the institution’s scale. Makes a difference for those classes marked honors and AP courses which boost the GPA. Low GPA’s may be kicked before an adcom even sees applications unless the application is flagged in some way. Our private high school changed it’s grading scale and course designations after finding out this information.
If you are applying to colleges which have accepted kids from your child’s school before, they know the profile and the school’s policies.
If you are applying to colleges off the beaten track, it would be worth the guidance counselor addressing some of these points in the accompanying letter and not just relying on the school profile.
With the Common App, each high school submits a school profile as part of the school report (which includes the counselor recommendation) These very specifically state what the course policies are, and what constitutes “rigor.” Many high schools report average gpa and test scores, so colleges can put students into context. Additionally, most colleges have regional admissions counselors who are charged with knowing the school profiles in their territory, and these people are generally the first read on applications. So yes, the school profile is read.
I think there may be varying degrees of knowledge of a particular school’s profile, academic policies and student body. A few years ago, a parent from my D’s HS told me that her daughter was applying to a college, and that they told the applicant that they were surprised her rank was so low - considering her grades and rigor. The college had called the college counselor to check if that was correct.
I think that colleges that receive a lot of applicants from and have regular admissions of students from a particular HS probably know the story for that HS. If your S is applying to a college that doesn’t receive a regular number of applicants, it might be a good idea to ask the school’s college counselor to let them know where he stands.
Is it ever appropriate to contact the college admission officer directly if you think the HS profile doesn’t clearly reflect the situation? D’s HS just initiated an accelerated program that means that any student who isn’t enrolled in that program (they test in anywhere from K to 7th grade) will almost certainly be ranked lower than the accelerated students. For D, that means she probably never had a chance to break the top 25%. (Accelerated kids start IB in 10th grade and those classes are weighted higher for rank, but not reported GPA) The school rewrote the profile last year and it mentions the accelerated program, but doesn’t explain the impact it has on class rank. I figure that if the GCs wanted it in there, they would have included it so hesitate to ask them to tell the colleges about the impact. The first cohort of accelerated students graduated last year, so I’m guessing most college admissions reps don’t know about it. I recognize that those students took harder courses earlier, but am concerned that the admission people won’t know that students who would have ranked in the top 5% before the program was located in the school are now automatically ranked much lower.
It would be most appropriate to ask the counselor to call and clarify, if they would. The student could also put it in the “additional information” section f tohe Common App, if they were just stating the facts, in my opinion as a college counselor.
Op,
When applying to a private college, they take the school profile into account. If other kids from the HS have applied in the past, then your HS has been researched by the ad com so they get a relative sense of the HS. If your kid is the first one ever or a very rare kid to apply to that particular college, then presumably the ad com uses the school profile to learn more about your kid’s HS. If kid is applying to public College, much of the info goes into a computer and gets thinned down based on gpa and std tests. There might have some additional info to slightly weight the info based on the HS but they might not, and in thise “not” cases, I kind of doubt that the HS orofile is taken into account.
If 25% of the kids in the accelerated program are taking more rigorous courses than your daughter, that is the rank I’d expect her to have. That is the normal way it works. Your former system is less common.