Hey there!
Basically, I’ve heard some colleges recalculate A minus’s to a 3.7, which my Californian high school doesn’t do. I’ve had 2 A minus’s so far, and senior year has been pretty hectic so I might have as much as 4 A minus’s after first semester senior year.
It’s a pretty competitive high school, and there’s definitely people with less than 4 A minus’s.
Recalculated, my GPA would be ~3.97 UW, 4.47W.
Would this hurt my chances at tippy top schools? (Stanford, etc.)
Schools like Stanford are reaches even for students with perfect perfect GPAs. apply and see. If you don’t get accepted to these tippy top schools you will never know why. But it likely won’t be because of a couple of A- grades.
And I do hope you have schools on your application list that have stronger likelihoods of acceptance that schools with less than 10% admissions.
Personally, I would take comfort in the fact that there is no actual answer to this question.
At a high level, the more selective private colleges are likely going to take your transcript, your school report, test scores if submitted, your counselor recommendation, possibly your teacher recommendations, possibly internal tracking data, possibly regional AO experience, possibly academicky activities/honors, and so on, and come up with some sort of internal academic rating. They will then consider that academic rating along with how they evaluate the other aspects of your applications, like activities and personal/fit factors, and come up with an overall assessment of your application.
No one can predict what any given grade will do to that academic rating at any given college, nor whether any difference would actually be material to your overall assessment. So, take challenging classes, do your best in those classes, submit your applications, and see what happens.
There is no substantial difference between a 3.97 and a 4.0. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Stanford rejects 4.0s left and right. So, no, this will not affect your application to Stanford, but with an acceptance rate of 4%, it’s a high reach for even the tippy top students with perfect grades and SATs.
The horror 
Too much pressure on yourself.
Control what you can, not what you can’t. Each school handles as they do.
Your GPA isn’t going to be your issue. Your test, essay, LORs, activities, ability to pay (depending on the school), state of residency, or many other things may be.
Be the best you and you’ll be fine.
btw - Stanford has a 3.7% acceptance rate. Take out athletes, etc. and it’s less.
That’s the type of school that - assume it’s a no but take your best shot - but an A- or 5 isn’t going to be why you don’t get in. Some schools will recalc to whole #s only.
Best of luck.
That’s good to hear. Yeah, I know the top privates are mythically competitive, I was just wondering if this something they weigh heavily
Stop worrying. You’ve put your best foot forward.
You’ll never know why a school admits you…or doesn’t.
I personally can’t imagine this to be a reason why they wouldn’t - but that’s just my opinion.
But it doesn’t matter - you don’t know unless you try. So apply to wherever you are worried about.
No.
Not true.
It’d be helpful if you fleshed out the claim (or counter-claim) you’re making. I’m not sure what your argument is here.
To the OP, you might know this already, but if not: One thing to know about for the UCs is that they explicitly don’t care about minuses (see here). So any A-'s are counted as 4.0 for the UC UW GPA, and 5.0 for the UC W GPA. Assuming you’re at least considering some of the UCs for your list, know that they don’t care about minuses.
I am suggesting that quite often one is able to predict how academics will be perceived by colleges. In this instance, a 3.97 UW vs a 4.0 UW do not make a difference to “tippy top schools.” Hope that helps you.
I note highly selective private colleges may not even look directly at school-reported GPAs, they may just process the transcript for themselves. And various such colleges have indicated their process is evolving in response to the increase in volumes, possibly including the use of AI.
Without having access to the current process, including any such tools, being used at a given such college this year, I would not personally feel confident saying anything definitive about how various hypothetical transcripts will be evaluated.
Indeed, the few times I have seen AOs be asked similar sort of hypotheticals about to what degree some particular thing might be helpful or harmful, their response has usually been some variation on, “Please don’t ask me to answer such questions, I can’t answer them without reading your whole application first, which I won’t do until I get it.”
So if an actual AO at such a college does not feel confident they can answer such hypotheticals without a complete picture in the context of the actual application process, that further suggests to me that I should not feel confident answering such hypotheticals without a complete picture either.
That makes sense. There are lots of things I do not know either.
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