If someone has very high test scores, i.e 800s on subject tests, 35/36 act, 5 on ap exams, do okay grades lessen admission chances?
Define “okay” grades.
Top collwges want to know you can handle the academic workload. Test scores are one piece. Top test scores will help, but they won’t offset a 3.5 GPA with a pedestrian courseload. But a few B’s with a really rigorous courseload and top test scores will generally be viewed as fine.
Usually, grades matter the most but only in the terms of the admission process rounds. Like @renaissancedad said, colleges want to make sure you can handle the college workload so they will prioritize and look at transcripts and grades, then standardized test scores second. Since standardized test scores can be practiced/cheated/and kinda unfair at really judging how good a person’s academic ability is, they look for the grades for a more comprehensive view. After that, if your grades and standardized test scores are good, then they move onto the next round looking at ECs, PS, LORs, interviews, etc. in a full committee to make a decision
@Soheils like around a 3.7. There is MAJOR grade deflation at my school and insanely smart kids; in a class of 100 there were 3 kids with perfect scores on their ACT/SAT. Only recently though has it become hard so most colleges don’t know
@Runner99 : I think your school reports the curriculum to the colleges, so they will know what the courses are like. However, I don’t know if they know about the teacher’s teaching methods. As for SAT getting perfect score, either you are a good test taker or you practice a lot. Sure there are some people who score really high SAT out there but the SAT is not an indicative tool to measure academic capability. That’s why transcript matters again. As for a 3.7 GPA, I can’t really tell. Usually the kids who applied to high-end colleges have like 3.9 or 4.0 UW GPA. Maybe @gibby can provide a very knowledgeable perspective on this?
Your GC has to submit a school profile, so presumably things like grade deflation will be factored in.
Schools will look at your GPA in the context of your course load, and the trend in GPA. Junior and senior year grades are more important. Extenuating circumstances (illness, death in family, etc.) may be factored in, especially if your GC or teacher documents them, but only up to a point. Some schools (Stanford and the UCs) recalculate GPA and don’t include freshman year grades. Overall, the general point is to make sure that no one is admitted who can’t handle the work. Standardized tests help, but some people are good test takers and not particularly good students, so performance in school over a period of time is generally given more weight. But there’s no specific formula. The harder your curriculum, the better your standardized test scores, and the better your other stuff (ECs, letters, essays, etc.), the more you are likely to be given a little slack. But it’s not an infinite process. A 3.0 UW GPA with 2400 test scores is very unlikely to get through.
You asked about Harvard and Yale. You know who the competition will be, right? Kids with 4.0 or darned close, rigor, great enough scores, the right balance of great ECs, great letters and essays.
I think all Stanford recalculates is to see gpa without freshman year, not to shine up a B because a course was tough.
You have to put yourself in the Harvard admissions officers’ shoes: why should they take you over those 3 insanely smart kids?
In colleges like Harvard and Yale the grades will matter because the rest of the applicant pool will be filled with applicants who have top grades and top SAT/ACT scores. Even with perfect scores you are not guaranteed a spot. It’s best to have a hook - like being a top athlete or top in some other field outside of school.
What’s important to remember in the college application process is that your grades are NOT directly compared to students at other high schools (at least not at first).
Colleges judge you in the context of your high school and your guidance counselor is asked to rate your academic program and GPA against all your college bound peers at your high school. Even if your high school has grade deflation, there are still students who are ranked in the top 2-3% of the class – and that is what HYPSM look for!
Sometimes a high school’s guidance counselor will NOT provide “in-house” GPA rankings to a college, in which case Admissions often reads all applications from a specific high school at the same time, placing applications in GPA order and comparing the rigor of each student’s curriculum so they can get an idea of the pecking order at your high school.
An admissions officer then rates all applications from a specific high school on a 1-6 or sometimes a 1-9 scale, directly rating YOU against YOUR classmates at your high school with 1 being the top score. (Side note: Your extra curricular activities and “character” are also rated on that same 1-6 or 1-9 scale.)
Admissions offices then compare your application ratings (1-6 or 1-9) against other students across the country and across the world. All students academically ranked 1 who are also ranked 1 in EC’s and ‘character’ are compared to each other. Then, Admissions compares students ranked with a 1 in two categories and ranked 2 in another. And the process continues down the line.
When an Admissions Officer looks at your academics which include your grades, class rank if provided by your GC (or discovered by putting your application in rank order against your classmates) and SAT score, do you think you will be rated a 1? Do you think you will be rated a 1 in EC’s and ‘character’? That’s really the question student’s must ask.
I agree with the first three paragraphs of Gibbys comments. I do not agree with the last three. It is not as empirical as she makes out. You do not have to be number 1 in all categories. Harvard is looking for future leaders. If you are an academic superstar that can be enough. If you can run a 10.0 100 meter dash that is enough. And yes grades matter a lot. Harvard is an academic institution. They want students who can do well in the classroom
It’s tricky to suggest there is one sure way tippy tops do it. Or even one consistent pattern within a college. Your own accomplishments are viewed in the context of what’s available to you at your hs and in your community. But ime, within a hs, kids are not initially stacked. There’s a great effort to review each as an individual, until you hit more serious culling, much further into the process. Also possible to have two or more with identical ratings. This isn’t because, say, they are co-vals with same scores and shared presidency of stu govt. It’s because each had rigor, top grades and great scores, and a pattern of ECs that made sense for that kid, with his or her supposed individual goals.
There will always be kids who truly stand out (which is more custom to the college than CC thinks.) But that’s a matter of the whole application and a handful of reviews. But no, it’s not enough to be an academic superstar (you can read what MIT says.)
I disagree. There are currently 26,407 public high schools and 10,693 private high schools in the U.S. alone, and everyone one of them has an academically ranked Valedictorian – an academic superstar. Harvard doesn’t have room for them all, neither does YPSM. To be admitted, student’s need to be more than an academic superstar – they need to also be a stand out in some other way!
I concur with @gibby in disagreeing with @proudparent26, who wrote:
As gibby notes, academics alone isn’t enough, but the converse is also true; being the fastest runner on the planet, without the requisite grades and scores, won’t get one into Harvard.
@gibby @Sherpa It is well known fact that 5 to 10 per cent of each entering Harvard class gets in on academics alone. Harvard does not define academic superstar as a class valedictorian who has taken10 ap tests. It is the kid who speaks 11 languages fluently. It is the kid who is one of the top coders in the country. It is the kid who has taken hard upper division math classes at Berkeley or Stanford while in high school.
Being the fastest runner on the planet will get one into Harvard as long as they meet the minimum Ivy league standard. The problem is the fastest runner on the planet wont want to go to Harvard. They will probably sign with Stanford!
That’s not “academic superstar” only. It reflects various choices and commitments and the thinking behind it.
Or Not. Either of those kids could still blow his/her chances. One way or another, CC has discussed this a lot. When Harvard suggests “on academics alone,” they don’t literally mean nothing else was there besides academics.
And just what would be this trump card is not left to the casual outside observers.
I am in agreement with Proudparent in that if a kid is off the charts brilliant they are not going to have to be as across the board strong to gain admission as other students. Kid’s who are basically genius’s. Now whether that represents 5% to 10% of the students who are admitted I don’t know. I do know that students such as this exist as I have heard our daughter talk about them. The student who as a Freshman had taken the most difficult math class that Harvard offers and crushed it, this same student was involved in instructing or co-instructing a class at MIT. The young woman who discovered the cure for her own strain of a rare from of cancer and has been a guest of the President of the United States at the White House a number of times.(Brilliance and character)
Students in this realm of brilliance are not likely to be held to the same standards in other area’s of their admissions packet as “typical” Harvard applicants.
I do truly believe that Harvard favors the student with character over the student who has the grades and test scores but there is nothing else particularly compelling about them. This of course is based on the student being at levels of academic success that has them be a viable candidate for Harvard.
Thank you for mentioning those students, as both did something that went beyond classroom academics. I think that’s the point that @lookingforward and I were making. Great grades and test scores alone won’t do it.
@proudparent26 I agree with you. High grades won’t distinguish you in the applicant pool, high grades and something else will. It is that “something else” that is important. What would really stand out in an admissions officers’ mind. Having had some experience in this–my brother was in Mather House–he had good though not great grades but was a nationally ranked downhill skier. He’s also into extreme sports, which made him stand out. That’s what did it for him.