<p>I am checking and collecting data for various schools for my son.</p>
<p>WHen I see the GPA stats the schools list on their web site for admitted students profile, I don't know how to "interpret" them. I am having a hard time evaluating the stats to see whether this school is a match, reach, or safety. </p>
<p>Are they weighted? Are they unweighted? Is it strictly on a 4.0 scale? 4.5 for instance when schools give extra for A+ while default A is 4.0? I have to assume that the schools provide numbers that make them look "good" as in "high" for competitive schools. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the class ranking is also a bit of a suspect. When the "fine prints" report that only 35% of their students supplied class ranking information, I assume that many "competitive" high schools don't supply ranking in fear of disadvantaging their students. My son's HS decided not to provide class ranking info on their transcript from this year on for this reason. If I am right, then the vaunted claim on their web site that "85% of our admitted students are ranked in top 10%" is a grossly exaggerated claim unless you are talking about top 20 schools. </p>
<p>My son is aiming for top 50-80'ish (USNWR) schools. When these schools claim 85% of their admitted students in top 10% of their HS, I am starting to be a bit suspicious. </p>
<p>My son has a pretty decent SAT score (2040, will take again in Oct to increase it further) and GPA that does not match the SAT level (lower). I was crossing off a lot of schools based on the GPA info. For instance, so far, when I saw average GPA at 3.8, I thought, 3.8 unweighted, 4.0 scale. This is not where my son is, so I figured, "Ah, big time reach school. Next". Perhaps, I should be a bit more optimistic?</p>
<p>by the way, another interesting piece of information. Obviously, schools want to present their stats in best possible light. Most common SAT information they provide is the 25-75% range for their ADMITTED students. This is different from “incoming freshman class” statistics.</p>
<p>For the first time, I discovered a college that provided SAT stats for their overall admitted students, ED admits, and incoming freshman class. It’s Bucknell University (tope 30’ish LAC). The stats are:</p>
<p>There is a clear advantage of applying ED. No surprise there. They are clearly loosing top end students in the cross admit game (RD admits), with the resulting middle 50% meaningfully lower for the enrolled students. </p>
<p>Perhaps, unless we are talking about top few schools that do very well in the cross admit game, there is a bit more room for optimism for applicants than warranted by a straightforward evaluation based on published “admitted” student stats schools provide - this is where “show of sincere interest” will work to the applicant’s advantage (meaning, if admitted, I will enroll, and boost your yield rate).</p>
<p>I think you’re right to be skeptical of the class rank data touted by top schools. I always look at the “fine print” (where it is provided), and every year the actual “percentage of students reporting class rank” seems to get smaller and smaller. If it’s less than 50% reporting, I just ignore it.</p>
<p>As for reported GPA, I assume that the “average GPA” is just that – the average of the GPAs reported by the applicants, which in most cases will be a weighted GPA. (I asked this specific question at 2 different schools and that’s the answer I got.) Although there are probably some exceptions, most schools are not going to bother recalculating thousands of GPAs just to put them all on the same basis. (The UCs do have their own way of calculating GPA, based on very specific classes and with a cap on AP weighting, but I don’t have any first-hand knowledge of it.)</p>
<p>If your son’s stats are a 2040 SAT score and a weighted GPA > 3.5, I think he’s probably in the running for those 50 - 80ish schools. And if the rest of his application is solid – good LORs, some ECs with leadership roles, and a great essay – he’s likely to get at least a few acceptances from great schools.</p>
<p>Every college and university reports statistics for enrolled students on a document called the Common Data Set. As posters have pointed out, because of yield, these numbers are almost always lower than those of admitted students. If you simply Google “Common Data Set” and the name of the institution, you usually pull up this data.</p>
<p>GPA’s are the “gorilla in the room”…some schools report exactly what students submit, others recalculate to unweighted, others recalculate to their own weighted…to add to confusion, some do not use + or - in their calculations, others do…common data set is of no assistance in this matter because there is not an opportunity to find out how schools look at GPA…also, does the school only count 5 major courses or whatever is on transcript? how do they handle academic (sci, math, etc) “electives” that a student doubles up on? you get the picture…</p>
<p>therefore, one can defer to their own guidance counselors to figure out reach, match, safety or use SAT/ACT guidelines to get a general idea…</p>
<p>then there is the ED issue which the OP mentioned…</p>
<p>suffice it to say that ANY school that has below a 25% admission rate in RD is going to be a reach for the majority of people (of course, not here on CC)</p>
<p>I agree that reported GPAs are very difficult to interpret. Individual high schools use such different methods to compute their GPAs. Your best bet is if your HS provides Naviance, so you can see how students from your HS did with acceptances with particular GPAs.</p>
<p>Even if your school doesn’t have Naviance, you can get a lot of information from other scattergrams, either from the publicly accessible Naviance sites (search here on CC for Naviance passwords) or from other websites (college data, my chances dot net). When looking at scattergrams, there tend to be a lot of points clustered along a diagonal, showing correlation between test scores and grades. You can look at individual colleges and see how they react to points to the left of the diagonal (better grades than test scores), or to the right of the diagonal (better test scores than grades).</p>
<p>"I assume that many “competitive” high schools don’t supply ranking in fear of disadvantaging their students. "</p>
<p>Many HS do not provide ranking because they do not rank, they also do not have Val / Sal. It does not mean anything to college. Most colleges calculate student rank based on student GPA and his HS class profile (HS must provide this). In addition, most colleges strip GPA back to uw. These are the reasons for not paying too much attention to what HS is doing. All hoopla about rank / Val / Sal is waste of time. If a kid is the only one in class who has GPA=4.0uw, the kid would be ranked #1 by college, no matter what. Given, of course, that kid had the most rigorous curriculum available at this HS.</p>
<p>I think high schools that don’t rank per say still send along information that lets the school know where the students fits in their high school class (top 5%, 10%, 25%, etc). It they didn’t, I would think they would be at a disadvantage with the top schools.</p>
<p>^^^ The high school my kids attend doesn’t do that. They give the highest GPA from the class, and the mean GPA. I don’t think that tells you a whole lot. I’m pretty familiar with the school and I couldn’t tell you what percentile my kids are in.</p>
<p>beth’s mom… pretty much the same here. They give the highest and lowest GPA and that’s it. I have no idea what percentile my kids are in. Also, our school GPA that is reported is 10th-12th grade, only academic classes. I like that because then you never have that inflated idea of your kids GPA is, when in reality most school don’t count those non-academic classes like P.E., music, art. I know that the UC’s do, but most don’t. If they happen to include those non-academic classes then it’s a happy surprise but I would rather be grounded in reality.</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t have Naviance and S’s GC has actually never even heard of half the LACs to which S plans to apply (e.g. St. Olaf, Lawrence). So, I’ve been calling those schools directly and asking whether S is academically in their ballpark. I describe his HS school (big, above average, public, Texas) and give them his GPA, range of grades received, class rank and class rigor. I’ve been surprised at how honestly they’ve replied.</p>
<p>Not sure there’s ever a good way to figure out what the GPA means. For admitted students, there’d be a hs transcript, most of which would give unweighted and weighted GPAs. Unweighted is preferred, as no two high schools seem to figure weighted grades the same way. Now, if every high school reported weighted and unweighted GPAs, and used a 4.0 scale, potential applicants could still figure out what the GPA range means. BUT . . . well, not everybody uses a 4.0 scale. Schools that give an A+ more than 4.0 are on 4.33 or 4.5 scales. Then, not every school will report an unweighted GPA . . . </p>
<p>And don’t even get me going on rank. My district has a new plan designed to rank according to rigor, as well as GPA - got tired of the grade grubbers refusing to take non-weighted classes, I guess. Anyway, at the moment, one can have a higher GPA but a lower class rank than a classmate due to not taking as many courses. I admit, I like it, but it does make the whole rank reporting thing tougher.</p>
<p>I guess, in the end, I’m not sure that it matters. The high school GPA becomes almost meaningless on the first day of college classes.</p>
<p>So true!!! I know there are complaints about SAT being biased, etc, etc, but at least it’s the same yard stick with no confusion unlike GPA: there is something to be said about that.</p>
<p>High Schools around the country are pretty well known by the top colleges. I think they can interpret what a specific GPA from a specific school means.</p>
I don’t necessarily agree with this. The Common Data Set has gone a long way toward allowing students and parents to evaluate across institutions. Now if only all the colleges would publish it! </p>
<p>The two posts above drdom were actually talking about how HSs cloud the issue, not colleges.</p>
<p>"High Schools around the country are pretty well known by the top colleges. I think they can interpret what a specific GPA from a specific school means. "</p>
<ul>
<li>Agree. I strongly believe that one of the reasons that D. was accepted into her program was the name of her very well known (at lest in our state) small private college prep school. I am not taking any credits from her, she graduated #1, but program was extremely selective and had only 10 spots for incoming freshmen.</li>
</ul>
<p>Kids from unknown high schools, don’t despair. There are many, many high schools around the country. Top colleges just can’t know all of them. Still, these colleges do accept students from unknown high schools – schools that are brand new, mediocre, and even just plain lousy. A strong profile certainly helps a college understand the student in context. But mostly it’s about an individual student who has taken advantage of the available opportunities.</p>
<p>my point was that for a venture that can cost as much as a house, you would think there would be more info out there by both high schools, colleges and the feds. Why are graduation rates listed as graduating in 5 or 6 years? I’d like to know the 4 year graduation rate so maybe I wouldn’t have to pay an additional 50K. If everyone has consumed the cool-aide that college education=better job=better income, then publish that data too. Why are tuitions rising at a rate faster than inflation in general and even healthcare inflation? I’ve had to pay a tuition increase in the midst of this great recession - why? Why don’t universities disburse 5% of their endowment per year as required by the IRS? Why does the congress ignore this?</p>
<p>^Nobody is required to pay 50K / year in college. The fact is that families who pay that much, have chosen to do so. College could cost as little as zero. Yep, it is a matter of choice. And congree/government should be kept as far as possible from any educational issues, they have done enough damage to our educational systems, enough is enough.</p>