Look for the Common Data Set to find those GPA stats. It’s often buried, but they are required to publish it. Put it in the schools search engine and it should pop right up.
What’s harder is finding out what your child’s college within a larger university might set as a standard. Some schools don’t admit by college, and some do.
For example, my son wants to go into aerospace, and the ACT scores run as much as 3 - 4 points higher in the engineering colleges at most big universities, a fact that was lost on his college counselor who told him a 30 in math was just A-ok because that was above the 75th percentile at the university overall. We had to dig to find out what the scores were for engineering. Needless to say he did some studying and bumped it up to a 33, thank goodness.
Conversely, a student might be surprised at what is required in other colleges- it might not be as bad as you think!
Thanks @mom2and. A challenge for us is that the kids’ school is so small that Top 10% is just a literal handful of people. As a result the school doesn’t rank the students (though I assume colleges rank the kids from the same school vs each other in some fashion).
@am9799 I will give that way of utilizing Naviance a shot. Thanks. I have noted that for colleges with enough applicants from our HS for the numbers to be meaningful, acceptance rates for the kids is much higher than what’s reported, so what you are saying resonates with me.
When a school gives the average GPA of students accepted to the school, at what point in high school is that coming from? For instance, is that the average GPA at graduation, the average GPA midway through senior year or the average GPA going into senior year? I’m not sure how to interpret those numbers. My daughter will have about a 3.67 unweighted GPA at the conclusion of junior year (4.2 weighted.)
This should really be emphasized. Find a school that you will be admitted to early, before RD applications are due and you will have a good safety. It’s really not that hard to do that.
I think it’s worth it to have two safeties so that should the safety actually be needed, the student will have to affirmatively choose their school and disappoint the other one. There something of a catharsis in that.
Great advice, @ClassicRockerDad - Our goal was for our kid to not only have a safety, but a CHOICE of safeties. They change so much from fall to spring of senior year. It was really nice to have a couple of options – ultimately not first choice options – in the bag for the winter holiday.
Oh, and what everyone else said about GPA. I paid almost no attention to it except within Naviance for our school, which I felt at least offered some context. Overall, I used a combination of Naviance, collegedata.com, parchment and CC scuttlebut to rank the schools my kid applied to in order of viability/safety-ness. It was – forgive me for saying this – a “holistic” process that took some time to sort itself out. (There were spreadsheets…)
And as wonky as the whole process is, my predictions after all that turned out to be pretty solid. Admitted to all the schools I had deemed safeties. Admitted to most (but not all) of the schools I deemed matches. Admitted to just one of the schools I thought were reaches.
Safeties are tricky, because they are safeties until they no longer are safeties. ie; GC told D, that American was a safety, except that during the admissions period preceding hers, it could no longer be counted on as a safety, so safety no more. It gets tricky if that designation changes during your admissions cycle, due to things like a bigger focus on yield protection or big uptick in applicants
Yes, it’s important to be careful about how one defines “safety.” The school that merely has a reputation as a safety, not so much. That’s why it’s important to look at the data when classifying them. I wouldn’t call any school that admits just 35% of applicants (as American did recently) a safety for anyone. At best, it’s a match for some students. Maybe even a low match for some, but still not a safety.
@porcupine98 I’m attempting the same sort of squinting, “holistic” eyeballing. I don’t find many of these measures particularly useful on their own but, taken together, they can help provide a decent sense of relative odds at different colleges.
I agree with the plan of EA for your safety. It relieves some of the stress and you can compare financial aid as well. My D applied EA to four safeties, was accepted to all and had COA in hand when she applied to her other RD schools.
For many kids, in-state publics are safeties - even if not the flagship. For schools that admit more than 60% of the applicants, a student that has average stats (greater than the 50th percentile) can be reasonably assured of admittance. If your student has a large difference between weighted and unweighted (some high schools give a 1 point bump for honors or APs), you may want to look at the unweighted to find a true safety. Applying early to schools with rolling admissions also provides a big advantage in gaining admittance.
Remember that some schools do not want to be considered a last resort, so showing interest can be really important. Kids with too high stats that show no interest may be wait listed, simply because the school believes the chances the kid will actually attend are very low.