<p>we have a friend whose son played the gpa game to the hilt. but he took all ap and honors – and got A’s in all of them. but he wouldn’t take any electives that he couldn’t take pass/fail since electives weren’t weighted and would therefore bring down his gpa since all the ap and honors classes were weighted. he was valedictorian. he also was rejected by every ivy league he applied to. he is now attending the “safety” school that he thought he was too good for. it took him awhile, but he is now incredibly happy there.</p>
<p>there is no gaming the system. the ivies admit who they want to admit from an enormous pool of incredibly qualified applicants. </p>
<p>you can dream, but at the end of the day, the application list has to be realistic. anyone who focuses so much attention on the ivies just isn’t being realistic.</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t calculate GPA and doesn’t rank students. Yet, we get kids into the best schools all the time (my D who graduated last year is at an Ivy, as are several of her friends). Also, there are schools that don’t even give grades. They give narratives and the admissions committees are familiar with all of these. Schools look for the best qualified candidates and they look at lots of criteria. It’s in part a numbers game, of course, but it’s not just about GPA.</p>
<p>franglish - Your school is the best model. I notice kids in my school district learn, cooperate, and are happy when they are in elementary school because they don’t have to compete for grades. In middle school they have grades but they still learn and are happy because the grades don’t count for anything. In high school they compete for grades, show less collaboration and are not happy. We should have a model to let kids compete with other kids outside of school instead of competing within school.</p>
<p>Well, I learned about this whole Cum Laude Society thing this week… here’s what happened:</p>
<p>We moved to this area last summer, my daughter just completed her junior year at a highly regarded local private school, she took AP’s where possible and honors where not, she did very very well in all her classes and received prizes for being top-student-in-course for 3 out of her 5 academic classes. Also received one of those LAC ‘Book’ Awards. Has one intense EC that she does outside of school, does community service, participates in school clubs, all that goodness. Did she make it into the Cum Laude Society? She did not, although she doubtless outscored at least half of those who were appointed. At her school, a faculty committee chooses the awardees of the Cum Laude Society; apparently they met at some point near the end of the 1st semester. The only member of that committee that had even met my daughter was actually her advisor, who never really clicked with her (she’s more into the social/athletic types), and who obviously didn’t advocate for her. </p>
<p>If she had stayed at her previous school (900 miles away) she most likely would have been invited into the Cum Laude Society there, based on her grades and teacher-comments (all of which were available to the committee at her current school, by the way). If she had had an advisor who was a bit more interested in how she was doing, she woud have been invited in. </p>
<p>So at the end of the (prize) day, she was one of the top juniors at the school, but didn’t ‘make it in’. I refuse to believe for a minute that this will make any appreciable difference in her college applications. Not that I think admissions officers are all-knowing, and while I think scores, GPAs, teacher letters, EC’s all matter a great deal for top-college admissions I can’t take seriously the notion that this one honor society membership is interpreted all that closely by them. If anyone reading this has some personal ad. committee /ad. officer experience contradicting my laid-back take on this, please let me know. In the meantime, I’m telling my daughter to forget about it, enjoy her successes and keep up the good work. </p>
<p>(I’m also pretty sure that she will be admitted into the Cum Laude Soc. next year, but that will happen too late to be included on her applics, right?)</p>
<p>I want to add something to the OP: You can’t control all these variables; you can only do your best and hope you don’t get screwed over too much by the world in response. If your daughter sticks to taking the most challenging classes (even if she gets B’s in some of them) and works hard at learning in them, I suspect she will have fabulous college admissions results. That doesn’t mean that she’ll have a sure shot at an Ivy, it means there are lots of great schools where she will get a great education at a price you can afford. Relax a little.</p>
<p>POIH:
There is an important piece of information missing from your post: what % of hte class goes to HYPSM at your daughter’s school? </p>
<p>Is it close to 20%? Then you have a point. (but then it is also true that your daughter attends one of just a few private schools, and your advice is irrelevant for most people on CC).
If it is 3-7%, then you have to agree, that even among CumLaude kids most do not get into HYPSMs. I can tell you what probably happens from my daughter’s experience (her shool also doesn’t weight courses).</p>
<ol>
<li>True, kids who do not make top 20% GPA-wise usually do not get into HYPSMs regardless of the number of APs or SAT score. Her school (and this is true for any other school sending considerable amount of kids to HYPSMs) is competitive, and even kids in top 10% do not have perfect grades, they have a B+ here and there; kids not making top 20% are overall not A students with a few B+s. </li>
<li>False, that SAT does not matter. Simply most top 10% kids aiming for HYPSMs have SAT high enough for HYPSMs. PSAT (and NMF business) is not a perfect indicator of the future SAT score, a lot odf kids take PSAT without preparation and end up with 210-215, but then prepare and score above 2200 or even above 2300 on real SAT. From admission charts at my daughter’s school it is clear how a low SAT (below 700 on any section) frequently leads to rejections at HYPSMs.</li>
<li>False that difficult courses do not matter. They do. Simply among top 10% there are kids who took most difficult APs and got top grades (there is always someone getting an A in AP Physics C or Calculus BC). They constitute the 3-7% gaining admission at HYPSMs. Those who took easier courses get rejected even wit a high GPA. </li>
<li>Intel and Siemens finalists are usually admitted to HYPSMs (if they apply), but most oof them are in top 20% GPA-wise. </li>
</ol>
<p>If admission to HYPSMs from your school is closer to national average (under 2%), then it should be even more obvious: among CumLaude only 1 in 10 is admitted. Something should distinguish this kid from other kids with high GPA.</p>
<p>^^ The average acceptances to HYPMSC and other Ivies together is around 25%.
So it really does make a difference. I never thought that a prep school who state clearly in profile for colleges that they don’t rank because of rigor of curriculum will allow induction to Cum Laude in Junior year giving away the top decile. I think it is against the school spirit. I do think my D is in top 20% grade wise but giving away the top 10% hamper her and other at school who don’t make the cut in Junior year.
I know she will end up at a good college even if it is not an Ivy as there are lots of other top colleges. But I was offended because I think it is not fair for a prep school to allow induction to cum laude during junior year.</p>
<p>POIH: Thank you for posting an important warning post for other parents. I agree w/ you that GPA rules, especially when the admission folks don’t differentiate between Calc BC and Calc AB, or Physics C or Physics B. It seems unfair. You may have some compensating alternatives: (i) If she is not already maxed out on SAT’s and SAT II’s, she can retake those. Idea is if she taking the most vrgorous courses, it should reflect in her subject tests perf, specially relative to kids who took relatively easier route (tho’ not really easy). (ii) Teachers should give her better recommendations. Given that Ivy adcom’s look at the entire picture, she may be able to beat others w/ higher GPA at her school. She still has really good chances of getting accepted. Finally, and here is the good news, regardless of whether she gets accepted at HY…, at the end of the year, her game is NOT over. It is your game that will be over. Her game or should I say life will just start. So relax and enjoy.</p>
<p>from my experience, high school rank gets you in or keeps you out of the door, moreso than any other factor (not taking into account legacy/aa/recruits). i had a perfect SAT score, perfect and near-perfect SAT IIs, national-level ECs, two large scholarships, numerous competitive leadership positions, took every AP class i could, and was a national merit scholar/national ap scholar/TASP participant. however, i got Bs and even 1 C and 1 D in half of my AP classes (the other half were As) and did not make the top ten percent. big mistake.</p>
<p>so i empathize with the OP’s situation. i was flat out rejected from HPC (assuming C=columbia, didn’t apply to YSM but i assume i would’ve been rejected as well) and accepted to most of the schools that were just a cut below (dartmouth off the WL, chicago, cornell, williams, etc). i even got into columbia as a transfer student this year (not yale though, hence my SN). bitter pill to swallow, but moral of the story: screw up and there will still be second chances somewhere down the road, if you really, really want them.</p>
<p>Correlation is not causation.
Correlation is not causation.
Correlation is not causation.</p>
<p>Almost nobody is a sure thing at a top school, and neither getting top stats nor taking a tough course load entitles you to go to one. Both, of course, are positives.</p>
<p>If you’re top college material, you should be able to do both - get very good stats AND take a tough courseload. But you don’t have to get both perfect. A couple of Bs won’t get you rejected. These schools reject plenty of people with straight As and perfect SATs.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Once you get out of high school, nobody will ever care again. Most high schools do not offer cum laude to begin with.</p>
<p>I think it’s exceedingly rare for the subset of students with perfect grades among the few hundred students nationally who have perfect SAT scores to be blanked in admission at all top-ten colleges. Harvard, yeah: Harvard can afford to be very choosy. Most of the other Ivy Plus colleges will make an offer of admission to such a student, as there are not that many such students to go around.</p>
<p>Umm. My son goes to a private school that has a lot of HYP admits. Not all of them are Cum Laude members. Also kids in the second quintile academically have gotten into other ivies and highly selective schools consistently. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the school really does not push APs or make a big deal out of them. Or honors for that matter. No grades are weighted. The kids who took APCalc AB get into the very top schools just as much as the ones who take APCalc BC is what the math chair told me. THe kids who do take the AP exams tend to do very well on them, but no one seems too excited about taking AP courses. I was told that 4 well chosen APs are as good as a slew of them. Admissions to colleges seems to hold that as true.</p>
<p>Now, it is a whole different story at a former public HS of ours, and a local catholic school that I know well. The ONLY kids who get into HPY academically have taken the very hardest courses, the AP courses AND were val or sal. In addition they had to have something else going for them, athlete, legacy, intense talent. That is not the case with the independent school kids that I was discussing in the first paragraph. </p>
<p>It is important that you know what the patterns are in your own hs as that is what determines much of how it is going to be for your child. If your HS gets a regular group of kids going to the very top schools, you know that it is on the radar screen of the adcoms there, and they will have a good idea of what kind of courses your child has taken and what the grades mean. AP is not so important in those cases. Some adcoms even know the teachers of some of the courses, and take that into account. Where APs become very important is when your school is not known by the colleges, and the grades may not mean the student underwent a difficult curriculum. Or if your school has kids taking AP courses but not doing well on the exams. Unfortunately if you have a kid in such a school, he will be at a disadvantage in elite school admissions even if the way the curriculum is done is of no fault of his.</p>
<p>classof09 : My D didn’t apply to RSI as she thought that there were two more qualified applicant from her school and have a better shot. One of them is going to RSI.
MY D did get into a very good paid research internship over the summer and will continue her research in Bio informatics.</p>
<p>I took a quick look at 5 year data for S’s school that does have a large number of kids going to HPY. Not as big of a correlation with Cum Laude Society as you would think. But that might be well the case for kids who are getting into HPY for purely academic reasons. It is surprising that HPY does not have a majority of kids accepted that way, but by their own admissions it does not work that way. </p>
<p>But every, any generality is going to have exceptions, especially when applied to an individual situation. If you are going to be a pure academic admit, the fact of the matter is that you have to have high grades AND the top courses.</p>
<p>What is being talked about here is not GPA as much as it is class rank.</p>
<p>Our kid was not val, sal or even top 5 student in class based on GPA. (School does not weight any grades when figuring GPA and class rank.) But the kid did take most difficult courses, got mostly As (and a very good GPA), and was admitted to Harvard. Stanford and Princeton turned him down, though. Don’t know if it was the rank issue or something else, but obviously Harvard looked at more than class rank.</p>
<p>Tokenadult,
About 20% of my class is going to an IVY. Add another 25% or so to include top LAC’s and “near Ivies,” e.g. JHU, U of C, etc. There are several girls with 3.98 (my school doesn’t weight and all HS classes are “honor level”) or so GPA’s and 2300’s who were rejected or waitlisted at all Ivies and top 10 schools. Now maybe that’s the difference between 2300 and 2400, but I think not. This was a really hard year, especially for girls, and, while I appreciate that you have been on this site a lot longer than I, I’m not so sure that perfect means in, at least this year.</p>
<p>Maybe not everyone means the same thing by “perfect.” To me, referring to test scores, “perfect” means the highest scaled score possible (2400 on the three-section SAT, 1600 on the former two-section SAT, and 36 on the ACT). Perfect scores are rare. </p>
<p>Perfect grade-point averages are AT LEAST two orders of magnitude more common than perfect test scores, but again by “perfect” I would mean nothing less than the highest average possible according to a given high school’s grading scale. At some high schools, that would 100, and at other high schools, that would be 4.0, and at some high schools it would be some other number. A student with that peak number at that student’s high school has a perfect G.P.A. (possibly not uniquely even at that high school). Any student with a lower grade average does not have a perfect G.P.A., and I think that is the main point of the OP’s concern. </p>
<p>I am certain that ALL colleges every year admit students with less than perfect standardized test scores. Perfect standardized test scores are too rare for the facts to be otherwise. </p>
<p>I am also certain that Harvard is in earnest when it says it has NO minimum G.P.A. requirement, because Harvard (and colleges like Harvard) would rather choose a student who challenged herself in high school than a student who played it safe with wimpy courses to preserve a grade average. But students with perfect grade averages are sufficiently numerous that Harvard COULD, if it would, fill its entire enrolled class with students with perfect grade averages, still leaving enough left over to fill the classes of several other highly desired colleges.</p>
<p>I know plenty of 2400 validictorians (including my cousin!) who didn’t get into HYP. They, in my experience, did have a lot of success with the schools right below, however (Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth, Duke, Brown, etc).</p>