<p>"According to College Board surveys of members of the 2007 senior class who took the SAT, only 29 percent of students in Connecticut and Massachusetts had A-plus, A or A-minus averages, while 38 percent of students in New York and New Jersey, 39 percent in Virginia, 40 percent in California, 42 percent in Florida and a breath-taking 49 percent in Texas had grade point averages that high. In the United States as a whole, 43 percent of seniors who took the SAT reported A-plus, A or A-minus averages."</p>
<p>I have noticed that when looking at common data sets. I will typically note the ave GPA and then look at the middle 50% SAT scores to validate the GPA. Especially when looking at schools in another part of the country. I cannot imagine Admission reps don’t also do that.</p>
<p>I’m always skeptical about surveys based on self-reported information, though. The official numbers for our high school, where more than 80 percent of students go on to 4-year colleges, show that about 25 percent of students have B-plus averages; an approximately equal number of students (20 percent each) have B or A-minus averages; and only 5 or 6 percent of the class have GPAs in the A range. And, due to a reporting quirk, no kid has had an A-plus average in the last 12 years (since I’ve had a kid at the school). I think because gym counts, and no one ever gets an A-plus in gym? Anyway, it makes the school appear not to inflate grades.</p>
<p>^^That is very similar to our midwest public statistically as percentages. Grades are given on a point scare and converted to a letter but no A+ so if a student ends the semester with 101 or 118…it’s an A which converts to a 4.0 no weighting of grades for APs. From the performance scores on standardized tests and my kids grade averages it appears there is no inflation or deflation…it all makes “sense” on the surface.</p>
<p>I’ll bet there’s a further bias in the SAT data. Where you have kids taking SATs in areas where the ACT is dominant (which may include Texas, I’m not sure), it will generally be kids who are looking at highly selective colleges on the coasts. Especially kids taking SAT IIs. They are going to tend to have much higher grades than run-of-the-mill college-bound kids from their state.</p>
<p>The school profiles that come with the Secondary School Report and transcript lay out the grading scales, GPA calculation methodology, and class-specific statistics for us. Many include distribution charts in the class-specific information. Those are extremely helpful and interesting.</p>
<p>^^^ That makes sense. I’ve heard that there are some states/schools that pay for the kids to take the ACT. Leaving the SAT/SATII’s to those that apply to schools that require them.
Grade weighting is all over the map. Take momofthreeboys example as the “lower” end of the scale. Our school is the same but gives +1 for AP’s. I’ve heard of others that give +1 for Honors and +2 for APs. We applied to enough schools to see that they can value weighted GPA and test scores quite differently.</p>
<p>Dean J: The SSR is specific to the Common App, right?</p>
<p>GPA’s shouldn’t be used for college consideration. There are so many differences between states or even schools within a close area. You could rule a kid out of admissions as an example if they are below a 3.5 or 3.0. But, if comparing 2 kids for admission a kid with a 3.9 should not be given preference over a kid with a 3.7 for example. </p>
<p>Some colleges even look at AP test results. Even within my son’s own school you also see disparity in teaching/results of AP exams. Some teachers have a much higher score average for their AP tests then others. Some teachers teach towards the AP test and passing, while others teach material and not towards the test. As an example, there is 1 teacher that all of the kids know the odds of them passing the AP test are slim. And repeatedly, year after year, kids from that class get 1’s and 2’s on the AP exam. Other teacher’s are known for having mostly 4’s and 5’s in the same subject.</p>
<p>I get the impression that most colleges don’t take AP tests into consideration for admission. In their shoes, I’d be highly suspicious of a high gpa (weighted or unweighted) with lots of AP’s that hadn’t taken any AP tests (or only one or two), or scored poorly.</p>
I would say that most schools that maintain their own application use them. We had one before we went to the Common App in 2008.</p>
<p>
It depends on the school. Some recalculate on their scale and some have a few different calculations (an academic GPA, a math/sci GPA, etc.). </p>
<p>At my school, we don’t recalculate, but we don’t use the GPA out of context. We look at GPA with the high school’s methodology in mind and we don’t make comparisons from one school to the next for the reasons mentioned above. It just wouldn’t make sense to compare the student at the school with equal weight for all H/AP/IB/DE courses to the student at the school with different weights for each type of course or one at a school with no weighting at all.</p>
<p>Florida does their own weighting system from what I understand. My son’s 3.7 was converted by them into a 4.4, while one of his friends had a 3.7 that was converted to a 4.0. </p>
<p>But… Even with that said, getting a 3.7 (converted to a 4.4) at his private school IS NOT THE SAME as getting a 4.4 from the local public school. It doesn’t compare. But, in the eyes of some colleges that 4.4 from the public school is better than my son’s 3.7.</p>
<p>I’m sure every admissions department has their own methodology, but if I think about my kids they are simply strong B+ kids…their GPA reflects that, their standardized test scores are in the 80th percentiles, they score 4s and an occasional 3 on the AP tests. I can’t imagine that any admissions office couldn’t look at that along with the school profile and figure out if they will be successful at that given school or not. And really the bottom line is we, as parents, want our children to be successful in college. Clearly once admissions gets into the process of choosing student 1,2, or 3 to admit they need to take a closer look at the entire application but in general the inconsistencies between one high school vs another high school should be visible by looking at the various components of the application. Where it “hurts” is places like Texas that have the top 10% rules and admittance policies that are strongly based on ranking…that’s where the differences from school to school make the most impact. I take college claims of x% of the kids were in the top 10% with a grain of salt, don’t even factor that factoid. I could easily “find” a school within a short drive where my kids theoretically could be in the top 10% but why cheat the kids of a solid high school education that way. I’d far rather have B kids at a really good high school where they have to work alittle harder than A kids put into a less than stellar high school or the Barney school where everyone is an A student. Once they hit college it’s a whole new ballgame anyway and high school is in the rear view mirror.</p>
<p>Well said momofthreeboys. We have the same issues our here in California with the UC system (top 4%), and the average test scores compared to the average GPA’s of admitted students are embarassingly low. </p>
<p>Dean J: DS applied to a lot of schools, and now it’s obvious to me who looked at the whole application the way you talk about, and who just crunched the raw numbers. I don’t know how you people deal with the tens of thousands of applications, acceptance rates and matriculation rates…I’d get night sweats this time of year!</p>
<p>momofthreeboys, I agree with you. The problem I have is when some private schools use a chart of gpa/standardized test scores to decide if that student will get merit aid and how much merit aid. Many consider the student’s GPA from a high school where only 30% attend a 4 year college after graduation the same way as the student who graduates from a HS where 98% continue on to a 4 year college right after graduation. These 2 high schools are so different that I don’t think it is fair to use GPA to determine merit aid. FWIW, we did vote with our feet and our son did not apply to a few schools that use this method because we felt that our son would be at a disadvantage. I am very happy that we filtered out those schools. Our son did very well with merit aid at schools that do not use this method for awarding merit aid.</p>
<p>Now, if they only cross-referenced this article with a study that shows which states are most lenient with kids being allowed into AP courses…hmmmmm</p>