I just got my mid-year grades for senior year. I took 5 AP classes plus 1 Honors class. I got 4 A’s and 2 A-'s. For super competitive schools like Harvard, will the 2 A-'s put me out of the running? There are about 12-15 students from my school who are also applying, and they have no A-s at all.
I got one A- in AP Psychology and one A- in AP English
Wondering about a similar issue
@sjsprint Not at all. If you look at the common data set for Harvard, the mean GPA is not a 4.0, meaning a majority of students got multiple B’s, not just A minuses, on their transcripts. A 90 vs a 95 will not make or break an app. Obviously higher is better, but an A in multiple AP courses shows you possess the academic acumen to succeed there.
Half of Harvard students have a perfect 4.0 The average GPA is above 3.9. Get a single A- and half of the seats are now essentially closed to you. See how it works?
Are there students at Harvard with an A- or two? Yes, but you just got lumped into a much bigger pool.
Do you know what it takes to get a 4.0?
@JustOneDad you are saying among applicants?
At Harvard (and other top schools) an A- is just seen as a 4.0/4.0. They don’t differentiate between a A-, an A, or an A+. I wouldn’t worry about it.
Ordinarily, I’d say, no, an A- isn’t going to hurt. But the original poster is saying that there are a number of students in his/her high school with 4.0s, and some number are applying to Harvard. That’s your competition. Harvard looks at your grades in the context of your school. My sons got grades of A-, and even a couple of Bs, but they went to a school where a 4.0 is pretty rare. The grading was just a lot tougher.
That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if other aspects of a student’s application outweighed an A- here or there, allowing the student with a couple grades like that to get in while a student with a 4.0 is denied.
That’s matriculated students; admitted and accepted.
Sure, no problem. Just be sure to convince them in your essay that the A- represents you reaching your maximum academic potential.
JustOneDad is just one sour guy.
JustOneDad is a realist. A 5% admittance rate is very very small, and most of the 95% who get rejected are very good students.
I don’t know how Admissions views high school grades, other than in the context of your school, but just to set the record straight, Harvard College DOES differentiate between an A and an A-, although no A+'s are given: http://static.fas.harvard.edu/registrar/ugrad_handbook/current/chapter2/GPA.html
So, what you’re saying is, the "A-"s won’t necessarily result in outright rejection, but having the "A-"s does weaken my application?
It really depends on the classes you have taken and the grades received. FWIW: my daughter had a few A-'s on her transcript and was accepted to Harvard. She also was salutatorian of her class: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1619966-ivy-standards-for-rigor-of-highschool-curriculum-p1.html
As others have said, your grades will be viewed within the context of your class. The other aspects of your application are extremely important. It is incredibly difficult to predict the likelihood of being admitted, unless you are one of the top students from a traditional feeder school.
@gibby is that scale used to recalculate an applicant’s gpa (like the UCs)? Or is that just for the gpa of current harvard students?
^^ That scale is directly from the Student Handbook and is used to calculate a Harvard student’s GPA.
Maybe a better way to look at acceptance at any supremely selective school is to remember that loads of qualified applicants don’t get in. I’m sure plenty of students with 36 ACT’s, 4.0 GPA’s, and lots of other honors are denied admission. It’s best to keep that in mind and not count on getting in.
That said, I know if I was reading your application OP, I would much rather see you as a passionate learner, taking really challenging classes, with two A-'s rather than a perfect 4.0 student taking standard classes. Not all 4.0’s are equal…
Depends on your class rank. If you are not 1, 2, or 3 in your class, you do not stand a chance of getting into the top ivies. There should not be 15 kids in your class applying to Harvard, when anyone below 4 has an extremely low chance.