<p>Hi all. My S is an B+ student with a 32 ACT and 9 AP courses by the end of senior year at a strong private school. He may have a chance to play a sport at Dartmouth, but he is concerned that he is not "smart" enough to do well there. Should we be worried about that? Our D attends a very competititve non-Ivy university and frankly has rather mediocre grades there. We were thinking that our S may be better off attending a university where he could really do well, but, on the other hand, how could he pass up a chance to attend an Ivy? Thoughts? </p>
<p>What is his career goal? If he wants to go med school, then getting less-than-stellar grades will be an issue. For many other careers, having good, but not top, grades may be good enough.</p>
<p>What do you consider to be “mediocre grades”?</p>
<p>There are people with worse stats who get in who aren’t athletes, so I think that your son will be fine. If he would rather just have fun and go to an easier school though, I would be able to understand. I don’t think your son’s intelligence will limit his ability at Dartmouth; more how much he is willing to/wants to work.</p>
<p>I think that the consensus when it comes to the Ivy League and their counterparts is that it is extremely difficult to earn an acceptance and equally difficult to not be “smart” enough to complete a degree. As we know, and courtesy of strict math, 50 percent of the students will be below average and 25 percent in the bottom quartile. The fact that most were academic or athletic superstars in the kiddie schools is mostly irrelevant. </p>
<p>I would wait to jump through the first hoop of being admitted before worrying about “being smart” enough to attend. The adcoms will make that decision for you. </p>
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The adcoms will make that decision for you.
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<p>I agree, but the adcoms aren’t deciding whether you will be an A student. They’re deciding whether you can make it thru their classes. If you graduate with a 2.9, then the Adcoms won’t be wrong…but that GPA will keep you out of med school and better law schools.</p>
<p>But, if the OP’s son’s career goals don’t depend on a high GPA, then going with what the Adcoms determine is fine. </p>
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<p>What do you consider mediocre? Mostly A’s, but a couple of B’s? or mostly B’s? or mostly B’s and a C or two? </p>
<p>Will your D’s GPA hinder her career goals?</p>
<p>Much really depends on your son’s career goals.</p>
<p>Medical school is not out of the question at this point. He is interested in biology and will probably start out on a pre-med track and see how that goes. I think that grad school of some sort is likely for him.</p>
<p>I understand your point about seeing if he gets in before worrying about it, but he’d need to make a pretty big push right now to play his sport, and he’s not sure if that’s the right thing for him. He only applied to Dartmouth because of the possibility of playing a sport–it would not have been on his radar otherwise. He is a better fit academically at the other schools where he has applied.</p>
<p>As for my D, she is in her senior year and likely will graduate with just over a 3.0. I suppose that’s ok, but I know she could’ve done much better elsewhere. Luckily, she is not interested in grad school for the time-being, and it hasn’t yet hurt her ability to obtain good internships. We are just hoping that she will be able to turn one of those internships into a real job.</p>
<p>I know a number of kids who got into Ivy and excellent D III schools via athletics (their academics were good, just not quite the caliber of the school they got into) and they all seem to be doing fine. One person I know took an extra semester to graduate from an Ivy League school while playing football (I think he also took summer classes to lighten the load in season) but he never regretted his choice. However, I don’t think any of them are in the STEM fields. Many schools have help for athletes (ex. tutoring, early scheduling etc.) so it is something you should pursue with each college you consider. Being part of a team has its pluses and minuses – the plus of an immediately accepting group of friends and the negative that it is a huge time commitment on top of academics. </p>
<p>Take Dartmouth.</p>
<p>There are two considerations, as mentioned:</p>
<ul>
<li>Is he smart enough just to cut it?</li>
<li>Will he get lower grades such that that they interfere with his success going forward?</li>
</ul>
<p>On the first: I suppose there are two ways to define what “cutting it” means. If it just means “not flunk out” the question is straightforward. It’s highly unlikely that he’ll flunk out. The school wouldn’t accept him if there was a significant danger of that, and the fact that only a miniscule percentage of students do flunk out indicates that they’re almost always right. You could define it somewhat more loosely, so that not cutting it would include winding up in a situation where your inability to follow what’s going on in class or to get grades close to those of your peers would be so depressing it would be hard to take. The likelihood of that is higher than that of flunking out, but I still think it’s pretty low.</p>
<p>On the second: I seem to disagree with everyone else. Generally speaking, anyone who’s looking at grades takes into account where they’re from. If people believe that a “B+” from University X is just as hard to get as an “A” from University Y, they’re going to consider them to be the same thing. Note that there is an element of “belief” in there: it matters only indirectly how hard it actually is to get the grades. Which raises the hard-to-pin-down question, how do beliefs about the value of Dartmouth (or Ivy League generally) grades compare with reality? It’s hard to say, but my opinion would be that - if anything - the belief is more likely to be skewed so as to overvalue the Ivy League grades.</p>
<p>Put on top of that: in lots of situations - like virtually every one you face more than five years after graduating - nobody ever asks about your grades, but where you went to college is on your resume forever. Dartmouth - even with no form of “laude” following it - will look good for the rest of your life.</p>
<p>Final thought: his ACT score puts him pretty much square in the middle of Dartmouth’s class, doesn’t it? I haven’t done a bunch of research, but some place I just looked said their middle 50% is 29-34, so he’s well up out of the bottom quartile. It obviously depends on the school, but at a lot of strong private schools a B+ average is very good.</p>
<p>I don’t know your financial situation but the conventional wisdom that’s always parroted on here is that med school only cares about your GPA and your MCAT, the school you went to doesn’t matter, it’s most sensible to save the money by going to the cheap school (though would benefit if it’s a university that has a medical school for some opportunities to work in a hospital in undergrad) or where he would get significant aid. </p>
<p>I don’t know much about med school admissions, but I don’t put a lot of stock in what’s parroted either.</p>
<p>In most of life, people care more about the name of your school and never even ask about your GPA.</p>
<p>Financial considerations are obviously an issue, but the OP didn’t ask about that, so I figure he has that part of it figured out, more or less.</p>
<p>My younger son was a B+ student at a big public high school and went to one of his reach schools (Tufts). He was mostly a B+ student there, but mostly because he took a very challenging for him course load. (Arabic and a couple of other time-sink courses). He would probably have been an A student at his safety, but he thinks he probably wouldn’t have learned nearly as much - particularly in Arabic where Tufts has a very demanding department. My kid says in other majors he’d have done much better, and with hindsight he might have done things differently. In any even even with a B+ average he’s found a very nice internship for the fall - he’s applying for real jobs now - we’ll see what happens.</p>
<p>Your GPA may count against you for your first job, and for med school applications, but so much of your GPA is really your work ethic, and the luck of picking the right courses. </p>
<p>Some of the responses above indicate that they know little about med school admissions. </p>
<p>@ThereAreLlamas med school admissions are not like other situations.</p>
<p>Med schools do NOT give you a pass for lower grades from an ivy…they just don’t. If you don’t believe me, then spend some time in the SDN premed forums and you’ll see. Even in the premed forums here, there are posts from premed students with non-ivy stats that got into those kinds of schools thru some hook or luck …and suddenly their GPAs are no longer med school worthy. </p>
<p>Med schools don’t say, well, he’s got a 3.3 from Dartmouth so that’s like a 3.6 or 3.7 at Flagship U. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. That 3.3 from an ivy will keep you out of med school unless you have some other hook (URM or non-trad who’s finished a degree years after a lowish grade start).</p>
<p>If I had a B+ student with med school aspirations, the last place I would want him is in a top school. That’s like asking to be weeded out. </p>
<p>I am NOT saying that premed at a flagship or mid-tier private is easy. It’s not. It’s just that your entire premed prereqs aren’t filled with students that are all stronger than you are and grabbing all the A’s.</p>
<p>If the OP were interested in nearly any other career goal, then going to D would be fine. </p>
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<p>So a student who has a sincere interest in med school needs to look past the four quickly-fleeting years of undergrad and make his decision based on where he wants to be for the rest of his life.</p>
<p>There will be a lot of opportunities and support there. It will likely be excellent for preparing for a PhD where your research experiences will be more important than getting a top gpa. You want a strong gpa but there is wiggle room. Showing research promise and getting strong recommendation letters are important. But for med school aspirations you have to plan to be an A student, it seems.</p>
<p>Dartmouth has a reputation for great teaching. It’s probably a good thing that he’s questioning himself–college will be a new level. Talk to other athletes and get a sense of support, workload, balance. Good luck to him!</p>
<p>Your son is smart enough. Statistically, he will probably end up being a B+ student at Dartmouth. Unless the time required for his sport substantially undermine his ability to do well in school.</p>
<p>His stats and grades wouldn’t be good enough to get admitted without the hook of the sport, but that doesn’t mean the other Dartmouth students are smarter. They are just kids who did a little bit better in high school, maybe because they cared more about their grades or worked a little harder or whatever. </p>
<p>But Ivy admission standards don’t mean that Ivy classes or grades are harder. I don’t know about Dartmouth, but at least in past years, some Ivies (like Harvard) were notorious for grade inflation. Of course it probably depends on major as well. But the point is that it’s possible that Dartmouth would be “easier” than many school that are ranked lower, for a variety of reasons. For example, if you compared attending Dartmouth to a flagship state U, it might turn out that the smaller classes and more undergraduate-focused environment at Dartmouth would mean that some students who would be overwhelmed and flounder at the state U. would do better at Dartmouth. </p>
<p>However, you also wrote, “He is a better fit academically at the other schools where he has applied.”. What do you mean by “fit”? Do you mean that he is more comfortable with the academic offerings, structure and culture of the other schools? Or do you mean that his test scores look like more of match at the other schools? </p>
<p>Because if by “fit” you mean the school that better fits his idea of what he wants out of college…then by all means he should choose the best it school.</p>
<p>But if by “fit” you mean the schools where his test scores look better in comparison to the other students… you are on the wrong track and your son may be very sorry down the line that he passed up the opportunity to attend Dartmouth.</p>
<p>However… you also wrote - “he’d need to make a pretty big push right now to play his sport, and he’s not sure if that’s the right thing for him.” If your son isn’t sure that he wants to continue with his sport in college – then it’s probably a bad idea to choose a college based on that sport, for a number of reasons. </p>
<p>Speaking of grade inflation, this might give the OP some comfort: <a href=“Dartblog.com”>Dartblog.com;
Many of these schools are much harder to get into then they are to stay in. I know a few athletes that were recruited with much lower stats than your son. I think he’d do fine.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for all the responses. They have been helpful. I’m convinced that my S could be successful at Dartmouth, and your responses have given him some comfort of that. When I spoke of “fit,” I was referring to his statistics aligning with the statistics of the admitted students at other schools, although his statistics certainly isn’t out of the ballpark of those of the students admitted to Dartmouth. At this point, I think he likely will make a push to play his sport and see if he gets anywhere. If they don’t want him, we know that there’s really no chance that he’ll be admitted. But he’ll never know if he doesn’t try. And I’d hate to have him look back with regret. Thanks.</p>
<p>I would try to forget about statistics and encourage your son to look at the best school for him in terms of academics, location, size, and 'vibe," just like everyone else. Does he love his sport or is he playing it so that he can get in to Dartmouth at this point? If he doesn’t love it, then maybe he should reconsider where he is applying.</p>
<p>Our family has kids who have gone to a wide variety of schools and the workload, in terms of amount and difficulty, is much more onerous at, say, an Ivy. We didn’t see or hear about the so-called grade inflation at Harvard, for one: one idea is that a preponderance of A’s just reflects an intelligent student body 
At any rate, that is old news. The work is hard.</p>
<p>Ivies, like other larger universities, use grad student teaching fellows (assistants) to grade and run discussions. Considering the abilities of peers in class, you can look at the classes as challenging in a good way, or in a scary way. That depends as much on personality as talent.</p>
<p>Ironically, the state university nearest where we live does not use grad students to teach, at least in the humanities, and classes are small. The professor teaches and there are usually about 20 students. There is a lot of personal attention. On the other hand, the workload is lighter and less rigorous than that of an Ivy, and the discussions are sometimes less than satisfying.</p>
<p>Dartmouth has a different way of organizing the school year. Has your son looked at that? As I remember, too (I think I remember correctly, but it’s possible not) Dartmouth has you take 3 courses in depth rather than the 5 at a state u. or 4 at an Ivy. I think there is a summer term too, that you go to once or twice. Anyone here remember better than I?</p>
<p>What does he want to major in? Has he looked at curriculum, distribution requirements, internship opportunities?</p>
<p>I would look into schools in a way that goes beyond statistics and sports (especially since it sounds like he is not committed to the sport). The most important thing, in my view, is how your son reacts to being in the middle or even the bottom of a range of students in a class and environment. Does he like to be surrounded by challenge, or is he more security- oriented, wanting to be master of his universe, so to speak. How would his self-esteem hold up in a more difficult academic environment?</p>
<p>I think it is unhealthy to live in a way that is geared too much to the future. He should enjoy his classes, be able to do well enough to feel good about himself, and be in a place where he can have good friends and develop and grow. Grades are just a measure of learning, and good grades would simply indicate a good “fit.” He can worry about med school or any other career later. Many kids want to be doctors in high school and most change their minds.</p>
<p>p.s. Of course he can play his sport freshman year and then quit. Also, playing a sport is very time-consuming and makes a difficult course load more difficult for some.</p>
<p>Dartmouth is an excellent school. The school won’t accept him if they think he won’t succeed.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, playing a sport in college can be very time consuming.</p>
<p>Besides medical school, a sub-3.5 GPA will affect admissions to law school, business school and other grad programs, as well as senior year job recruiting. </p>