<p>I have a 91 - 92 unweighted GPA, but my weighted GPA is closer to 99 (my school does GPA on the 100 point scale). But my class rank is within the top 10 of ~450. (based on weighted GPAs). If I have ~2200 SAT score, and decent ECs (officer of 2-3 clubs, and member of 2 other clubs). And I work at a lab and volunteer at a hospital. </p>
<p>I know many of you don't work on the admission committee, so you wouldn't know definitely, but I was wondering based on previous people accepted is my GPA fine for the ivy leagues, or really below the average GPA? </p>
<p>I see so many people on CC who get 96- 98 who apply to the ivy leagues, so I am not sure if I stand a chance</p>
<p>I am not specifically asking for chances, but if my GPA is really below the average at HYP and the other ivy's or is it just fine?</p>
<p>Your GPA is just one aspect of your transcript. A slightly higher one would help, but if you get the scores you intend to get then I think you have a decent shot. </p>
<p>As decent of a shot as you can have for the Ivies, that is… :)</p>
<p>Your GPA is not a major factor in Ivy admissions. You sound like you’d be considered academically qualified as long as you have taken a rigorous curriculum.</p>
<p>However, Ivy admissions shift their focus to your essays, recommendations, and ECs once they move you into the academically qualified stack. In this stack “officer of 2-3 clubs” means little to nothing, so you may run into some trouble.</p>
<p>Ivies (and other top schools) don’t care about titles and lists of things you’ve participated in. They care about what you’ve actually done in those activities and organizations. It’s actually better to have had one meaningful and significant leadership experience where you’ve actually done something important for your organization, school, or community than to have 10 President titles that - at least in the application - show up as not much more than titles. The same goes for the activities - one activity that you can talk about beats 10 that you can only say the name of any day.</p>
<p>If you can make your ECs sound compelling and sound like you’ve actually accomplished something meaningful (rather than presenting a list of memberships and titles), you’ll dramatically increase your chances at the Ivies.</p>
<p>Now, I’m not saying that your ECs aren’t meaningful. For all I know, they are. I’m simply stressing the importance of your portrayal of your ECs in your application. Pick the most important one or two activities and make them sound compelling. (Of course, you should still list the others!)</p>
<p>So my main ECs are science fair club, and a club that’s supposed to increase awareness about the darfur genocide (i don’t feel comfortable naming it online). I joined model UN this year. I have also done FBLA, done this for a bit, but might drop it, because it is pretty boring (in my opinion). And some other minor ECs are like NHS, and volunteering. </p>
<p>I feel like my main interest (the most time and effort I spend on and that I like the best) is probably science fair. So is one EC enough to portray my interests? you did say that it is better to do one, than many, but is one or two really enough - I have seen the results thread of some Ivy’s and those accepted sometimes have a laundry of ECs (not sure if all of them are meaningful though)</p>
<p>I think GPA is pretty important considering the Ivy’s have “important” or “very important” in their common data set, so anyone else want to confirm or reject RedSeven’s idea of GPA in context of ivy league admission?</p>
<p>Thanks again RedSeven and Brownford, really appreciate it.</p>
<p>I would say that GPA is important, but that there are so many students with high GPAs applying that a high GPA is necessary but not sufficient. That means that you need a high GPA and other things.</p>
<p>What would a high or the estimated average GPA of an ivy league admit be (based on a 100 point Scale)? Just so I have an idea of what to aim for.</p>
<p>One overarching EC (ie, science) is enough; one club almost certainly is not. If you’re invested in science, do research with a local college prof, enter the big competitions, submit to science journals, etc. Or take it in another direction and start a science fair at a local middle school or donate old lab supplies to underprivileged schools. You can shake loose many accomplishments from one extracurricular interest.</p>
<p>This, unless you’ve done something massive with the club (e.g. started the club and grown it to be a large organization that’s accomplished important things).</p>
<p>The people with the laundry lists often isolate one or two of those ECs to talk about in greater detail on their application. It helps to have been involved with more things, but it’s also important to highlight and expand upon the biggest things.</p>
<p>You’re probably already within the GPA range of Ivy admits based on your class rank and GPA. For the Ivies, your GPA mostly just determines whether you’re academically qualified, so you don’t necessarily have to have the highest GPA in the applicant pool or anything like that. (That said, a higher GPA probably gives an edge when they’re determining which of the academically qualified students to admit, but at that point it definitely drops off in importance.)</p>
<p>So do you think colleges would put more weight on my class rank or my unweighted GPA? Do you think colleges will think that my class rank is “unfair” just because I have taken more AP classes than my other classmates but I get lower grades in those classes?</p>
<p>I am asking this question because someone was complaining about this issue to me yesterday, so is it “unfair”?</p>
<p>^Rank is very important, but so are individual grades (not necessarily UW GPA, but the grades themselves). Top schools want kids who can handle tough coursework.</p>