It can also matter which program the kid is applying to. Cornell accepted a student last year from our high school that had just above a 3.0 unweighted GPA into its Hotel Management program. They often reject 3.8s and 3.9s applying to their stronger programs.
“The niches exist within pretty conventional spaces.”
I think that’s right. I was talking to the admissions folks at Reed this summer and brought up the type of kid I often see: the one who’s so obsessed with his chemistry experiments or whatever that he ignores his English assignments and gets Cs and Ds. An officer responded that they see a lot of kids like that, but if they want to come to Reed, they need to “come to Reed.” That is, they need to show that they are ready to cooperate with a fairly conventional college structure with majors, courses, deadlines, etc. If the department says you have to pass statistics, then you have to pass it, whether it interests you or not. Part of succeeding in college is doing what you’re told. The Reedies may have eccentric personalities, they may not value grades, but they have to get the job done.
Hotel@Cornell (actually, many of the colleges at Cornell) look for different things.
GPA may not matter as much at the Hotel School. Service industry experience does, however.
Exactly, @purpletitan It could be that this student actually does have a decent chance even with some weak grades, if they are applying to a program that they are an especially good fit for.
@readytoroll,
Since you are friends with this mom and want to help her, I would recommend a modification to the smile and nod.
You don’t want to insult her kid or her. And kid’s school may be a feeder to this college of interest. So the 3 points that I would make to her, which are observations and not judgmental to her kid would be:
- Even if kid’s school is a feeder to a college, not all kids who apply to said college will be accepted. There will still be rejected kids.
- Always good to have academic and financial safety
- Their HS GC will have a better sense of kids chance of admittance to X college given kids grades, scores, naviance, and history of previous placement of other kids than you will have.
From what I am seeing at Cornell, interest at different school is important, but average stats to get into each school is really not that different now. Hotel school stats maybe a bit lower than A&S, but not drastically different. All of those schools have become very competitive.
Rumor has it that URM status gives one additional 200 points on SATs.
Ivies do look at the individual school when considering GPAs. I had a D and a few Cs, and I barely missed top 10% in my HS. My son had a D and a few Cs, and he is in the 4th decile (top 40%) at his school.
Also curious what “low” is. My son’s GPA is 3.3 UW/3.7W, and until he tanked first quarter senior year, he would have had a good shot to get into my alma mater due to the legacy hook (and your friend’s child had a hook as a URM) and high test scores. And due to the BS weighting system, which I’ve never heard of (giving bonus points for regular classes).
But the OP thinking that one “must have a 4.0 GPA to get into an Ivy” is ludicrous. The salutatorian of my graduating HS class got flat out rejected from Yale, so it is no guarantee. And me and a bunch of others got into Ivies far from a 4.0.
As for “will have no problem getting in,” the proof is in the pudding. Let us know if he did get in. Top 25% is low for an Ivy unless he plays a sport or has great test scores.
I worry about parents who don’t understand that an admittance rate of under 10% means. And even in the rare case at my son’s school, when there were many legacies applying and they had 50% admittance rate ED at one non-HYP Ivy, half of the kids who applied didn’t get in.
Maybe her kid will get in, maybe he won’t. Hopefully he is more realistic than she is.
Things like that your never know. If the kid gets in it might mean he is an unbelievable poet OR that the feeder thingy is really strong in that school. And if he does not get in again you can draw several other conclusions. If you go looking for exceptions and special cases and I do not know what there is always a case you can make. When it comes to my kids I am looking for something more than what it “could” happen as a possibility and I am a bit sober. The amazing writers I know form our community get in to Amhersts and Emersons and not Harvard. Could it happen? Of course it could. As in everything could happen in this world kind of saying. If I were this kid’s mom I would definitely send the app to the ivy but I would not count on it.
The comparisons to make are within the past four or five years. And ask yourself who designates “a great poet?”
@lookingforward, from “Dead Poets Society,” the class read the preface to a book on just this subject (what designates a “great poet”). It claimed that a great poet could be ascertained by plotting two variables against each other on a graph and maximizing the area so defined.
Does that help? 
(Robin Williams’ character, Mr. Keating, has the students tear those pages out of the book, rip them up, and throw them away.)
URMS, especially low-income, with Ivy-level test scores are very, very rare. Savvy low-income families “sneak” their kids into big name schools every year, with inflated sky high GPAs. Are they successful? Maybe, maybe not.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/9/30/brittany-smith-harvard-shooting-sentenced/
Hold Fast To Dreams is a book by a Brooklyn college counselor. He’d help low-income kids get into prestige schools and they often couldn’t handle it or recognize the doors the place could open.
http://www.amazon.com/Hold-Fast-Dreams-Guidance-Counselor/dp/159558904X
In my experience, I’ve helped low income girls get into top 20 schools, they usually major in something soft, like sociology. Half of them work in HR, the other half went to average ranked law schools and are struggling to pay the debt back. I no longer obsess over sending kids to schools they’re not going to take advantage of. Advienne que pourra.
Ivy2323, one could say the same of legacies as well:
http://gothamist.com/2015/01/10/princeton_grad_indicted_for_his_hed.php
Many kids, of all background, may not be well suited for the Ivies. That means fit is more important than prestige.
Agree with @ivy2323.
Also agree with @lookingforward. Examples from 2-3 decades ago (or even 1 decade ago) aren’t terribly relevant to today.
These days, if you don’t have a major hook (including being URM, being a major donor, come from a powerful/prestigious family, or being an athlete/talented in some big way), you have to be pretty exceptional for most Ivies/Ivy-equivalents to overlook a GPA around or under 3.5. And just being legacy doesn’t seem to be a major hook at most places.
Again, the results threads are very informative.
Some schools just below the Ivy/equivalent tier do seem to take some kids with a GPA around 3.5, however.
My D has an extremely low income URM classmate with a low 80s GPA/astounding test scores, especially in light of his background (5s across the board on humanities AP exams, 3 SAT IIs north of 730) who decided to give it a shot at Cornell ILR, Colgate, & Chicago with some of the most powerful essays (D calls his common app and Chicago essay the two best she’s ever read). I understand he wrote about wanting to run for office, and D wrote a simply beautiful peer recommendation describing the spark he brings to class. They attend a top NYC public where the student is widely considered among the smartest kids in the class, and the student apparently has very close ties to the mayor. The school in question sends around 25-40 to Cornell a year, though it looks as though he’s the only one applying to ILR. I’m interested in seeing how this one unfolds.
@giantsfan1011 - I’m not familiar with a gpa on that scale - are you saying low 80s is good or bad? i.e., is the student one with low grades but high everything else? Or are you saying he is high in all measurables?
Exactly. The low 80 comes out to around a 3.0. D tells me the student in question had upwards of 6 teachers who wanted to write his recs, so I’m assuming they’re going to be fantastic. His SAT is somewhere in the 2100-2200 range with a large skew towards the writing section (800.)
I know we have veered off topic (which is fine, because I got plenty of input and thank you for that!) and I’m going to continue to veer because I’m also interested in this kid being discussed above. I’m trying to wrap my mind around how being disadvantaged has resulted in a low GPA. I get it for standardized testing, since rich kids can afford tutors - are you saying it’s the same for the grades in this particular school? Are all the rich kids paying for intensive tutoring to raise their grades, and the disadvantaged kid can’t do this? Otherwise, if he’s “considered one of the smartest kids in the class,” why is his GPA so low? Does he have to work outside of school?
I was content to dismiss this one as evidence of why video games are destructive, but D’s recounting of his APs and SAT IIs suggest something else entirely. I also thought extremely talented cheater, but she insists he knows the work, and standardized tests have been proctored with extreme scrutiny since Stuyvesant’s cheating scandal a few years back. It’s why I’m posting in the first place, it’s beyond odd.
D says he spends free time in the library, stays after class to talk to teachers one-on-one, and runs classroom discussions “like no one’s business.”
They did attend the same middle school, though they weren’t friends until high school so she can’t tell me anything further. Student’s essays appear to indicate serious problems at home.
The one hope I have is that Cornell does have an opportunity program for low income in-state students, though even that such programs generally search for high GPA-low scorers. Of course, there’s always the possibility he’s a late bloomer responsibility wise.
I hope to hear more about this ^ student too!
Why his GPA is low? I assume because of the same reason that some perfect SAT scorers, brilliant kids have low GPAs. They hate busy work and they do not always return assignments on time. Has nothing to do with URM status. Students apart from their SE and racial profile, still have individual strengths and weakness.