No way to answer your GPA question because schools have wildly varying formulas for computing GPA.
@WorryHurry411 You’re question does not seem hypothetical , but appears more like you are also invested in playing the GPA game.
Plan A
HYSP
Plan B
Cornell, Brown, Columbia, U Chicago, U Penn and UC Berkley.
Plan C
Middlebury, Williams, CMC, Duke, Vandy
Plan S (Safety)
Local flagship and other schools with honors programs and full merit
@carolinamom2boys I asked because few posters suggested that study hall would result in higher GPA. I already know that no top student in our district takes study hall so my son won’t do it and there are so many subjects that interest him more than a free period.
How is that common knowledge that no top student in your district takes a study hall? That just seems to perpetuate the notion of playing the GPA game .
This kiddo is a junior. Does he already have an ACT or SAT score?
It is a common knowledge because it’s only allowed for dual credit or job reasons and high ranking students at our school don’t take dual credit for some reason. I sent another kid and two foster kids to this district so I must have heard it from one of them or their friends or parents of their friends.
My kids HS’s data indicates that Williams is significantly harder to get admitted to than Penn and Duke and Chicago are now running neck and neck.
I think you’ve got some assumptions based on really old data here unless your HS’s stats indicate that the breakdowns you have are appropriate.
And if your kid liked Williams there are at least a dozen schools which are easier to get into and have similar environments, profiles, lifestyle, etc.
If you can tell us what your kid is looking for (apart from the prestige factor) we can give you a list of places to explore that might make a more targeted list than the one you have.
And you can take HYPB off the list if your son is quitting his EC’s to focus on getting good grades. High stats is not enough at these three schools- absent something interesting and compelling besides being Val, Sal or having lots of AP’s unless you have donated a library or endowed the new nanotechnology lab.
A high stats kid without anything else should focus on Wash U, Emory, Tulane, Davidson, Vanderbilt and a few other schools like that which will be happy to scoop up a high gpa/high test score kid even without the rest of the package.
Have you encouraged him to quit the EC’s to focus on his grades? That’s the direct route to the reject pile at HYP. And without any hobbies, skills, interests, or a job- forget Brown.
"One hypothetical question. If one has 4.50/5.0 GPA and takes 6 AP courses while other who has 4.48/5.0 GPA and takes 5 AP and study hall then who’ll end up with the higher GPA? If both score let’s say 97’s on all exams. "
The one who takes 6 APs will have the higher GPA. But the kids at your school are only taking 6 courses so they don’t take study halls. Ours take 8. I haven’t heard of anyone enrolling in 8 AP classes at our school and based on released GPA ranges for graduating seniors I don’t think it’s happening. Students take non-weighted classes to fill out the 8 period schedule. Some of them take only 7 classes and they take a study hall. Every arts or other elective class they take lowers the GPA. Study halls don’t bring down GPA.
Actually, our students take 7 classes as well, AP sciences and some other classes are double block.
Ah well then your kid will probably lose out to someone who takes fewer science APs. You see the idiocy of all this…
Of your “Plan B” schools, only Chicago and Berkeley have merit scholarships, and getting the ones big enough to make the cost comparable to your state flagship (presumably Texas, since you are familiar with the top 7%/10% admission) is likely as difficult as or more difficult than getting admission to the “Plan A” schools. Likewise, getting sufficient merit from a “Plan C” school is likely as difficult as or more difficult than getting admission to the “Plan A” schools.
So the actual list is probably:
Plan A (super reaches): HYPS, Chicago with Stamps, Berkeley with Regents, CMC with Seaver, Duke with big scholarship, Vanderbilt with big scholarship
Plan S (safeties): state flagship (Texas?), automatic merit schools
Cornell, Brown, Columbia, Penn, Middlebury, and Williams do not offer merit scholarships, so if you are unwilling to pay, then he should not waste effort applying to them. Likewise, admission to Chicago, Berkeley, CMC, Duke, or Vanderbilt without a big scholarship is equivalent to a rejection since you presumably will not pay.
I agree with what ucbalumnus said above. The students who are offered the big merit awards at UC, CMC,
Duke, Vanderbilt are the WOW kids that HYPS will also accept.
You DS has only ultra reaches and safety schools.
He needs to cast a much wider net , unless he would be HAPPY to go to a safety school.
Your Plan A, B and C schools are virtually indistinguishable from one another in terms of selectivity, caliber of the student body, and opportunities/resources. I don’t know why you put them in 3 tiers when they are all the same tier. Almost single one of them is a reach for everybody.
Who has been lying to you and your son that these schools are of different calibers and that A offers appreciably more opportunities compared to B and C? Whoever that person is, he’s a liar.
Where are your matches?
Where are your affordable safeties?
It makes absolutely no sense at all that you’d pay for A but not B and C. It’s like saying you’d pay for Harvard but not Yale, or vice versa. What is your rationale?
I know that in your home country universities are very “tiered” but have you learned that it’s not that way here? It seems like both you and he are having a very hard time internalizing that and accepting the reality.
And if you say YOU will pay for Plan A but not B or C, then YOU are the one putting pressure on him, in which case it is disingenuous to pretend that his pressure is all self imposed.
In fact, most of the Ivies do not have a wide range of choices of majors. They’re mostly overgrown liberal arts colleges – some with engineering schools added on. Most of them offer little else.
The main exceptions are Penn (which has world-class business and nursing schools as well as engineering and liberal arts) and Cornell (which offers a vast number of majors including some you would never see at any other Ivy, such as landscape architecture, industrial and labor relations, fiber science and apparel design, and hotel administration).
But then, you’re not willing to pay for Penn or Cornell, right?
@WorryHurry411 : In our highly competitive school district, students with your son’s academic profile aim for the schools @blossom listed:
Many of the top students in our district apply ED for these schools, and the families are full-pay. So RD at these universities will be quite competitive and you can forget merit. Pizzagirl and ucbalumnus have already outlined the pitfalls of your strategy.
Also, do not simply assume the state flagship will bestow honors with merit - in Maryland, the engineering school admission is very competitive. Probably the case with VA as well. Do the math - there are many,many kids with your son’s profile that are going to get rejected from HYPSM. A large number of these aspiring Ivy students come from MD, VA, CA and NJ. So the respective state schools have also become selective in giving out scholarships, because they have a lot more well qualified applicants to choose from.
maybe this will help give you some perspective…
my small state has 964 high schools. if we oversimplify and presume that each has a Val and a Sal, that is 1928 students (and that is probably low-900 of those schools probably have multiples of both).
the entire admission for freshman at H was 1,990 for the Class of 2019 selected from record pool of 37,307 applicants, 21% of them being Asian-Americans http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/04/harvard-college-admits-1990/
now i’m virtually positive that H doesnt blare Born To Run from the loudspeakers and exclusively serve Porkroll sandwiches…i’ve never once heard it referred to as Little Jerseytown.
my point is that the process involves much, much more than a GPA and a graduation speaker lineup–there are zero guarantees for anyone and you both might be wise to come up with a Plan Z.
just some food for thought.
Worryhurry, you’re supposedly so worried about the pressure he is putting on himself to chase a handful of super selective schools. Yet by the same token, you will only pay for those schools and you won’t pay for others that are just as good. Of course he’s stressed! If he doesn’t get into HYPS he’s out of luck!
Can you see why we are frustrated with your rationale? You have encouraged him to slice a collection of excellent schools into super-tiny tiers that make no sense, decreeing some as “pay worthy” and others not.