Just curious if others see this. Data from my school demonstrates a pretty clear line for GPA. No one got accepted with less than 4.57 (in state - Wake co.) I am not sure if that cut off is school specific or if they apply it more generally. My school has its own grading scale so I’d think its school specific. But interesting how that published average of 4.6 pretty much matches up to this line on naviance. I know admissions is holistic but maybe its holistic only after the threshold of GPA is met?
I suspect that the GPA cut-off is school specific, since the information on Naviance is for students from your particular school; and if your school has a history of placing students at UNC-CH, then the chances are that the admissions office is going to be considering your school’s reputation and historical product in making admissions decisions. At least, that’s my thought. And given the UNC System policy of increasing admissions of students from North Carolina counties that are rural/economically distressed, those schools – which may not have an established history of sending students to UNC-CH – might, and likely do, have a different minimum GPA for admitted students (or have more variation in the GPAs of admitted students).
Not directly on point with your question, but one thing to consider is that, for historical (i.e., previous years and not current year) data points on the Naviance scattergrams, the GPAs that you are looking at are the GPAs for the end of the senior year, not the GPAs at the time of application. That may give you some slightly incorrect information for your purpose, because what you are interested in are the GPAs at the time of application, not the final “graduation” GPAs.
For example, when my daughter applied to UNC-CH, she had a 4.5 GPA (the GPA at the end of her junior year, as she applied and was accepted EA); after a bad case of “senioritis”, however, her GPA by the time of graduation was a 4.2. But if you looked at her data point on the Naviance scattergram after she graduated – as a historical data point – then you might think that she had been accepted to UNC-CH with a 4.2 GPA, when her GPA at the time of admission was actually 4.5. So you have to be a little careful with the information that you glean from Naviance (at least from the scattergrams).
If you have Naviance, and you have well over 100 students applying, which was the case with our kids’ HS, we used a simple rubric to predict acceptances (We, the parents, not the school). If say, 75-80 students were accepted from the HS the past three years (forget the stats, because they keep rising), The top 60th of the 80, so about the top 50 ranked students in this year, would get in. Outside that, was anybody’s guess.
My daughter’s school had 35/54 accepted last year with a 3.6 UW being a pretty noticeable cutoff. Over the last 3 years 107/183 were accepted.
It seems very stats driven and not as holistic…
Thx everyone. That’s funny about the GPAs being end of the year. I knew that, but thought maybe they were higher, not lower. I forgot about senioritis! Of course the grading/weighting scale has changed starting with my class so this is all guess work anyway.
I just envision them throwing out any application that doesn’t meet the threshold. Then with the ones that do meet the minimum, they apply the holistic approach. I’m right there but not above. Going back to look at UW trends and apply the rubric approach. Oddly somewhat fun to do this…thx for your replies.
@Tuxrd2: Between January and May the GPA on Naviance for anyone currently in your school will reflect the cumulative GPA after Fall Semester. And, if you have someone who really does well in senior year, theoretically their final GPA could be higher than the GPA that was used to determine admission. My point is that you have to consider the GPAs on Naviance scattergrams in light of that potential variability; the data points are useful, but you have to be careful how to use them.
The “average” keeps going higher every year. Most kids two, three years earlier, with one of my twins stats (4.97/34/1490), were accepted- there were plenty with lower GPA and test scores that were. Mine, was deferred, then accepted.
From anecdotal observation of kids in my daughters graduating class I agree that the cutoff for UW GPA seems to be right around 3.6-3.7 . For standardized tests ACT of 29 (superscored). As far as the holistic part goes I do believe that UNC takes ECs very much into account much more so than NC State. I do recall a few examples of kids in my daughters grade with solid stats but weak ECs that were not admitted.
I was also told be our GC that solid stats but 2APs or less will not gain admission. The AO’s told them that and last year our school had a two students with over a 3.7UW and 1330 get WL because of a lack of rigor. Other than that pretty much everyone over 3.6 regardless of test scores was accepted.
Keep in mind this is one of the top schools in NC so it’s relative but to eliminate that possibility a minimum of 3APs (if offered at your school) should be taken.