<p>Great. I am sure I am not alone in wondering “Which school was it?”</p>
<p>lderochi - so if that is correct, a C in a AP class is equal to a 4 and a B is equal to a 5. Is this then all compared to a 6.0 as a GPA or is judged against a 4.0?? (Does that make sense.)</p>
<p>I used to think I was a reasonably intelligent person, but this whole college search process is driving me nuts… My son’s GC put together a list of schools for him. Her assumption was that he would get his act together and get straight A’s… not happening.
So I told her that we are going to PA and asked for schools she thought he could get into (w/present GPA)for us to visit. (She originally had schools like Bucknell, Bowdoin and Wake Forest - not in PA, but schools that are tough to get into.) </p>
<p>So we get the list and it has these schools on it
Allegheny
Dickinson
Franklin and Marshall
Gettysburg
Muhlenberg
Ursinus
Also - not in PA but Oberlin, Emory and Hamilton</p>
<p>So am I going nuts??? Does he have a snowballs chance in he** to get into any of these schools?</p>
<p>Warriorboy, given your reference to a 3.1 GPA, unless he has a ton of honors classes; very high SATs; top athletic skills; or is in an underrepresented category; your instinct seems correct to me–these are all reaches. In PA, among others, Juniata, Scranton and Washington & Jefferson are easier and Moravian, Albright, Bloomsburg, Lycoming, Kings and Arcadia possible safeties.</p>
<p>Naviance for our school shows Franklin Marshall, Gettysburg, Muhlenberg and University of Pittsburgh as match-ish for students with a 3.1-sh GPA (unweighted, core courses only) and a combined verbal/math SAT of 1250-ish (1330 for Univ of Pitt).</p>
<p>We don’t have Naviance but it seems like the coolest tool! collegeboard.com’s How Do I stack Up is what we used and I constantly had to remind myself that the mid 50% SATs don’t neccessarily reflect a real student. </p>
<p>What I mean is that admitted kid A may have a verbal score at or above that 75% mark and a math score below the 25%. </p>
<p>Admitted kid B may be in the opposite situation score wise.</p>
<p>Admitted kid C may be one where both sets of scores are right there in the middle</p>
<p>I say this because for those of us w/o Naviance it’s important not to discount your kids’ chances just because a part of their profile falls below the mid 50%</p>
<p>D’s Math scores were like example kid A and she ended up being accepted at 7 of 9 schools with merit $$, Waitlisted at another and ultimately received offers from two additional UC campuses to which she hadn’t even applied.</p>
<p>Keep the faith. It’s hard sometimes to avoid making the comparisons between our kids and the uber achievers here on CC but there is somewhere wonderful for all of our kids.</p>
<p>warriorboy – I do understand what you’re saying, and I think you have it correct. Under Elon’s system (and not to pick on Elon, a lot of schools also have idiosyncratic re-calculation systems), a person could have, e.g. a 5.2 GPA on a “4.0 scale”. Which I have a philosophical agreement with (like giving 125%). A better way of thinking of it is that the Elon scale is theoretically a 6.0 scale (in the core subject areas). But I can’t imagine anybody getting a 6.0 – they would have to take nothing but AP classes from their first day of freshman classes. </p>
<p>So if Elon’s average GPA is “3.9 on a 4.0 scale”, that’s a really confusing statement. Because that implies 4.0 is the highest possible GPA. And it’s not. My own completely un-scientific opinion is that for a student who takes a courseload with a reasonable but not overwhelming number of AP and Honors classes, and makes A’s in all of them, their Elon GPA might be in the 5.0-5.2 range. So Elon’s reported 3.9 average, to me is probably a solid B+ student.</p>
<p>My S just got motivated his junior year. He has an unweighted 3.3, taking advanced and AP only this year and next. He scored 28 on ACT. What do you think his chances are at Univ. of Mich? Do they look at lower gpa and higher ACT as worse than a high gpa and a lower ACT?</p>
<p>Michigan just looks at sophomore and junior grades in core classes with no pluses or minuses.In other words, if your child had all A-'s in core classes 10th and 11th grade, his/her Michigan GPA would be 4.0. If they had all B+'s it would be 3.0.</p>
<p>I used that collegedata website for D this last time around. None of these things can be 100% accurate, but I enjoyed the college match, college admission trackers & so on. The little bar displayed for each college with your child’s stat’s was rather fun-with “reach, maybe or good bet”. And you can play with it and change their SAT scores, GPA’s and so on. Another thing I did was put in all data from our tax return & looked at our EFC for the schools (all done under Federal Formula) & it even had a line item called “Your Unmet Need”. A calculation of how much you may be gapped at this particular school. Rather a good website I felt & a good diversion! We may as well have fun for this college search process.</p>
<p>SLUMOM, I was intrigued by collegedata until I really looked into it. Every single college I put in was in the “match” range, albeit from one end of the match range to the other - and this was for my 3.2 kid. I finally put in Harvard to try to force it to say “reach.” From that I determined that collegedata was kind of useless - it said every school was a match.</p>
<p>Lafalum84, I never noticed anything like that on that particular site. Sometimes D was right on the border between “Reach” and “Maybe” and some of those were accepted or denials, so in a way it was accurate. Now I am using it for my son, more fun & games! The actual admission profiles can be revealing showing who was denied, accepted or waitlisted. It is just another tool to use & we all know it is such a crap shoot at best! Even if you accurately put in GPA, Test Scores, Class Rank, & so on, you may come up with “Maybes”. Princeton Review’s Counselor -O-Matic is another one!</p>
<p>collegedata was fairly accurate for my students. But they didn’t have any long reaches on their lists. I don’t think it looks at acceptance rates which may account for its inaccuracy when you start figuring your student against their data for super selective schools.</p>
<p>But its EFC calculator was right on and very helpful.</p>
<p>With Naviance–or any other data–be sure to check the difference between ED and regular admits. At certain schools–F&M and Muhlenberg among them–ED is significantly lower. At colleges strapped for cash in this recession, ED may become even easier for kids not requesting aid in particular and for kids in general, because they are agreeing to accept whatever is offered.</p>
<p>With Naviance and other data sources, it would be helpful–but I think it is impossible–to separate athletes and legacies, for whom the requirements are lower–often much lower-- even at schools which do not give athletic scholarships, including the Ivies.</p>
<p>Here’s another question. If I look at a school’s data and approximately 18% of admitted students are in his range, but his ACT score is above their 75% range, would you consider that school a reasonable possibility?</p>
<p>warriorboy, I would guess that in most cases grades have higher weight in admissions than test scores. Check the common data set to see how “considered” each are. If his grades are 18th percentile, am I interpreting that correctly? I think it would be a reach. It might be a good question for him to ask the admissions people himself.</p>
<p>But out of that 18%, you don’t know how many were legacies, athletes, musicians etc. That is an unknown factor. Or maybe the family has mega bucks & could possibly donate millions for a new science building! New science buildings seem to be very popular!</p>
<p>warriorboy, It depends on where that 18% is. Is is the lower 18%? If so, then I would have to agree it would be a reach.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that I was clear. When I look at a college on one of the websites, not sure if I can name it, I can go to the section that says “how do I stack up” it gives a bar graph of the # of students that had a GPA range - can’t remeber the exact numbers.
2.5 - 3.0
3.0- 3.2
3.2 - 3.5
3.5- 3.75
3.75 - 4.00</p>
<p>So there is a percentage next to each GPA range along. So it might have a lot of students above or below my son’s GPA range. </p>
<p>It also gives the bar graph for test scores and class rank. Do I need to look for a large number of students below his GPA range even if his test scores are in the top 25%. Should I just ignore test scores and focus on GPA.</p>
<p>mamom - I just reread your post. So if he is in the bottom 18% then it’s a reach. If there was another 20% below him then that might lift him up to a match.</p>
<p>that’s right, although even with another 20% below him I would still consider it a reach.</p>