<p>michone – I think the sports scene is decent at University of Buffalo (football), and Binghamton and Albany (basketball). SUNY Cortland also has a pretty lively Division III sports scene. I agree with you re: school spirit (although Geneseo, New Paltz and some others have a fair amount of school pride). A handful of SUNYs are also not unattractive, although even the best have a hint of the institutional feel. SUNYs also remain a pretty easy admit for B students outside the top tier such as Bing, Geneseo and New Paltz. A fair number of B- students with average SATs in my wife’s school got into Albany this year for example. It’s getting pretty hard for the C+ student however.</p>
<p>northeastmom, UNC-Asheville is a public institution and will cost an OOS about $14,000 for tuition a year</p>
<p>hey everyone i just wanted to let you know that all of your posts are helpful :]</p>
<p>i am a junior this year with a 3.2 weighted gpa hoping for it to go up at the end of the year since that is my cumulative gpa as of the 1st semester. Can you guys help me compile a list of schools to look into? I’ll give you guys a quick wrap up of my stats. To date i have 5 AP’s and will graduate with 9 AP’s. I took Human geography (4) and AP Euro last year. I took three AP tests this year and have yet to receive the scores. 4 years French ,math,english, history and one elective each year. I have a lot of EC’s but the ones that stick out are Varsity tennis, class rep, Junior Civitan Secretary, District officer of my Junior Civitan District. I hope to become president of my schools Junior Civitan club next year. I’ve taken my SAT’s once and received a 1720. I did not prepare but i am hoping that with preparation i can get my score higher. I reside in Northern Virginia but i am open to schools anywhere although i do prefer east coast[ with the exception of chicago, love it there! ] If this is of any help , my family moved here from egypt in the late 90’s… we are sudanese though. Basically the point is im a URM. Also i would appreciate schools with good reputations. I am open to all schools but my parents are biased since my older sisters attend Cornell and The College of William and Mary. Any suggestions are appreciated !!! thanks in advance :]</p>
<p>dont mind grammatical errors, i rushed through this:]</p>
<p>Are their any good resources for students/parents in this group - books, websites, counselors, etc. It seems that everything is geared to the student applying to the ivies. Don’t see a lot of helpful information for students in this group.</p>
<p>I am new to this forum. At what gpa is a student classified as an academic underachiever?</p>
<p>I don’t think there is any such hard and fast definition. The determination is more on a case-by-case basis. Some students may be giving it all they have to get a 2.5 while others who get a 3.5 with virtually no effort could be at 4.0 if they worked anywhere near as hard.</p>
<p>Some signs that a student might be underachieving include doing a lot better percentile-wise on aptitude tests than in GPA, repeated indications from multiple teachers and other professionals that the student is not working up to their ability, a tendency to do a lot better in subjects that the student enjoys vs. the ones that they do not enjoy, frequent episodes of work not being done or not being handed in, a tendency to do the minimum needed to get by on assignments rather than taking the time to do a thorough job, and I am sure the others on this thread can come up with a bunch more. Of course, these things say nothing about why the student could be underachieving. It could be that their priorities are elsewhere, there might be one or more learning disabilities involved, it could be that the student needs glasses, there might be underlying emotional problems or a host of other reasons. The important thing is to detect the problem as early as possible and figure out the root cause. That can be quite a difficult and time-consuming task.</p>
<p>I’ve been on this site for years. There is information here for every kind of child, you just have to look for it and ask for it. My kids are/were B, B+ (sometimes even C) students and I found colleges for them with substantial merit aid. It can be done!</p>
<p>I just thought of another way to find a college that has a good college sports scene that isn’t too big. I don’t know a lot about college sports but what I understand is that like colleges play like colleges so if you find one college that has football and is the right size, they should be playing other’s that are similar, right? I know someone (lives here in PA) that is going to attend the University of Dayton in Ohio. One of the things he liked was that it has D-1 football, but the college only has 10,000 students. </p>
<p>From Dayton’s football site I can see the other teams they play: [DAYTON</a> OFFICIAL ATHLETIC SITE - Football](<a href=“http://www.daytonflyers.com/sports/m-footbl/sched/dayt-m-footbl-sched.html]DAYTON”>http://www.daytonflyers.com/sports/m-footbl/sched/dayt-m-footbl-sched.html)</p>
<p>Seems like a round about way to find out the information, but maybe that will help.</p>
<p>kathiep, yes that is very true, for instance St. Lawrence University is Division III, but for Men’s & Women’s Hockey, they are Division I, with a student population of about 2,000. </p>
<p>Looking at the Athletic Conferences may certainly help a prospective applicant if he/she is a sports nut! My D#1 is a UCONN alum & enjoyed that whole Division I rah rah stuff!</p>
<p>This is just a nitpicky observation but Dayton plays FCS division football (formerly Division I-AA). Not as many athletic scholarships are permitted and some FCS schools, the Ivies for example, don’t offer any athletic scholarships. The FCS schools on average are smaller than the Division I (FBS) powers and have correspondingly smaller stadiums. Holy Cross, for example, has one of the largest FCS stadiums, seating about 23,000. I personally enjoy going to the FCS games even more than those in the upper ecelons of Division I because there isn’t a bad seat in the house.</p>
<p>I’m not yet on top of the whole recalculation of GPA thing. The whole issue certainly makes it confusing to figure out which colleges are appropriate. </p>
<p>If many colleges add .5 for honors, and 1.0 for AP, what do they add for university classes taken as a high school student?</p>
<p>Which colleges do the above, and which do not?</p>
<p>When we look for GPA ranges to find schools, how can we know whether they are weighted or unweighted (I don’t think that is always clear)? If they recalculate, how is that done (exactly)?</p>
<p>It would be great if every school was extremely clear about what their stated GPA ranges actually mean.</p>
<p>Another question I have regards core classes. I know you would remove things like health, speech, PE, drama, and regular art classes, but what about AP Art?</p>
<p>The schools that recalculate GPA based only on core classes would very likely remove anything that was not English, Math, Social Studies, Language or Science whether or not it is a regular class, an honors class, an AP class, an IB class or a class taken at a college.</p>
<p>spideygirl, some schools ask for 2-3 electives, so I think that is where AP art fits. Other schools evaluate as Bassdad suggests. I attended one info session that said if one takes an elective such as “basket weaving” (not suggesting AP art is basket weaving at all, but I am relaying what was said), that’s very nice, but we are not going to count it in the gpa for admission. The same would apply for other electives at that college (so classes in religion, fine arts, or lifeskills also would not count in the gpa at that school for admission). Also, if the requirement was 3 years of the same foreign language, and a student took 3 years of French plus 2 years of German, I do not think that the grades in German would count for admission at that school. They would view those extra 2 years of study in a foreign language as an elective. The 3 years of French would count in the gpa.</p>
<p>Spideygirl: My D called the admissions office at her number 1 and asked. They didn’t give their formula but told her that the info on collegeboard.com reflected a weighted GPA</p>
<p>kathiep: I’m intrigued and heartened by your post "</p>
<p>“My kids are/were B, B+ (sometimes even C) students and I found colleges for them with substantial merit aid. It can be done!”</p>
<p>I’d love to hear your recipe but am sure it isn’t that easy.</p>
<p>^Thanks you for that info. Now I am wondering, though, how to incorporate this new information about counting classes (even foreign language) beyond the required minimum as “electives”. That would mean that you would possibly be arriving at very different gpa’s for different schools. If, for example, a person had four years of math but only three were required, does that mean that some schools would then consider the 4th year as an elective?</p>
<p>Wow - particularly for the group of students that this thread addresses, choosing where to apply is quite a challenge because of gpa calucation. </p>
<p>It would be great if all colleges published their methods, so students knew whether or not it is worthwhile to apply.</p>
<p>spideygirl, I don’t think the extra math class or foreign language classes would normally be counted as an elective by colleges. At least the few times I’ve heard them talking about what they look at - all they say is they don’t count things like basketweaving or yearbook for credit. I just don’t think it’s worth obsessing over. </p>
<p>That said I have calculated S2’s GPA without his orchestra classes, and generally use that number when reading about colleges and even when I look even at our own Naviance data I assume that his actual GPA is a little lower than what the graphs show.</p>
<p>spideygirl, I think that the applicant should contact each school. Schools do calculate gpa differently. Some add 1.0 to APs, and .5 to honor classes. Others do not. Some count 3 electives into the gpa, others do not. Some take the hs gpa at face value, and others recalculate gpa their way. In conclusion, check with the schools that one is interested in.</p>
<p>One thing you can do is bracket the answer by calculating your own GPA under the worst case assumptions and under the best case assumptions. If the difference between the two turns out to be rather small (which it would be for those who do not load up on AP classes and tend to do about as well in their core courses as in their other courses), then there is not much point in obsessing over how the colleges run the numbers internally. If the difference is large (which it could be for those who take a lot of APs or for those who do much better or much worse in their core courses than their other courses), then you need to do some more research so you will be able to tell if a specific college that interests you is a reach, match or safety.</p>
<p>^^^^ Great suggestion, BassDad!</p>
<p>kathiep - can you tell us some about your kids their stats and where they ended up?</p>