<p>Everyone here might also want to keep in mind the schools on the space available list.</p>
<p>[Space</a> Availability Survey Results 2009](<a href=“http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Research/SpaceAvailabiltySurvey/Pages/SpaceSurveyResults.aspx]Space”>http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Research/SpaceAvailabiltySurvey/Pages/SpaceSurveyResults.aspx)</p>
<p>no guarantee, but some of these schools may be more open to your child next year.</p>
<p>Queen’s Mom – Sometimes the Common Data Set can be revealing. Sometimes it only clouds the issue. Elon says its mean GPA is 3.9 on the CDS, 3.95 on the UCAN website and 4.0 on its admissions website. On the FAQ on the Elon admissions site, however, it says: “The middle 50 percent of Elon’s incoming freshmen had a 3.5 - 4.0+ high school GPA.” If the 75th percentile is 4.0+, that means 25% of the kids had a 4.01 or better GPA. This means they are NOT using a standard 4.0 scale. Anyway, Elon is one of the more notorious employers of obfuscation. And I don’t know why. Elon is a perfectly good school. I have no idea why they go to such lengths to hide the fact that many 3.3 students are admitted.</p>
<p>^It’s annoying, my son can’t do Latin worth beans, so it really brings down his GPA, so did a bad freshman year chem teacher, but he’s a really bright kid - one that many colleges ought to be happy to get. The percent of kids in the top 10% of the class may sometimes be another clue as to just how tippy top selective a college really is.</p>
<p>Elon: mean GPA (unweighted, core courses only) for accepted students from our high school is 3.36 (past four years, significant number of applicants) and SAT (math/verbal combined) is 1250.</p>
<p>I think Elon is one of those schools which has really benefitted from the demographic surge. I predict it will become easier to get in, now that the baby boomlet has peaked.</p>
<p>(In fact I just checked the Applications Growth thread and indeed it indicates that apps to Elon were down slightly this year.)</p>
<p>For the most selective schools, you don’t get much slack without a big hook, but it seemed to me that most selective colleges, top 300 or so without counting HPYetal, are a bit more forgiving about gpas if the kid is coming from a known rigorous high school with difficult courses. That has been my experience, anyways. As long as the grades are not going below B level. If that SAT is up there and everything else is in place, I’ve seen some unweighted gpas at the 3.0 level getting into such school. This is looking at Naviance type data.</p>
<p>Let’s take Elon (D is not interested in it, but since that’s the school we are discussing). According to D’s naviance, average admitted weighted GPA (unweighted is not given) is 3.94, SAT (1600) is 1209, and SAT (2400) is 1793.</p>
<p>I have read the Colleges That Change Lives Book and know many others on CC use it extensively. I think the book has the right concept, but I find it only a good starting point. I worry that many equal schools have lost hundreds of students over the years by not being in the book and that many parents and kids miss out on the right school because the book includes so few colleges–for example, none in either New York or New Jersey; no public schools.
It also offers no detailed explanation for why, for example, in PA, Ursinus and Juniata made the list, while Alleghenny, Muhlenberg, Susquehanna, Dickinson and Franklin & Marshall did not.</p>
<p>yabeyabe2, I absolutely agree with you! I do think that some excellent schools did not make the cut because their acceptance rate was too low, and they accepted more students with higher gpas. Still, I do agree with you.</p>
<p>The list of colleges included in the Colleges That Change Lives book has not changed since the first edition, published in 1996.</p>
<p>So I think it is important to consider the points made therein conceptually – it’s best to look for the same characteristics in “unknown” schools you encounter or seek out.</p>
<p>My 2006-2007 edition of CTCL includes Allegheny College. Dickinson and F&M are not included because of their selectivity and high GPA/SAT requirements. They, along with Muhlenberg, are also listed in the chapter, “A Few Favorites and Two Hundred Worth Going To,” in Pope’s “Beyond the Ivy League.” I don’t know what concerned him about Susquehana. Maybe his editors said “no more than 200!”</p>
<p>Catholic colleges are a good admissions deal, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. I think we all agree that the book has continuing value as a starting point, but readers should be cautioned that there are gaps in the coverage, whether caused by the passage of 13 years; the small number of schools originally highlighted; or criteria which might omit public, Catholic or slightly more selective schools.</p>
<p>It does have some selective schools: Reed, for example.</p>
<p>Back to the discussion about Elon, is that a school that one of our students could apply to. My son was interested, but I thought that based on GPA that he would never be accepted. </p>
<p>So how do we figure out what they really want for a GPA and test scores? I have found some freshman profile pages but not at all the schools. Allegheny has a pretty high selectivity rating also!!</p>
<p>Yabeyabe2, the CTCL website lists a couple of those PA colleges that were apparently left out of the book. The website is very easy to navigate and provides all the basic info about each school.</p>
<p>[Colleges</a> That Change Lives](<a href=“http://www.ctcl.org/]Colleges”>http://www.ctcl.org/)</p>
<p>warriorboy, I have accessed naviance to a couple of high schools, but not ours. I can see that once the gpa falls below a 3.5 there are a lot of waitlisted/rejected students for admission to Elon. I do not know if the 3.5 is weighted, or unweighted on the scattergrams.</p>
<p>warriorboy648 – Based on what Elon says on its Common Data Set (I’ve provided the link below) the college emphasizes rigor of curriculum, GPA and standardized test scores in evaluating candidates for admission. The essay and recommendations are seen as “important,” while class rank is only “considered.”</p>
<p>I would say that a student with low 600s on each section of the SAT (or a 27-28 on the ACT), a difficult course schedule within the CONTEXT OF THE STUDENT’S HS, and an UNWEIGHTED GPA of 3.4/3.5 has a reasonable shot at admission. When I talk about context, Elon will not be comparing the rigor of curriculum of Student A from Horace Greeley HS in Westchester County, NY with that of Student B from William Jennings Bryant High in Hayseed, Iowa. If your school doesn’t offer 15 APs don’t worry, just take the toughest courses your school offers as long as it you can do better than C+ work.</p>
<p>The tough part is figuring out the “Weighted Elon GPA.” Elon says it looks at only core academic courses – no art, PE, music, health, woodworking, etc. Elon says it then gives weighting to APs, honors and college credit courses. It doesn’t say what the weighting factor they use is. If I was really serious about Elon and in doubt about how to recalculate I’d call the Elon Admissions Office. They are asking for it, in my opinion, because of their lack of transparency. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.elon.edu/e-web/administration/institutional_research/CDS2008C.pdf[/url]”>http://www.elon.edu/e-web/administration/institutional_research/CDS2008C.pdf</a></p>
<p>^^and this doesn’t account for ED acceptances which, by percentage, were in the stratosphere even before the economic crisis of last year; will be very curious to see some of these ED #'s from the most recent admissions cycle…</p>
<p>and I agree with hudsonvalley: I think Elon is following the lead of some of their southern peer schools in terms of transparency…our Naviance is totally unweighted and shows acceptances all over the board ranging from 3.1-3.7 albeit some of those may have been ED</p>
<p>My daughter was accepted to Elon and offered some merit aid. She was a B+ student, took honors classes and just a couple of AP’s but had very good EC’s. That was 6 years ago before it reached it’s current popularity. A more recent HS grad was not accepted with similar stats.</p>
<p>With Elon and so many schools, the “average accepted GPA/SAT” numbers can mislead, because:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Early decision standards may be significantly lower than regular admissions (and the regular admissions SATS, etc artificially high), because these schools get tons of applications from kids only using them as safeties, so the averages are pumped up by kids who do not enroll, vs. ED applicants who will enroll</p></li>
<li><p>In this economy, kids not asking for aid may get in with lower numbers</p></li>
<li><p>In any economy, legacies, athletes (even at non-scholarship schools), etc can get in with lower numbers–and some small schools take surprisingly large numbers of athletes, especially if they have football teams</p></li>
</ol>