If you are below average gpa (such as 3.7; average at Dartmouth according to prepscholar is 4.06), may they still consider you?
Yes, but the acceptance percentage, IMO, drops as the GPA drops. I’m sure Dartmouth is similar to Princeton in that regard.
https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/admission-statistics
Additionally, I would assume that many, if not most, applicants with lower GPA’s are heavily hooked (URM/recruited athlete, etc.)
How do you achieve a 4.06 UW GPA? Isn’t a perfect UW GPA 4.0?
Some schools calculate an A+ as a 4.33 (Simone colleges also calculate A+ as 4.33)?
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At our HS, a 3.7 would be an amazing GPA… The school doesn’t weight. In other words, it depends on the school and the coursework.
Naviance may be a good guide for your school.
The answer is simpler than that- Prepscholar guessed. I can’t provide the link to the below quote due to this site’s rules, but Google is your friend.
So we don’t know the data source, nor do we know if they are strictly using unweighted GPA (it appears from the statement that it is mixed). For me, if the info does not come from the primary source, I question its accuracy.
It can also matter what courses led to your gpa. Drivers Ed, gym, some odd district requirement, etc, matter far less than cores, rigorous classes, and those related to your possible major. They’ll look at the transcript. Applicants should know it’s more than just cumulative gpa. And if you know what else a top college looks for, you can gain perspective on how your complete app will appear.
A 3.7 unweighted average is an A- average, according to the College Board. With a most challenging course schedule, that is hardly low.
Of course they have. A quick search of CC results threads show at least 4 (probably more, I didn’t look that hard) out of a couple of dozen posters in the past 2 or 3 result threads.
Athletes for sure have, as well as applicants with other exceptional hooks/interesting BGs or accomplishments. (I know a few from many years ago.) But it is relatively rare. Dartmouth common data shows no info for GPA but has 93% of the 36% of admits who report class rank as being in the top 10%. So the percentage of students with 3.7 UW GPA is pretty low, and most are either hooked in some strong way or attend very competitive schools with good relationships with Dartmouth admissions and have very strong test scores, rec, etc.
It’s a highly competitive school that has to pass up 4.0/800/800 students, and will also take 3.7s if they bring something rare or exceptional to the campus.
At our HS, when my kid graduated in 2008, the top 10% of the class included some GPAs in the B+ range. IIRC, the B+/A- break point was a 92. Grading was on a 100pt scale, with no weighting at all. They didn’t rank either, but you could figure out roughly where a GPA would fall by looking at the school profile for the class, if you wanted to. This was a rough break for kids who chose to challenge themselves with APs and Honors and accept that they would get Bs. It caused some very negative admissions results for at least one kid I knew. One year we had a val who had never taken a single honors or AP course. Ridiculous.
As CaliDad2020 points out, it does depend on the HS.