@DLP824 Welcome. Colleges have mentioned that they will recalculate GPA because schools differ so much in terms of how they calculate it. Perhaps call some of the schools to see what their specific method is.
@DLP824 Welcome! So, I saw your Chance thread where you mentioned your Dâs weighted GPA. It is usually helpful to post the unweighted GPA instead of, or in addition to, the weighted GPA, in addition to what scale is used. Since the 5.0 scale is not often used, you may want to (for your own edification) recalculate your Dâs GPA on a 4.0 scale (or estimate as closely as possible) so that you can more easily compare her to the stats you see most commonly used on this site. You will see that out of state stats for UF are pretty insanely high, and you will want to make sure expectations are set appropriately during your search.
My d had a lowish unweighted but a high weighted gpa, so she emailed all the colleges to which she applied to find out how they recalculated. Most were very happy to provide the information.
My S has friends who scored really highly on the ACT and yet are trying to now prep for and score well on the SAT. They think the SAT looks more prestigious for colleges. I have heard that colleges donât care about whether you submit the ACT or SAT. Thoughts?
@Octagon From what I understand, colleges do not prefer one test over the other. But Iâm curious: if these students thought the SAT looked better, why did they bother with the ACT?
@Octagon From Prepscholar, and what I have heard for almost a decade now:
âKeep in mind that, regardless of what you might have heard to the contrary, all schools accept both the ACT and the SAT. Though in the past selective colleges on the coasts generally preferred the SAT, this hasnât been the case for decades.â
@ShrimpBurrito Thanks. Their strategy was to take the ACT because it was supposedly easier to prep for. Then once they received a high score, possibly after one sitting, they would move on to more intensive SAT prep.
@bigmacbeth Glad that there is no preference anymore.
I told my S who is taking the ACT not to bother with this âstrategyâ since there are much better ways to spend oneâs time and it probably didnât matter anyways.
I see too that there is a new trend to take both tests regardless of how well one does which really makes me shake my head.
I think itâs a good idea to try both tests, as students tend to perform better on one or the other, but if you ace the first one, just be happy and be done.
ACT and SAT have subtle differences and so it may be worthwhile to take either practice or real test to see which one suits the student. But I am not sure if you can really consider one test as easier than other or that preparing for one saving time for the other - this need not be true. ACT has more straight forward questions - especially in the English - but slightly shorter time. SAT has a bit more confusing question/answer-choices but it has a bit longer time. So preparing for ACT need not help in SAT - in fact, some prep companies suggest students have a gap of at least a month and some serious re-orientation before taking the SAT (after ACT).
Taking ACT or SAT after already having a good score in other test is (IMO) a waste of their precious resource - time.
At what score should kids consider good enough to stop taking the test if they are going to apply to some top 20 schools? For example is there a difference between a 34 and 35 to a school like Vanderbilt, for example?
@janiemiranda. Depends on what the rest of the kidâs resume looks like. 75th percentile at Vandy is 35. A 34 is great with all the other stuff they are looking for in a student.
My D20âs college counselor proclaimed she was done with a 34. It wonât be the score that keeps her out of 99% of the colleges out there. She has some significant ECs so not sure how thatâs weighted. With that being said, I would have preferred she try once more, but I guess Iâve been overruled.
@bigmacbeth thanks for the info. Ds weighted gpa as I mentioned in the other thread is 4.886/5 and unweighted is 4.429/5. Our guidance counselor said just multiple by .8 so 3.91W/3.54UW. Hopefully that is correct and what I am going with for now. That is total gpa though, not core. I have calculated out her core gpa separately and it falls about in the middle on the 4.0 scale.
My daughterâs friend took the SAT after getting a 36.
That was real head scratcher for me.
@VickiSoCal ^^^agree. Close friendâs D also got a 36 first try and the mom was wondering if she should also take the SAT to âvaiidateâ the 36, smh! Ultimately the mom let it go and her D is now a freshman at Harvard. Just goes to show how insane this college process is and makes a lot of us a little bit crazyâŠ
I think this is part of why some students want a SAT score. 1490-1520 on the SAT is a 34 on the ACT. 1530-1560 is a 35. If you compare a 1490 (34) to a 1560 (35) there is a bigger difference when looking at school stats.
Iâm not saying that the schools will judge you differently but I personally think it is easier to see where one fits into a schoolsâ admission stats with the SAT scores compared to ACT.
^^+1 - taking SAT after a 36 in ACT is head scratcher.
In our city there is a âsomewhat trivialâ reason that prompts high-scoring kids to retake the other one: there is this award/recognition for high score in each ACT and SAT. Typically - there are more 36 ACT scoring kids than max 1600 SAT. So this prompts kids with near perfect SAT (1570-1590) to attempt ACT. This award is nothing much but kids get a medal at a townhall meeting which generally comes in local news and newspapers - a bragging thing for local hs kids :).
Yes, I believe the US Presidential Scholars recognition is based on perfect scores. I donât think there is any money associated with the recognition and the finalists arenât announced until Spring of 12th grade so it is a feel good recognition (which they all should be) and not something that is included on a college application. https://www2.ed.gov/programs/psp/index.html.
As you mentioned Vanderbilt specifically @janiemiranda - there does seem to be a different in outcomes from my kidsâ school between 34 and 35. We donât have a ton of data points, so take it for what itâs worth, but our Naviance shows zero acceptances at 34 or lower in the last 3 years. You might check your schoolâs data to get a sense on how the students do with various scores. We donât have a ton of high stats kids, so our data sample is relatively small.