Just got a fresh “Your College-Bound Kid” podcast. Reporting a sampling of 8+ unnamed schools host talked to said ED numbers way down this year. Also said some schools might even lower the bar for certain priority groups ED this year since they are scared.
I have a silly question- how does your school calculate GPA?
I always thought it was like this:
Cumulative freshman year + cumulative sophomore year + cumulative junior year + cumulative senior year / 4 (years) = total cumulative GPA
D21’s school throws them all together and divides by the number of credits. It skews her GPA down as I imagine it would for any IB/AP kid.
Just curious.
@jeneric here it’s all the classes together as you describe (regardless of when they were taken) divided by number of total credits (that’s what makes it an average of the grades…the other way you describe doing it would make it an average of the years’ GPAs instead of an actual GPA, I’d think).
Ours is like yours. No distinction is made about when classes are taken. I’m not sure how it would work out if done by year. Our kids GPA’s tend to rise every year, as more weighted AP classes are available. Freshmen get none, Soph 1-2, Jr and Sr 4 each year.
For an unweighted GPA take core courses only, using a 4 point scale assign points to each semester grade (A=4, B=3 and so on). Ignore plus minus. Divide by the total number of core course semesters included in the numerator.
Our experience is that you won’t see anything about that test at all until scores are posted. There is no acknowlegement of registration, and even more unnervingly no confirmation that the test was even taken until scores are posted.
IIRC, but I’m not positive, those scores will be available to the GC and maybe even show up in your physical mailbox before they are on the website.
D took an in school test September 22. Still nothing at all is being shown.
D took the school SAT on Sept 23 and was supposed to get a score this morning. So far, nothing. On the CB website, it even still says that the test was given in April not Sept. On the page where they list the dates that scores are available, it does list the school day Sept 23 test and today is the day scores are released. Some kids on Reddit got their scores this morning at 8:00 est but many still waiting. I was refreshing my screen a bunch this morning but have given up and will just check later. I don’t even think D knows a score is coming. Again with the bad curve according to the kids who have posted their scores and how many they got wrong. I just think all SATs have a rough curve now above 700. On this test, five wrong only gets you a 700.
GC got back to me that ACT in-school testers will get paper score in the mail 3-8 weeks after the school receives test materials from the ACT. Then two weeks after the mail is received, the website will reflect the score. Ugh.
Now I have an answer from ACT customer service. Said as soon as possible but it could be until December. 2-8 weeks. Not to expect for October until at least November. Ouch.
He also said they post scores online Wednesdays and Fridays. Scores are processed randomly and not by location. He didn’t mention anything about mailing scores.
We’ll still hold the EA apps up until a couple of days before the deadlines and hope they can turn it around soon.
Checking in…I have not posted frequently but do lurk regularly.
DS has now submitted 13 applications. He has one more to submit before Nov 1 and after that he has about 5 he is thinking about but says he is not sure if will submit or not. All of those left are super reaches (eg., Stanford, Harvard, etc.) and he is getting tired…
He considered ED, REA but decided against it…most of those submitted are EA.
Hoping to have a few acceptances this month which will take some of the pressure off. He has a v good SAT score from August of 10th grade and is signed up to take the ACT next Saturday. He took a few practice tests and seldom misses anything but he always does better at home vs at the actual test. I read some say that the recent math portions have been tougher than normal and warned him but he has done math competitions for years and feels very confident…I hope not too confident as I think Covid has everyone a bit rusty.
As others have mentioned, it will be great when this is over! Good luck!!
A while back I asked the group for its collective wisdom on using a soph teacher for one of the recs. For various reasons, she didn’t have good junior year options (the teachers she wanted to use all only had her for 9 weeks before Covid wrecked everything and sent her online, where frankly she did not shine). D was planning on using one rec from a junior year teacher, and doing the second from a soph teacher who knows her well and that had her for 2 AP classes in her major area.
She just told me this morning that a second college (Pomona, not sure the first) said during their virtual school visit that they required it to be a junior or senior year teacher. Most likely she won’t apply to Pomona, but the fact that 2 AOs said that gives me some concern.
The new plan is to add a teacher who she had soph and junior years. We considered her earlier, but the big concern is that I don’t know how good of a rec she would write. I’m not thrilled that half of that class was online, but since she had her the year before too hopefully she will still write a good rec.
She is going to leave on the soph teacher, and use him as an additional rec if that is possible to submit. Of the 3 he knows her best, likes her best, and is probably the best letter writer.
Ugh. I want this process to be over.
I don’t think I posted this yet, but D did get accepted into our state flagship that has rolling admissions, and a couple of days later she received a letter that she was awarded a full tuition scholarship. I think they normally don’t award those until after December so they can look at all the early apps and decide where to draw the cut-off line. My guess is that since they had a good idea what the cut-off will be from past years, they decided to give out awards earlier this year in the hopes of locking down some of those top students. They have been advertising early scholarship consideration, but I didn’t expect it to be basically contemporaneous with the admission decision.
This is not her first choice, but a nice admit at an even nicer price to have in the back pocket. She will definitely be a student somewhere next fall. Even though I expected this, it does give me more peace of mind than I thought it would.
@dadof4kids -Thats great news! Congrats to your D. All good news like that helps make these long weeks a little bit better with a nice bright spot. Unexpected early extra perks!
Hello everyone,
My DD2019 introduced me to this forum, and I’ve been reading all the very helpful posts… this is my daughters account I’m using.
Now that it’s my DS21’s turn and I’m hoping you all can help me with my scenario.
Opposite from my daughter, my son’s attitude is very relaxed towards this whole college process. His motto is… education is education no matter where I go. Because of that, we are just going to apply to UCs in our own state. His stats is about 3.88 unweighted, around 4.17 UC capped (if I calculated right), 1470 sat from one sitting. Targeting majors in stem (I know, very competitive).
At first we were just hoping he could get into one of the mid tier UC with his stats. However, with the recent news on sat submissions, all the mid tiers seem like such lotto system for kids with his gpa. I’ve been thinking if we should ask him to apply to some out of states or privates as backup. This kid, would only apply if it doesn’t require any essays!
Should we be concerned? You’re probably asking why not just talk to him. But this kid is in his own lala land and hates college talks. we are lucky that he’s at least putting in the work for UC common app. My concern is he won’t have too many options in March 2021 if he gets rejected or waitlisted by most of the UCs.
My other question is if there’s list of universities that don’t require essays and is decently ranked for CS related majors?
Thank you in advance.
@Clueless2000 Would he be OK with going to a CC and then transferring if he doesn’t get into a UC? My nephew in CA has decided to only apply to a couple UCs + Cal Poly SLO, knowing all are a crapshoot but he’s perfectly happy to go to the local CC and transfer in 2 years. So, for him, this is fine.
@clueless2000 Have him look at U of Arizona, Arizona State, U of NM, and maybe U of Utah. With his stats he is likely to get merit enough to bring costs down to in state rates, maybe even less.
@clueless2000 my son is applying CS, and has similar stats to yours, and we are in California. I think mid-tier UCs are a crap shoot even with SATs being considered. Our local rep at UCSB said last year that only 50% is SAT and grades during holistic review.
Cal Poly is another app, but it’s a solid CS school and the app is pretty short and simple. You could add SJSU (and Long Beach and SDSU) to that app.
Did he agree to the college search when he took the PSAT or SAT? If yes, you might check his email. If not, you might see if you can get into his account and activate that - my S was sent some shortcut, essay-free apps through that data mining, even a couple with no application fee. Montana State my son applied no essay and was quickly accepted. He also just got a no essay invitation from U Minnesota.
@dadof4kids congrats to your D on the scholarship award. Glad it’s giving you peace of mind as you navigate the rest of this process!
Before posters give you CS school suggestions…What is your budget?
Can you help assess UC situation, @gumbymom?
@Clueless2000 If your S21 is already doing one essay for the Common App, couldn’t you just use that same essay for most of the other apps? Colorado School of Mines and Montana State U both sent out emails with links to easy applications that don’t require essays. Got one from U of Alabama with no essays and no app fee as well, but that one was for National Hispanic Scholars.