I know kids doing this. In schools where a weighted GPA alone determines class rank, the more A’s from APs the higher class rank. To be the top in such a system a student doesn’t need to be top in any of their classes, or even get good AP scores. But you have to give them credit for working hard to get there.
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Yep. My DD wrote about the small amount of kids who choose to take Latin at her public high school and the community they create over 4 years. She was accepted to UMich.
And I feel like she had similar prompts on other applications.
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This is what the school report is for, which is sent with every application. Admissions offices look at grades in the context of that school’s grading approach. Many boarding schools have tough grading and they do just fine in college admissions.
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Does every university have resources to do this? For example, UofA awards merit scholarship just based on unweighted gpa without taking into account rigor. Some schools have a minimum GPA which is just based on transcript.
That’s a really good point, but I think separate challenge. For admissions, the admissions officers often know the schools in their territories or use the school report for lesser known schools and try to look at students in context. It varies how much they have the resources to look every time but that is what the school reports are for.
For merit scholarships, that is a problem beyond the grade inflation. Some scholarships you can get for a 36 on the ACT and not a 35. Or there is a score and GPA minimum that doesn’t factor in rigor. With test optional, programs are probably needing to revisit their scholarship criteria and I am hoping that are able to find a way that is more “fair”.
Most colleges use enrollment management software that allows them to quickly understand where the applicant is at academically. Doesn’t help for auto merit though.
Fabulous news. I happen to count 6 MIT grads among my close friends - they are (obviously) some of my favorite people. Best of luck to your daughter. I am sure she will shine. I can’t recall if you are local or west coast, but Cambridge/Boston is a great area to go to college - although the weather leaves something to be desired!
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I think this was on the Brown app last year? My son wrote about gaming 
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Thanks so much. We are from the west (bayarea). I’m bit more complaining about weather than she is. She’s looking forward to her stay in Cambrige for the next 4+ years.
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We are not. The financial aid from the Ivies and NU was good and from Wesleyan was excellent. We are trying to negotiate to see if her top choice will come closer to Wes.
Also, she was accepted to UMD Music Perf and is leaning away from that as it is so intense. She also is interested in composition, and they don’t have much there, so if she switched to a general Music BA, it wouldn’t really help. She needs something more flexible I think. And, half of her scholarship money is based on majoring in music.
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Concerning checking the rankings, we (I) cobbled together every bit of info we could for S19 and D22 to narrow their lists, then they sorted and filtered per their interests before deciding where to apply.
So… anyone else want to brag about their spreadsheet?
Ours is 204 schools with 52 columns of info. 
I’ll have to find a new hobby now that our youngest has committed.
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I would consider putting it on google sheets and sharing here for people to leverage
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I posted an aggregate ranking for CS several months ago, with 7 sources and ranked by # of appearances on the rankings and average ranking.
It was promptly met with lots of “rankings are stupid”.
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Some ranking is useful as a starting point, but as we apply a lot of other criteria, your personal ranking (of CS schools) would deviate substantially away from the published ranking.
For us, rankings helped with the initial consideration set. The ranking within that set changed based on personal parameters.
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We started with the rankings however proximity became a key as well.
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I would think each family’s tools would be different. Our spreadsheet includes many family-specific items like our NPC results, the kid’s % chance according to Prepscholar and Campus Reel, ranking for their intended majors, D’s impressions on if the campus looked “ugly”, and even the lowest performing mark for current athletes that compete in each of our D’s track and field events (to see if she could walk-on or possibly be recruited).
I also believe that just by completing it, we learned A LOT about schools we never would have known, so the journey was just as valuable as the destination.
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My D22 sent in her deposit last night! She was looking for a west coast school with strong science and music programs, and she wanted either a LAC or an honors college within a larger school. Active outdoor program a plus. We don’t qualify for financial aid but wanted to keep the net cost below $50k/yr, so every place she applied was either a public university or offered merit.
Average excellent stats: 4.0uw/4.3w GPA at good urban public high school, 1470 SAT (submitted everywhere), NMF, 12 IB classes, excellent musician (all-state, all NW), leadership and community service related to music
She doesn’t want to major in music but definitely wanted to continue playing in high level ensembles during college, so she submitted music scholarship auditions or music portfolios to every school that took them.
She was accepted everywhere she applied, with merit and music scholarships at most of the schools. Only Scripps didn’t give her any scholarships. Here are her final results, in order of our net cost:
Willamette: 8k/yr
University of Oregon honors (in state for us): 20k/yr
Western Washington honors (got WUE): 24k/yr
University of Puget Sound: 29k/yr
Whitman: 46k/yr
Occidental: 58k/yr
Santa Clara University: 62k/yr
Scripps: 81k/yr
The California schools were out of budget so we didn’t even visit. She decided she wanted a smaller school, and Willamette’s music ensembles were too small for her, so that left UPS and Whitman. We visited both this month and Puget Sound was the clear winner for her. She spent time with the orchestra, wind ensemble, and in the science building and felt welcomed and at home everywhere. She paid her deposit last night and wore her sweatshirt to school today!
I’m happy with her decision. She’s a strong student and a great musician, and she was hoping to find a college where she would be challenged, engaged, and supported both academically and musically, but also not overwhelmed and stressed out. She wants to be able to have a social life and spend time outdoors too and I think she will be able to at Puget Sound.
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Wonderful list and decision.
But we gotta get away from calling 4.0 uw/ NMF “average” anything. 
Congrats!!
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Oh totally. Didn’t mean to imply her stats are average. But she fits in pretty exactly with the definition of “average excellent” that people use on CC to distinguish the high stats students that are pretty much the same as the thousands of other high stats students out there. Even at her high school she’s ranked 70 out of 400, since she’s taken a lot of unweighted music classes.
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