<p>Dear fellow CCers,
I think it's pretty safe to say I'm not the only one who noticed this trend, but I am just astonished by the number of people on CC who post their weighted GPA without specifiying what it's out of. In fact, I believe the last time I found a chances thread that included this fundamental piece of information was about three months ago. </p>
<p>Come on guys, If I tell you my weighted GPA is 4.3, what does it mean to you if you don't know whether it's out of a 4.5, a 4.66, or a 5.0? the system varies from school to school... </p>
<p>Orrican, I've tried several times on collegeconfidential to get people alarmed about two areas where they are being deceived by stats. Since you've got til sundown tomorrow to think them over, perhaps you'll be the first person to agree with me that these are areas of huge deceit.</p>
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<li><p>SAT scores of those ATTENDING are usually given, not those ACCEPTED. The former are relevant for estimating one's classroom competition, the latter are relevant for estimating one's chances of admission. Two COMPLETELY different things. But how seldom does anyone make this distinction?</p></li>
<li><p>Here's the BIG one. US News' categories of % of classes under 20 students and % of classes over 50. The % of classes the average student will take with under 20 students in them will almost certainly be way lower than the listed %. And the % of classes he/she will take with classes with more than 50 students will be way higher than the % listed. Think about it. The figures are the # of classes/courses (I'm using the terms interchangably). Since the number of students in the over-50 classes is (by definition) high, and the # of students in the under-20 classes is low, the statistical impact they have is similarly big and small. I wish I could explain it better. I'd imagine anyone who's taken a stats course in the last 30 years (I took one 31 years ago) could explain it better than I can. Ball's in your court, orrican.</p></li>
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<p>I think it's pretty safe to say I'm not the only one who noticed this trend....<<</p>
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<p>I think it's pretty safe to say that you are the only one who cares. The whole notion of weighted grades has made the top end quite flexible and thus rather meaningless. That's why I always put much more weight on the unweighted GPA as a legitimate stat.</p>
<p>Tourguide - Since this is posted on the Harvard thread, your comment about accepted students' SATs may be accurate - it's a fair measure of what your chances are of admission. After all, Harvard is no applicant's "safety school." But most schools can be a safety for someone who's much more highly qualified. So, the accepted SAT is not that representative of the college since it includes not only the scores of those who become the school's future students, but also the acceptances of those who are very unlikely to attend. On the other hand, that statistic is not balanced out by the extreme scores on the bottom end because those applicants don't get accepted. I think it may be likely that a school with an average student SAT in the low 1300s could well publicize an average SAT of "accepted students" in the mid- or upper 1300s that's skewed by applicants who subsequently got into and chose Top 20 schools.</p>
<p>Orrican, I wasn't trying to contradict you at all. I was just throwing out some other stats issues for you to think over because you seemed bored.</p>
<p>gadad, I didn't mean for either of my topics to relate specifically to Harvard. But I agree, seeing as how Harvard has a yield of about 80%, the difference between these two sets of stats would probably be minimal. But for other schools it could be dramatic. I just find it odd that people throw around SAT stats without much consideration about which set they are dealing with.</p>