<p>A valuable tool in assessing chances for a particular school is to look at the Naviance graph for your child’s high school. The GC can also assist you in assessing the chart by pointing out if those outliers on the data have special hooks and also letting you know if your student as anything that will help boost his chances. If your school is not one that tends to send many kids to the most selective schools, what the conventional wisdom says is that successful candidates need to truly be one of the top students. </p>
<p>My son had a definite rising trend in GPA, and that was one of the reasons we applied late in the process for him, having his senior year grades reported in quarter form so there were more of them. He had an identical GPA as a friend who applied to pretty much the same schools he did, and s/he was declined and WLed at those schools even though the test scores were much higher. That s/he had a declining GPA was an issue from some of the feedback given, and also that senior year courses were considered light. My son took the most difficult courses he could senior year, whereas s/he dropped the foreign language since level 4 was attained instead of taking AP level, and took Mandarin Chinese 1 instead, dropped the math, heavy duty science for some Environmental Bio course and other course of interest. Went the direction of interest, but apparently the colleges want to see that interest shown in ways other than in substitution for difficult courses. </p>
<p>If your son applied ED, EA or rolling at an early date, the senior grades may not be shown unless you can get the school to get that first quarter grade out there. For RD, those senior courses and grade will show on the mid year report and most all colleges want those grades and they do weigh in heavily. </p>
<p>Do remember that when you are dealing with the most selective colleges, they have some formidable candidates, so if your student is truly not the top of the top or have some unusual attribute they are seeking, the chances for admissions is very small. When you talk about ivies, it is a wide spread from HPYC single digit acceptance rates to Cornell’s double digit ones. Two of mine were accepted to Cornell with lower GPAs than your son’s but one was an athlete and the other had near perfect test scores, took the hardest possible courses at a very rigorous school that regularly gets kids into top school who are in the second quintile, though his grades were on the low side. But he also had an unusual hook that did differentiate his application, we were told. So other issues do come into play than his gpa. My son had Bs in Chem too, but he got a perfect on the Chem SAT2 test, for instance, and the grade curve for that course was a steep one at his school. </p>
<p>In my opinion, the last schools added to the school list are the most selective ones. It’s easy to pick off those big name schools that we all love to roll off of our tongue. Lots of fun to debate the merits of one vs the other and where your son would have the best chance. Where the true work is in putting together a college list is finding the lesser known schools that are likely to accept him and that he can like and grow as a young man and as a scholar. Even harder, I suspect, is finding the school that pleases you in addition to those requirements. But it is true work in putting together your college list. The rest is easy. But you have to understand that when the dust clears, the sure thing you will have are the choices of those likely schools, not the highly selective ones.</p>