<p>My school sends about two or three people to Harvard per year so I've wanted to investigate this. There have been a total of 7 people admitted and three of them were either ranked first or second.</p>
<p>In any case, look at this Naviance scattergram:</p>
<p>I have a GPA of 4.9 and will probably be scoring within the 31-32 range for the ACT. For some reason, you'd think that by this scattergram that I would have a decent chance. However, it seems like the average for my school is much different than the national average. </p>
<p>So would someone getting a GPA that high and with an ACT that high (32-33) have a good chance at Harvard? Seems almost weird. By the way, the average SAT score out of 1600 has been 1427 for my school.</p>
<p>Your school's scattergrams give the best info but you need to account for URMs, recruited athletes, legacies and development candidates. The more elite your school is--very few have that high of a SAT average, it's below that at Exeter and Andover--the more of those hooked candidates you're likely to have.</p>
<p>suze, none of the admitted students were URMs, athletes or legacies. Some of them didn't have any crazy extracurriculars, but a lot of them were super-involved at school. I knew four of the seven personally and they did not have parents that went to Harvard, did not play in any sport and were white. One of them was an Indian girl, however.</p>
<p>Oh, wait, you misunderstand me about my school's SAT average. The SAT average of a person ACCEPTED to Harvard is 1427. Our school is elite.. but not that elite. It's a public school and not boarding like Exeter and Andover. I know who the admitted applicants were because I saw some of them graduate when I was a freshman/sophomore.</p>
<p>And in THAT case, I have to ask .. whenever I posted on here, people told me I had no chances at some of the schools that accepted students from my with a lower ACT/SAT average than what I got. I don't know if I should get my hopes up or what. I happened to be on the "cusp" of the Princeton curve (I was on the upper right of the thin green line that creates a rectangle depicting the average). And for some other schools, I'm actually above the green line.</p>
<p>It is weird, because the more elite your school is the more they ecpect of you. Yet your schools average GPA for Harvard is well below their overall average. Sure there were not more URMs or legacies? The legacy could be through a grandparent or sibling. All minorities are not physically identifiable as such.</p>
<p>It is an inner-city public highschool, the gem of CPS. A 4.91 is lower than the national average? I find this hard to believe, even for Harvard-standards (just because there are probably admits with lower than this because of the lack of APs at their school). This is the accepted average GPA of those accepted to Harvard. We have a very rigorous curriculum & a block schedule. One thing that I might not have mentioned earlier is that a portion of our students are low-income [though I have no idea whether the admits were low-income].</p>
<p>I am about 99% sure none of them were URMs or legacies.</p>
