<p>Do any of you know what the average GPA is for admitted students? (I mean average Stanford-recalculated GPA) Thanks.</p>
<p>lol 4.0 i think</p>
<p>According to the Princeton Review's website, it's 3.9.</p>
<p>3.9 weighted, right?</p>
<p>no, I'm pretty sure that's unweighted, but this is all new to me.</p>
<p>Stanford uses only unweighted GPA.</p>
<p>Stanford only uses unweighted GPA on a straight 4.0 scale (they disregard +s and -s) in the core classes (history, math, science, foreign language, english)</p>
<p>clarification:
when you say they drop +/-, does that mean a B+ is a 3.0?</p>
<p>yes .</p>
<p>well that sure blows. That means a 93.4% is a 3.0 at my school. Or do they look at the grading scale too?</p>
<p>I emailed Stanford about this last summer. They convert all your grades (in the 5 major disciplines) to the straight 4.0 scale, with 90-100, an A, as a 4, 80-90, a B, as a 3.0</p>
<p>...Good God. Considering that my school's grading scale is 80-100 A, 70-80 B, and 60-70 C (with As being almost impossible), I don't even want to know what my recalculated GPA is. <em>dies</em></p>
<p>So is a 90 a B or an A?</p>
<p>Stanford's press release from April 2006 says that for admitted applicants to the Class of 2010, "nearly 80 percent have a grade point average of 4.0 or higher." Read the story here:</p>
<p>Their Common Data Set also shows an average GPA for enrolled freshmen of 4.3, and acknowledges that that includes weighting by schools (which is sort of meaningless because schools all weight differently).</p>
<p>These two numbers are consistent--average of 4.3 and only 20% below 4.0. If Princeton Review says 3.9 average GPA, then that has to be either unweighted, incorrect, or calculated in some other way.</p>
<p>Now for my editorial comment. It's my opinion that Stanford uses GPA as a quick screen in admissions and weights it too heavily (they have to--they don't do interviews and they don't want any supplementary material). This favors students from schools and areas that grade more leniently. Further, California high schools in general seem to have higher average GPAs than many other places (maybe as a result of the UC system having minimum GPAs for admission at certain places.) Don't take my word for it--you can find high school profiles on-line to support this. Finally, UCLA, a state school with students heavily from CA high schools (much more so than Stanford, which is about 38%), reports in their Common Data Set (sorry, data from 2002-2003 but it doesn't change much year by year) an average high school GPA for enrolled freshmen of 4.11. That is high! (UCLA folks don't flame me, please).</p>
<p>My son's high school in Mass. did not have a single student with a weighted GPA above 4.0 in the entire senior class of 100, and the average GPA was 2.8. Does that mean none were qualified to attend Stanford? Perhaps, but I think not. It just means that they don't understand that they're hurting their students' chances at colleges like Stanford by holding the line on grade inflation. It is a numbers game. Play by the rules or lose.</p>
<p>GPAs aren't everything. I applaud the colleges that take the time to get to know the student and understand his/her context.</p>
<p>(P.S. I hope the links in this post work. If not, can someone please tell me how to do them properly?)</p>
<p>So would have AP psychology counted as an academic course and thus be recalculated into the GPA?</p>
<p>also, would one B+ screw you over? ;-P Now I'm starting to get worried.</p>
<p>" GPAs aren't everything. I applaud the colleges that take the time to get to know the student and understand his/her context."</p>
<p>Stanford claims to be doing just that...</p>
<p>"would have AP psychology counted as an academic course"</p>
<p>Yes, it's social studies, so it counts.</p>
<p>And no, one B+ won't kill you.</p>
<p>How about if I am taking Psychology at a local college for college credit, does that get calculated into my GPA as an academic class? I am also going to take Trig in the summer for college credit at a local college, does that get calculated into my highschool GPA for Stanford?</p>
<p>"GPAs aren't everything. I applaud the colleges that take the time to get to know the student and understand his/her context."</p>
<p>"Stanford claims to be doing just that."</p>
<p>They may claim to be doing that, but talk is cheap and from what I've seen they aren't doing what they claim. They have perhaps the most unfriendly and impersonal applications/processes of any I've seen:</p>
<p><a href="http://admission.stanford.edu/pdf/Freshman07_Instructions.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://admission.stanford.edu/pdf/Freshman07_Instructions.pdf</a> </p>
<p>They are downright anal. For example, no interview, teacher references only grade 11 or 12, one extra reference limit, essays have to fit in the space on the application (even if printed on a separate page) and no supplementary information. No listing of special skills (i.e., resume), no papers (such as from RSI), no extra anything. Sorry, most impersonal/unfriendly of the 8 or 9 colleges my son applied to, sure comes across like they DON'T want to get to know the applicant. They obviously lean heavily on numbers (SAT and GPA) and essay, put less emphasis on the rest. They're not like other schools. Harvard, for example, says "send us anything you like". Do they get a lot of crap? Probably, but it should be up to the applicant to decide what's important enough to send in.</p>
<p>Is a 90 a B or an A?</p>