<p>My son who is a sophomore in a competitive public HS got 2 B+'s for the English honors and Spanish honors. He still has time and did have very rigorous curriculum during the sophomore year. But still, should I be concerned with the GPA's since he is targeting top colleges like Columbia, UPenn and UChicago in a couple of years? </p>
<p>10th
Honors English 10 - B+
Honors Spanish 3 - B+
Honors Chinese 4 - A
Honors World History - A-
Honors Math 3 - A
Honors Chemistry Lab - A
AP Statistics - A</p>
<p>9th (I was told the grades in 9th don't count toward reported GPA. not sure why)
English 9 - A
Spanish 2 - A
Honors Chinese 3 - A
World History - A
Honors Math 2 - A
Intro Physics Lab - A</p>
<p>His SAT score (first try) - 2240 (R 710/W 730/M 800 & essay 10)
SAT MATH II - 800
PSAT (first try) - 219
AP Stats (5)</p>
<p>Boy scouts for 10 years (now a troop leader)
Debate club (president elect)/Math club/Science club - many state/regional science and math team competition 1st/2nd/3rd place finishes
Sports 9 years in city swimming team</p>
<p>Next year he will be taking mostly AP's.
11th (planned)
AP English 11
Honors Spanish 4
AP Chinese 5
AP US History
AP Calculus 4 BC
AP Biology Lab</p>
<p>Should I be concerned with the 2 B+'s?</p>
<p>haha no… he will be fine… its not that big of a deal.</p>
<p>I have several friends who were admitted to top ivies with a handful of B+ grades. He’ll be fine as long as he’s in the top 10% of the class.</p>
<p>Thanks, rodrigo9 and aleaiactaest. Are you guys serious? Are you saying GPA is not important or are you saying B+ for honors class isn’t that bad?</p>
<p>A 3.9 or 4.0 isnt gonna make any difference. There’s so many other factors to an application that that little difference isn’t gonna matter much. If the ACT/SAT is good and the ECs are also good, two Bs isnt gonna make any difference whatsoever</p>
<p>It depends on your school. It most likely will not hurt you. Colleges compare gpa on a school level. At my local high school, 30% of the grade has a 4.0 (source friend). However, I go to a top 20 USA today private school and top 30 WSJ. I got two Bs, but my GC said it won’t hurt at all cuz our schools highest cumulative gpa was 3.89. So it depends on your school.</p>
<p>^It’s not that it isn’t important…but I think the actual, numerical value of your GPA is less important than people think. They just want to know if you’re qualified to do the work at their institution, and someone with a top 10% class rank, greater than 700 on each SAT section, and/or above 30 on the ACT can do the work at any school in the country. After that, it comes down to how you can contribute for their school. I know this may sound surprising, but a lot of the hairsplitting they do isn’t academic…it’s extracurricular/personal. I didn’t believe this until I saw many, many numerically superior (i.e., valedictorians with perfect GPAs and scores) students get rejected while their seemingly “less-qualified” (though still top 10%) peers with very clear extracurricular passions were admitted. Believe it or not, Harvard seems to be the Ivy that is least concerned about academic hairsplitting. After all, it has plenty of students with stellar numerical stats. Therefore, it has the freedom to be a bit lenient if a candidate presents strong extracurricular/person credentials. For a while, Harvard seemed to like students who were so dedicated to their extracurriculars that they put their grades second. See this article:</p>
<p>[Keys</a> to the Kingdom | Boston Magazine](<a href=“http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/keys-to-the-kingdom/]Keys”>http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/keys-to-the-kingdom/)</p>
<p>On the other hand, Princeton (by no means a second-tier Ivy) and some of the second-tier Ivies (Dartmouth, UPenn) seem to be the ones that are more picky about grades/test scores. This may be because they want to bolster their US News averages, which Harvard and Yale don’t really need to do given their already high standing.</p>
<p>^ Thank you, guys. Great insights!</p>
<p>colleges do not compare students from different schools because each school has different level of rigor… if he goes to a rigorous school his grades are perfectly fine. he should just keep up the good work and i think he will get into a ivy level school.</p>
<p>@rodrigo9, thanks. Hopefully he can keep up the grades while exploring his passion next year. His school(class size 460) usually has about a dozen students going to ivy or ivy caliber schools every year.</p>