My school’s profile is very strange. For starters, we’re an nationally ranked public school (top 100) and are consistently top 50 for STEM schools. We have a >90% pass rate for the 2500-3000 AP tests taken by our kids every year, and the middle 50% of our SAT scores is 1930/2110. The SAT score is rising, but our average GPA is also falling. However, I don’t know whether the profile will help/hurt me.
We don’t officially “rank” kids, but we have unofficial deciles for the first six semesters based on UW GPA. My class is small (around 30 members under the standard in previous years). Top 6-7% have 4.0s, the next 13-14% have >3.9, top 30% have >3.8, and top 40% have >3.7. The correlation coefficient for test scores and GPA is roughly .7. No one at my school is forced to take any sort of advanced courses. Of course, having a 4.0 at this school is pretty valuable if you have a good course rigor, but I was wondering if my 3.75 UW, 2210/2240 super, having all 5’s (except for a 4 on something I self studied) on my AP tests, and a good course rigor (not great because I’m not in accelerated math) would hurt me because of the school profile. How would colleges look at this? Does it cry grade inflation as others have said?