I completely agree (see, I wouldn’t let you leave)!
The idea that the only reason a school would want more applications is for rankings is really missing the mission statements these schools are putting out about having broad representation and a highly diverse student body. I love these efforts and highly respect the resources and attention so many schools are putting on this.
Stanford is not saying anything about how hard or easy it is to get admission, they just release the acceptance rate. Teenagers look at the 3 out of a 100 and think they’ll be one of the three, there’s a lot of research why they think like that, coming from the why the “don’t use drugs” programs didn’t work. At least Stanford has a rigorous application process which does deter some kids from applying, but most colleges do send the mail and emails “baiting” applicants.
“Hopefully this helps any prospective Stanford applicant in understanding, Stanford is very very hard to got accepted into”
It’s not really all that helpful unless Stanford says it, if you have a statement like that, that would be helpful. I doubt any college would say that, but if you have a quote, that would be interesting, otherwise student profiles are not going to cut it to teenagers, especially if they fit the profile and have zero chance of getting in.
Did a bit of spot checking, comparing acceptance rates to high school GPA, to test this theory that high schools are not inflating grades.
Purdue: Half the enrolled class has a GPA of 3.75% or better, and Purdue accepted 60% of its applicants.
University of Georgia: Average GPA of 4.0 (not clear on the scale) but has an acceptance rate of 52.88% for 2019.
University of Utah: 67% acceptance rate, 3.66 GPA
Texas A&M: 66% acceptance rate, 3.68 GPA
University of Wisconsion: 52% acceptance rate. 3.86 GPA
These are all median admitted GPAs (as far as I can tell), so the students that were using these schools as safeties are not included in the GPA numbers. This means that the average GPA of accepted students is even higher than these reported numbers. It is also safe to assume that, given the reasonably high acceptance rates, the schools are not exactly scaring off marginal students from applying. These schools are simply representative of the large population of very high GPA students that exists across this country.
These are all very good schools, but I have a hard time reconciling the relatively high acceptance rates with the incredibly high GPAs, and reaching any conclusion other than that the applicant pool has inflated GPAs compared to 10 or 20 years ago. How long will it be before all these schools can expect a 4.0 GPA from its applicants? As I have asked before, what will schools use to differentiate applicants when that happens?
On a separate but related not, I bet you will see the “median 50%” SAT score reach absurd levels as fewer applicants even provide scores. How long can the schools keep this statistic inflation game going before the criteria lose all meaning?
It is likely all of these schools calculate GPA differently (assuming you took these from the CDS)? Because there are many different ways to calculate this number, you can’t compare GPAs across schools (or have a good idea of HS grade inflation).
I can speak directly to Wisconsin’s GPA calc on the CDS. They take GPA directly from the transcripts…so in the CDS reported average, there are GPAs higher than 4.0, because many HSs (and the number is growing each year) ONLY report weighted GPA on the transcript.
Separately, as I have pointed out on other threads, there are schools where admissions and institutional reporting calculate the GPAs in different ways. Said differently, the average GPA on the CDS may not reflect GPAs calculated in the way they were when the applicant/transcript was evaluated for admission.
For these reasons, and more, many schools do not fill in the GPA field on the CDS, or make any type of ‘average’ GPA data available.
Why can’t I look at a school that lets in 67% of applicants and still has a reasonable expectation of a 3.7 GPA as an indication that high school grades are being inflated? This isn’t just happening at one school, this is across the board.
University of Tennessee accepts 78.8% of applicants and has an average GPA of 3.96. How is that even possible?
Early in the thread, I posited the question: What will AO’s do when everyone has a 4.0? I thought that it would be some day in the distant future. We are almost there now. Maybe not a 4.0, but certainly in the high 3’s. And the public data on high school GPAs certainly does not sync with the data the schools are reporting on their enrolled classes. It would appear that a much higher percentage of high school students are getting high grades than high schools are disclosing.
On the flip side, the colleges are telling the kids NOT to send in test scores, even after the kids have already sent test scores. It appears that we are officially in a world where sprucing up the schools’ marketing literature is more important than putting together the best student body.
A 3.7 isn’t all that impressive on a weighted scale.
According to the NACAC survey, most colleges internally recalculate GPA. Many colleges list their recalculated GPA when posting CDS stats. Some other examples of colleges with 4.0+ average GPAs listed in the CDS are below.
Clemson – Average GPA = 4.42, 78% of students have 4.0
UNC: Chapel Hill – Average GPA = 4.39, 93% of students have 4.0
U Maryland – Average GPA = 4.36, 94% of students have 4.0
U Virginia – Average GPA = 4.31, 90% of students have 4.0
William and Mary – Average GPA = 4.30, 86% of students have 4.0
Harvard – Average GPA = 4.22, 76% of students have 4.0
Scripps – Average GPA = 4.15, 67% of students have 4.0
U Pittsburgh – Average GPA = 4.11, 65% of students have 4.0
GeorgiaTech – Average GPA = 4.05, 85% of students have 4.0
Elon – Average GPA = 4.04, 54% of students have 4.0
Rose Hulman – Average GPA = 4.02, 60% of students have 4.0
Smith – Average GPA = 4.00, 67% of students have 4.0
Appalachian State – Average GPA = 4.00, 53% of students have 4.0
wow…Clemson has 78% with a 4.0 but Smith has 67%?
Both seem low in comparison’s to Maryland’s 94% with 4.0 Obviously such stats have little meaning without knowing what kind of recalculation system they are using, such as what weight is given to AP and honors.
Looks like you asked and answered your own question. The 3.7 GPA you reference is not a function of “grade inflation across the board” but instead a result of colleges “sprucing up their marketing” by recalculating GPA upwards.
Please see @Mwfan1921’s explanation…
Purely anecdotal based on personal experience, but I understand where @CTDad-classof2022 is coming from. I graduated several decades ago from a high performing Mid Atlantic public. In a class of just over 200, I had multiple classmates get into Ivies and other top schools. The co-Val’s were the only ones with 4.0’s and that was because GPA was based on full year grades (I knew both had a B here or there during a quarter). Jump ahead to my kids who both went to a big public where in a class of 400, 10 - 15 kids had UW 4.0’s. Rankings were based on Wtd GPA and the differences were taken to at least 2 and sometimes 3 decimal places. The game was to take the most weighted classes and avoid unweighted classes. Retests were common, which blew me away. A test result was a test result in my day. My D is currently a TA for intro Chemistry in a large well known flagship. One of her biggest headaches is students arguing for grade changes after each exam where those students missed the question but still want partial (or more partial) credit. Those students must have learned that behavior somewhere.
It really brings into question how colleges that are TO and test blind can assert that GPA is more predictive of success than test scores when all of the incoming class has a 3.7 or better. Are the schools saying that a 3.8 has a much higher chance of success than a 3.7? GPA’s are not useful for differentiating between students that precisely given the variability of all the inputs that go into calculating the GPA.
Better yet, how do the top ranked schools assert that GPA is more predictive of success when everyone has a 4.0? How do they map the different 4.0’s into a statistical analysis to reach the conclusion that GPA is more predictive than test scores?
Maybe ALL students above a certain threshold —say 3.7 — are likely to succeed at the school. Rather than trying to slice and dice which of them are admitted based on GPA or test score cut-offs, they take ALL of the likely-to-succeed candidates and pick from them the group most likely to diversify and contribute to the campus community, meet institutional needs, and challenge themselves, as judged by an examination of course rigor, ECs, etc.
Isn’t that the whole point of holistic review?
It isn’t that they are using GPA to decide. GPA can be used to screen out those with low GPAs who may have applied (keeping those with a GPA predictive of success) — then holistic review culls accepted students from the large pool of qualified applicants.
I grew up in a wealthy town, and back then, you got the grades you got. Despite that, kids would work the teachers for extra credit, but the teachers were curving the median to about an 80 to 82, so all the extra credit was doing was knocking someone else down to a C+. And the A’s were earned back then.
GPA’s are not really even that accurate to 1 decimal place, much less 3. Sure, there is a difference between a 3.8 and 3.2, but the difference between a 3.8 and 3.7 could be for a wide variety of factors, literally down to how one or two grades are rounded before they go into the GPA calculation.
I have heard anecdotal stories from teachers and parents in fancier suburbs that blew my mind. Honestly, the school administrators in wealthy towns know that their job is on the line if they don’t get X number of kids in T20 schools and Y number of kids in T50-70 schools. It really is that simple for a Superintendent making well over $200,000 a year. There is a lot of money dependent on those stats, because people aren’t going to pay $800k for a 3,000 square foot house in a town that only sends 5 kids to T20 schools. So either the Superintendent and High School Principal can deliver kids to top schools, or they can get another job. The pressure on prep school administrators is also off the charts. Parents are not paying $50k+ a year for high school for their kids to get C’s. People respond to incentives, and the incentives are pretty simple in this situation.
i’ve been reading this thread and others trying to understand this all over and over all fall, trying to give hollistic test-optional admissions the benefit of the doubt in my mind. i’m coming closer to understanding it all, but this newest one is setting me back.
d23 is vying for top placement in her small school (65 kids in her class). She knows the ACT score of the other top kid. Low 20s. Ive seen so many times on CC in the past on cautions to kids to not apply to top STEM type programs with lower SAT math scores. Is that advice all changed now? does the standardized test not even matter? BKsquare hit on something we see a lot - kids retesting, fighting for points, asking teachers for grade changes.
sometimes i think test-optional, hollistic admissions is just for top, elite high schools; and has nothing to do with smaller, rural, non competitive schools. ?? again, still trying to understand it all.
I have no problem with using the GPA as a factor, and even as the most important factor, but test scores serve a purpose as a check on GPAs and the rest of the application. Without test scores, there is an incentive for high schools to inflate grades.
I really do not understand why many of those who think GPAs are the most important factor are also against using tests at all, because the tests actually make the GPAs more useful in admissions.
This presumes that some how more spots at elite colleges are made available. The college AO offices don’t take more kids from one school based on higher GPAs.
Further limiting the likelihood of “more” spots are the elite schools overt attempts at greater geographic and socio economic diversity. They want fewer “800k 3,000 square foot home” kids and don’t care if the entire community post a perfect GPA.
Taking your logic to its conclusion would mean a school that is entirely stocked with 4.0 GPA students would all wind up at T20s.
As discussed previously AOs look for the best within a school and still measure relative, like for like stats.
Well, you also have kids taking and re-taking the ACT (or SAT). One parent posted that their child took the ACT 6 times. And, of course, there is the paid individual tutoring, prep classes etc. Not sure how that is any different than what goes on at some schools.
I have a D22 who is applying for STEM programs at top schools and my sense is that they want to see strong evidence of STEM capability, whether in math SAT/ACT scores, rigorous coursework (possibly reinforced by AP scores), STEM competition results, etc. So, if an applicant goes test optional, then STEM capability needs to be shown through other sources.
My kid has high test scores, so would benefit from not having test-blind admissions. But her higher test scores do not mean she would be more successful at a school than a student with lower scores. Nor does it mean a student with higher scores than my kid’s would be more likely to succeed. And maybe that student happened to take the test three more times than my child did. How to compare then? (Scores can be “inflated” similar to GPAs with retakes and test prep.)
ALL kids above a certain bar can succeed — a bar well below the tippy top. That’s my point about holistic admissions. The goal is to form a class based on fit and other factors unrelated to grades/scores.