<p>A picture is worth a thousand words.</p>
<p>FW - fascinating pictures. They represent a first glance at the picture we want to see, but as a data set, are (of course) a horrendously biased sample.</p>
<p>For the record - I had a 3.3 unweighted GPA (3.9 weighted, where an Honors class gets a 1.0 boost). I was waitlisted -> rejected from several schools during my senior year of HS (outright rejected from many). </p>
<p>Then I took a year off, got some work experience, refined my understanding of why I wanted to go to college, fell in love with Columbia, applied ED and got in. With a 3.3 GPA.</p>
<p>It helped that I was among the smartest kids in my (public) high school, but I was far from the most driven, disciplined, or experienced. I developed drive and discipline on the fly, and it was enough. Those "minimums" in the chart may be somewhat misleading, and I wouldn't want anyone to despair from reading them.</p>
<p>-Steve</p>
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<p>Exceptions don't prove a rule. In general, kids with 3.3 GPA should despair and refrain from dreaming about top schools. The competition is tough. One can try for top schools, but better have safeties, otherwise one may lose a year!</p>
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This is the kind of information we need to evaluate our chances in top schools. Thanks for letting the secrets out. The admission process is needlessly convoluted
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this info will help ... what is needed in tandem is information about the students who got rejected at these schools ... what was the MAX SAT that got a NO, MAX GPS that got a no. With that info it becomnes clear that estimating "chances" for top tier schools for any one applicant is VERY HARD to do. For every accepted kid there are bunch of applicants whose applications are jsut as strong.</p>
<p>I sure as hell would've liked to have this data when I applied to college...</p>
<p>IMHO, the admission process came to the point of complexity where the admission officers (being human) just cannot adequately take all the relevant factors into account anymore. If you take a look at the stats thread for recent acceptance/rejections that is somewhere here on the board, you will see no correlation whatsoever between GPA, class rank, SATs, etc etc and the admission decision. So the chances threads are totally obsolete, nobody can predict if a particular admission officer will have/not have a headache on a day he reads your application. And that is ultimately what will take you/not take you to a college of your dreams.</p>
<p>I agree on both counts...</p>
<p>The averages are so high because the average SAT at that school is ridiculously high! (Captain Obvious). The lowest score I am seeing is 1840. Everyone got accepted somewhere, right? So the lowest SAT in the entire class is 1840. The only part that puzzles me is why so many were rejected from so many schools. Must be a lot of not well rounded geeks or the colleges make them compete against their own hs classmates for limited admission slots.</p>
<p>The thing with going to such a great school is that particular schools are only going to selected an allotted amount per school.</p>