<p>High scores do not provide much of a boost without a story to tell. Based on the acceptance threads, most of the high score/low gpa kids who got in to highly selective schools did things like interview/visit multiple times (this works at small LACs), apply ED, demonstrate a real “passion” for something. My son (2220 SAT/ 800’s subject tests) has an overall gpa below 3.6 mostly due to freshman year. He has a strong upward trend and took the most challenging courses every year. Based on acceptances from our school, it is clear he would have been much better off taking just one or two AP/honors courses each year in order to boost his gpa, but at what cost? He had some great teachers who challenged him, and I think he will do well at UCSB.</p>
<p>A web site we found very useful was ‘my chances/parchment’ (google for web address). Go to the feature called scattergram after you search the name of the school and see where your data point lies relative to others. Their chance percentages are not very reliable, but the scattergrams give you an idea of the acceptance pattern for the school. You can click on each data point and see where that individual applied and the results.</p>
<p>I agree with Teenmom. Those scattergrams and programs like Naviance can be very valuable in assessing a gpa from a particular high school as does other info from the high school in the success in getting into particular colleges. Given two similar colleges, if one knows and has a record of accepting more kids from a given high school. that gives you some extra information. I found this info to be quite accurate. Looking at several years worth of results, there were not many outliers in the data and they tended to be acceptances that were clearly special circumstances such as a recruited athlete or a celebrity/development potential admit.</p>
Of course you never know how real the data is, but that is pretty cool. Especially the sorting variations on the scattergrams. I liked running the graphs by class rank. It shows some schools (UCs) where it is really telling. For some schools it is less predictive but it does show you where your chances are really slim, if not where your chances are particularly good.</p>
<p>Do you really consider a 3.6 GPA from a rigorous prep school a low GPA, especially combined with high test scores?? Really??</p>
<p>We have scattergrams on Naviance on our school website. There are PLENTY of 3.6 high test score kids getting into very, very good schools, even Ivy’s.</p>
<p>The problem with Naviance and scattergrams is the data is bunched together, i.e. GPA and SAT scores. Here is a kid with 2380 SAT 1 score and 3.55 uw GPA. I could never find a match at all. If I use her SAT score she is in everywhere but if I look at GPA she is barely in our state university. Once you have this discordance it is all guesswork.</p>
<p>SteveMA - even teenmom didn’t write that a 3.6 from a “top prep” was a low GPA. I think everybody on here knows there are schools with lower GPAs in general, and that there are “feeder” type schools. Of course a person needs to make sure they actually attend such a school, and I think the only way to tell that is from the schools college admissions results, which I rhink most everybody also knows.</p>
<p>Post #146, I believe Chaosika(?) got into a lot of good schools with very similar stats, SAT 2360, GPA 3.6 uw(going by memory). She got into Vanderbilt, USC, Claremont-McKenna, Wellesley, NYU(Gallatin). She seems to be a good writer, at least knows what she wants out of college.</p>
<p>SteveMA-i don’t think a 3.6 GPA is low, but from our upper middle class high school (where we had around 30 NMSFs) nobody with that GPA got into the Ivy League and many if not most didn’t get into Cal, UCLA, or UCSD. I think that GPA wouldn’t put you in the top ten percent. So it depends on the grading scale at school.</p>
<p>S had a 3.6 uw GPA at our regular public school and maybe made the top 10%. Not many NMF at our school. We only had 1 his senior year and D’s year had 2. So, I wouldn’t call it a “low” GPA, but certainly not great.</p>
<p>My perspective is from a CA resident applying to the circus that is UC admissions. If you look at the scatterplots for Berkeley and UCLA you can count on one or two hands the number of kids (out of hundreds) who were admitted with a GPA of under 3.6, and most of those had a weighted GPA well above 4.0. However the SAT scores show a more broad distribution, so at least in the UC system GPA (and class rank) trump SAT scores. I think the same pattern holds true for others ‘top’ colleges, but it is difficult to see given that most kids are rejected regardless of their GPA/scores. The data on the web site (mychances/parchment) I mentioned is consistent with official statistics published by UC, so I have no reason to doubt that most of the information is valid. I’m glad we looked at these scatterplots before the application season, it gave us a realistic understanding of what we should consider a “safety, match and reach”.</p>
<p>Under a 3.6 is different than a 3.6. A 3.6 is an A- average—I guess that falls into the “Asian F” category in CA though. Even looking at the Scatterplots for Harvard and Yale, there are a fair number of 3.6’s with 2100-2300 SAT’s that are admitted. Looking at the Berkeley and UCLA scatterplots on Cappex, which is nationwide data, 1000’s of 3.6, 1700-2000 SAT’s, and quite a few below 3.6’s are getting accepted there. I think the issue is a CA resident issue and not a GPA issue at the schools you mentioned.</p>
<p>Class rank matters in the sense that students at the top of a high school class are designated ELC. I’d bet that’s what the UCs are tracking, not class rank per se. </p>
<p>Reading back over the early pages of this thread, I think that anyone who’s a student in this range (or parent of one) should go back and reread the philosophy/big picture/holistic insights in this thread and in its predecessor, <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/767118-under-3-6-gpa-applying-top-20-parents-thread.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/767118-under-3-6-gpa-applying-top-20-parents-thread.html</a> I think that’s much, much more useful than just looking at random people posting here saying they had such-and-such GPA and SAT/ACT without also seeing the context of those stats. How rigorous was their high school? What was the student’s AP and/or IB and/or college-level course load? What are the student’s ECs, their writing ability? Was this an ED app? How does the high school fare in college admissions? Context is incredibly important for students like this. </p>
<p>Those of us who posted on those threads thought about these issues for weeks, even years, letting it settle in. I used the insight I gleaned from these threads to rewrite the high school profile at D1’s magnet, and darned if the seniors didn’t have an exceptionally good year in admissions. :)</p>
<p>I have a 3.4 UW GPA. Freshman year, got straight A’s because of easy classes, but downward trend ever since. However, my courseload is probably the toughest at my school. I’ve taken 5 AP’s, gotten 5’s on all of them, and I’m taking four more this year. Even so, I’ve gotten a ton of B’s and am only in the 2nd quintile. 2310 SAT, all SAT II’s are 750+.</p>
<p>I haven’t won any major awards except for National Merit Finalist. I don’t hold any leadership positions in extracurriculars nor have I done any science research. I do quiz bowl, tech for school plays, Model UN, and do a lot of community service with tutoring disadvantaged kids.</p>
<p>Going next year to Swarthmore.</p>
<p>I think it’s all about doing interesting things in your free time, and having the intellectual engagement you show in your essays that will naturally come through in your recommendations also.</p>