<p>Right, PG. Ds’s 3.7 number comes from some online calculator, which is why I put no stock in it. Will pull out the transcript right now and figure this out. But it will make a HUGE difference whether the 91s and 92s are 4.0 or 3.7.</p>
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<p>Yes, that’s definitely the old rep – and from knowing people who went there 20 years ago, it was a well-deserved rep at the time. It has certainly changed over the years, though two watchouts for me personally if I were to consider sending a kid there are a) the neighborhood (still rough) and b) many local students still going home on weekends.</p>
<p>YDS did not provide the credits assigned to each grade in her example. The GPA calculation needs to weight the grades by credits, unless all classes have the same number of credit.</p>
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[QUOTE=vinceh]
Ouch, as far I can find there are no bargain prices.
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<p>I didn’t choose my words very carefully. What I meant was, perhaps my son would have better shot at merit aid at these schools that tend to get overlooked. I don’t know if that’s true or not.</p>
<p>If all 90s are 4.0 and all 80s are 3.0, I will officially quit worrying now. For today anyway.</p>
<p>I will never be able to leave cc because I literally learn something new every day.</p>
<p>I went to USC for grad school in the early 80’s. At the time, you could buy a button in the bookstore that said “Make USC #1. Study harder.” I still have mine. They’ve definitely upped their academic game since then. I should point out that my USC connections have stood me well over the years</p>
<p>I remember being at football games, holding my credit card and derisively waving it towards the USC side when the Trojan fight song was playing. It was definitely a well-deserved reputation back then. Things have changed. A professor friend there was equally dismissive about student quality in the mid 80’s. He says there has definitely been a significant change. </p>
<p>I still don’t want my kids to go there 
Though if one wanted to and got in, I’d bite my tongue hard.</p>
<p>mantori.suzuki, the opportunities are always there, especially for a kid who is willing to go find them. Pick a science, then go and look up the undergrad research awards given out in that field by the major professional society. Now look at where the recipients are going to college. Here, I’ll give you a couple to start with:</p>
<p>[ACS</a> Division of Organic Chemistry Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Program 2009 Awardees](<a href=“http://organicdivision.org/SURFprogramAwardees2009.html]ACS”>http://organicdivision.org/SURFprogramAwardees2009.html)
[2009</a> SPS Scholarships Recipients](<a href=“Programs & Resources | Society of Physics Students”>Programs & Resources | Society of Physics Students)</p>
<p>Some of the usual suspects, yes. And some surprises.</p>
<p>The thread is moving quickly today. Going back two pages (from all of 2 hours ago), referring to the NY Times Guidance Office column, when I read the column I was actually more encouraged than discouraged. He didn’t say “grades, grades, grades”, he said “transcript, transcript, transcript”. </p>
<p>I interpret that as giving a lot of weight to which courses are on the transcript. Does the transcript include 4 years each of the core academic subjects? Does it include mostly Honors and AP classes? </p>
<p>Not to say that grades don’t matter, but if you search his long response, nowhere does the word “grades” appear.</p>
<p>Excellent point, sacchi!</p>
<p>Wife of H on USC math faculty reporting in. He’s worked there since '86 and saw a definite and legitimate increase to academic quality. During that time, USC has upped the ante by offering more merit scholarships (thus getting more high quality students) and by having a pot of money to secure top faculty (thus improving the teaching and research side.) For many years, UCLA could claim better stats on their entering class. This has not been the case over the past several years.</p>
<p>USC students may not be going home on the weekends. Slopes and beaches are attractive weekend destinations. USC works hard to maintain good relationships with the immediate neighborhood and help lift it up. Some claim this is why the campus was untouched during the riots of '92 (right around the time our DS was born … he’s a senior and will be applying to USC although he would not fall under the stats listed for this thread.)</p>
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<p>Santa Clara is on my Ss safety list partly because it offers the possibility of merit money for B+ students with strong test scores and ECs. Maybe not a bargain, but a $10-20K annual merit award would help us out.</p>
<p>Villanova would also be on his list except that it reminded him too much of his suburban NY high school.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove, thanks for the suggestion and links. Where is this Angelo State University!? They have twice as many award recipients as anyone else! :)</p>
<p>You’re right, that helps to keep things in perspective. I should know better than to think that smaller or lesser-known schools don’t offer good research opportunities. A couple of kids from my son’s school went to ISEF last year with projects they worked on at our local, extremely non-prestigious state university branch campus. A few people there are doing stuff that’s as interesting as what’s going on at bigger, better-known schools.</p>
<p>Confession: My trepidation comes partly from the fact that, at the mid-sized state university where I was an undergrad, pretty much all of the research opportunities in any subject seemed to be computer-related, i.e., either programming simulations or doing meta-analysis of other people’s data. At the time I believed the reason was that no one had the funding or facilities to do hands-on research of their own. True or not, that suspicion haunts me a bit as I look at schools for my son. I need to keep in mind that either I was wrong, or times have changed, or not all lesser schools are as limited as mine was. Or something.</p>
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<p>I feel pretty sure he meant the standard way colleges look at transcripts–for rigor and grades.</p>
<p>Heres the CollegeBoard GPA converter:</p>
<p>A+ (97-100) = 4.0
A (93-96) = 4.0
A- (90-92) = 3.7
B+ (87-89) = 3.3
B (83-86) = 3.0
B- (80-82) = 2.7
C+ (77-79) = 2.3
C (73-76) = 2.0
C- (70-72) = 1.7
D+ (67-69) = 1.3
D (65-66) = 1.0
E/F (below 65) = 0.0</p>
<p>[How</a> to Convert Your GPA to a 4.0 Scale](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>How to Convert (Calculate) Your GPA to a 4.0 Scale – BigFuture)</p>
<p>And heres the Princeton Review converter:</p>
<p>GPA Percentile Letter Grade
4.0 95-100 A
3.9 94 A
3.8 93 A
3.7 92 A
3.6 91 A
3.5 90 A
3.4 89 B
3.3 88 B
3.2 87 B
3.1 86 B
3.0 85 B
2.9 84 B
2.8 83 B
2.7 82 B
2.6 81 B
2.5 80 B
2.4 79 C
2.3 78 C
2.2 77 C
2.1 76 C
2.0 75 C</p>
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<p>After looking over the list I’d say very few of the usual suspects, at least as far as being defined by a Top 20 designation. It’s about individuals not rankings. Thanks for the links.</p>
<p>manitori, Angelo State is in San Angelo, Texas. not exactly a garden spot, but very popular with West Texas kids.</p>
<p>PayFor, thanks for the link. I’ll use the College Board version and see what I get.</p>
<p>I notice it didn’t say cores and language only, but that’s standard procedure?</p>
<p>I’ve never done it where I converted the 100 scale grades to the 4.0 scale and then figured it out. I use our 100 scale to get weighted and unweighted GPA and then translate that to the 4.0 scale. My problem is that the school gives him a weighted GPA of 97.4 which sounds great, but it includes two periods of orchestra every year. If you take those away the weighted GPA sinks to 94.9 and if you unweight his GPA and take out the music it gets as low as 88.2. So he’s got somewhere between a 3.3 unweighted to a 3.9 weighted, or even an optimistic 4.0 if you take the school’s word for it.</p>
<p>In any event I am quite sure most of the top 20s are out of his league, though he’s got a few just off the top schools on his list. (Georgetown, U of Chicago, Vassar, Tufts).</p>
<p>I’ve heard admissions officers talk. I think the Yale one put it best when she said they “read transcripts” and don’t just look at the GPA. But they also regularly say it’s better to get an A in your AP course than a B. (Not sure what happens to kids like my son who got A’s in his AP courses last year, and B’s in the ones that weren’t…)</p>
<p>Mantori -</p>
<p>I myself would look for numbers of Goldwater (Rhodes, Marshall, Churchill, NSF fellowships, etc.) winners over the years. Most top 20’s, but a number of other schools as well, including honors colleges at state universities, will fit into this category. A school that has winners for these prestigious awards would generally have the facilities to guide others towards less prestigious opportunities as well.</p>
<p>Then, I would ask how students become involved in undergrad research. (Some “portals” into undergrad research opportunities involve applications to special programs within a university prior to matriculation.) We found that some schools involved only top students, while others had ample opportunities for just about any motivated student, including students who have not had opportunities to do this sort of thing prior to college. Some seem to prefer that students wait until junior year and some seem to prefer to start students as freshmen or sophomores. </p>
<p>I would look at the top 60 or so research universities, including top 20’s but also many others. Some schools at the top as well as everywhere else on the list do seem to have restricted opportunities for undergrads. </p>
<p>In the spring most schools will have some type of undergrad student research symposium. This will be after your son has received acceptances, and he might want to look at these and chat with students when he visits. When we visited colleges at accepted student days, we found lots of students and parents grilling faculty with specific questions about undergrad research participation.</p>
<p>I would not worry too much about the C and D except for the very top schools, BTW, given the reputation of your son’s school and his more recent courses and grades.</p>
<p>If you are looking for another hook, we found that some schools are intrigued by science/engineering types who are motivated to do further foreign language studies.</p>
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I would not worry too much about the C and D except for the very top schools, BTW, given the reputation of your son’s school and his more recent courses and grades.
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<p>Thanks, but everyone else has already made me paranoid about this. You’re too late to help me. 
<– (my loony face)</p>
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[QUOTE=frazzled2thecore]
If you are looking for another hook, we found that some schools are intrigued by science/engineering types who are motivated to do further foreign language studies.
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<p>That’s interesting. I never thought of one’s academic interests as a hook. If the combination of science and language is unusual, then I will indeed suggest that he find a way to make that interest known.</p>
<p>Thanks for your other suggestions as well.</p>