<p>To put more fine of a point to it …
Is there data available that shows for a given college,</p>
<p>GPA % Accepted
4.0 50%
3.8-3.9 25%
3.6-3.7 15%
(etc., example made up)
Don’t really care what % of the student body winds up being made up of each of the groups - that’s not what I’m asking … but what % of those applying with that GPA is accepted.</p>
<p>Rice has some data available that provides a table for Class rank and for test scores, but not GPA. The class rank data is interesting.</p>
<p>Rank in Class</p>
<p>68% of Rice freshmen enrolling in Fall 2007 were in the top 5% of their high school class.<br>
Applied Admitted Enrolled </p>
<h1>1 628 323 83</h1>
<h1>2 222 115 40</h1>
<p>Top 5% (includes #1 & #2) 2,533 1,028 338<br>
6-10% 691 145 74<br>
11-20% 557 78 50<br>
21-30% 225 27 21<br>
31-40% 116 11 10<br>
41-50% 40 3 2<br>
51% or higher53 3 3<br>
Unranked 4,753 956 243</p>
<p>[Rice</a> University | Prospective Students](<a href=“http://www.futureowls.rice.edu/futureowls/Admission_Statistics.asp?SnID=942987531]Rice”>http://www.futureowls.rice.edu/futureowls/Admission_Statistics.asp?SnID=942987531)</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, you might find it, but keep in mind all those 3.0 GPA’s might come from high powered private schools or gifted magnets. </p>
<p>The college search “academic tracker” at the College Board site often has the GPA for enrolled students (which may be a bit lower than the accepted pool). Some schools don’t report it, however all seem to report rank.</p>
<p>Or, it’s not ceterus paribus (spelling?) – those 3.0 GPA’s could be disproportionately athletes, or legacies, or developmental admits, or people who had some overwhelmingly impressive EC (being in the Olympics type of thing).</p>
<p>Not sure if anyone here is applying to Harvard, but I just noticed that, with all the talk on class rank, Harvard does not even consider it in its admission, according to the USNWR.</p>
<p>^I don’t believe that, but I do think it depends. Yes, they don’t take valedictorians just because they are number one, but I’ve never seen them dip below the top 2 or 3% in our school. Of course the topped rank students also have good GPAs and (because rank is weighted) challenging schedules.</p>
<p>I guess Harvard may have figured out a way to arrive at the desired class rank without using it explicitly. There must be a very good correlation between class rank and other stats. But still, assuming USNWR is correct, how would they know a 3.6 GPA is or is not in the top 5%, given high stats on everything else? I’ve seen folks reporting top 5% rank with 3.6 GPA on CC that have other stats similar to other 3.6 GPAs who are out of the top 10% class rank. Historical data?</p>
<p>School profile</p>
<p>And the 3.6 from a school that uses +/- and the 3.6 from a school that doesn’t are two different things, too. I’m too lazy to figure out alternate scenarios, but they surely aren’t the same thing.</p>
<p>DD’s unweighted GPA was 3.5…weighted was much higher due to honors and AP courses. School computes class rank using weighted GPA’s. She was 8/197…top 5%. She didn’t consider applying to a top 20 school because quite frankly…she didn’t LIKE any of them (lots of family at these schools and we live in New England where many of them are located). Can you imagine that? A student not INTERESTED in HYPMS? Our high school does NOT have grade inflation. The school profile would clearly have indicated the range of grades for the class. OH…our school only ranks the top 20 students. After that…the students are placed in deciles.</p>
<p>There are tons and tons of wonderful colleges out there that are NOT in the top 20. These other schools deserve the attention of quality applicants too. </p>
<p>If your student REALLY wants to attend one of the top 20 universities…perhaps they should consider applying to a good undergrad program and really SHINING there…it would certainly place them better for a possible grad school acceptance to one of these top 20 programs or professional schools.</p>
<p>After all…they say that it’s where you get your FINAL degree that matters. These days…more and more college grads are getting a degree beyond their bachelors.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If you have the popular book, A Is For Admission, see Hernandez’s detailed description about how they figure out a rank. School profile and historical data are among the ways. They have existing formulas for schools they get lots of apps from.</p>
<p>How much the top schools care about rank is something most don’t seem to understand. As mathmom says, it’s not about the top 5% or 10% unless we’re talking a high school with an SAT average over 2000, it’s about the top few students.</p>
<p>But I would agree Harvard does not need to be concerned with rank because the unhooked they accept are bound to be val, they are so off the charts in everything they do. The Dartmouth’s/Brown’s/Columbia’s, they make sure you’re val or sal. 40% at Dartmouth for the class of '12 was one of these, and when you back out the hooked, that’s the majority of the unhooked.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, our school doesn’t +/-. Virtually all of S2’s Bs are 87-89s. It would make a nice difference in GPA for him. We have fingers and toes crossed that the reputation of the program he’s in and the academic difficulty will count for something.</p>
<p>I suspect S2 will drop his mega reach by the time 1/1 rolls around. He likes it, but there are other schools he likes better where he wants to (and frankly should) focus his efforts. He doesn’t even know their rankings. I peeked and am sorry I did.</p>
<p>P.S. my daughter (who was top 5% of her class with an unweighted GPA of 3.5 or so…oh…CR/Math SAT 1230) is attending a school which is the number 2 masters university in the west, and has an engineering school ranked #19 in the country (she’s an engineering major) according to U.S. News this year. </p>
<p>No one ever looks at that masters university list, it seems. There are some excellent schools on that list!</p>
<p>She never looked at or knew the rankings until well after she started attending there.</p>
<p>DS had a GPA of about 3.2 (unweighted…school didn’t compute weighted GPA correctly that year…another whole story)…he went to the univerity ranked in the top 60. I think his Verbal 720 helped him get accepted. OH…and he was a music major so his audition carried a lot of weight.</p>
<p>S’07 had an unweighted GPA of 3.47 (weighted 3.9) and no hooks. SAT was 2150. At the time he applied, he was listed as top 10% at his public hs. The highest ranked school he applied to was Colby, and he was wait listed there.</p>
<p>Not top 20, but he was accepted at Lafayette and Providence, and accepted with merit money & honors program at Union.</p>
<p>Lafalum84, my S had about the same stats as yours, in a private IB program. He applied to 2 top-10 LACs; was rejected by 1 of them and wait-listed by another. He also was accepted at 2 top-30 LACs and at our state’s public “honors college”. We moved him into Colorado College (USNWR #24) this weekend, with no regrets.</p>
<p>I graduated from a top-10 national university and have studied at other prestigious schools. In the past year I’ve had some of the same anxieties as many parents on this thread. But after our orientation visit to Colorado College, I feel he has wound up at absolutely the best “fit” for him of all the schools he applied to. I’m confident that even if the outcome had been different, after all the information-gathering and visits were done, he still would have chosen it over the most selective school that rejected him. Over and over I have gotten the impression that returning students and alumni love this college, and for good reasons.</p>
<p>Moreover, I left Colorado College feeling confident that for him, it is worth the price premium over the in-state alternative (granted, a scholarship narrowed the gap). From what I saw there, and from what I know about many other excellent schools, there is no precipitous drop-off in quality when you step down from that 20th rung. Worry more about whether it’s the right fit for your kid.</p>
<p>^This is exactly what son’s counselor keeps saying. You are buying a name brand when you go to a HYPS or a top 10 LAC but that doesn’t mean you get a better education by any stretch of the imagination. You might, but then again you might not.</p>
<p>One example he pointed to is a much,much higher percentage of kids go onto to graduate school from schools like Reed College than do Harvard.</p>
<p>Recently, we interviewed a young woman for a job as an analyst in my department, who graduated from a top 10 college about 7 years ago and, boy, were we unimpressed. She was arrogant as can be, dropping the name of her college at every chance and the fact that she interned at a Wall Street firm but her resume after college was very sketchy. She had been a nanny, she had been a realtor for a year and now she was employed as a secretary in the hospital when I work. I had worked with her on a few projects (her boss was a peer of mine), and although you could tell she was bright, she wasn’t up to par with staff who had gone to the local university.</p>
<p>A ‘brand-name’ top ranked college doesn’t necessarily mean anything in terms of career success. But finding a good fit can motivate a student to do well later in life.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is interesting data. Where can this data be found? How about the stat for other T20s? Also, I thought many schools don’t even rank their students, how would the colleges know this if the students themselves don’t even know if they are val or sal?</p>
<p>Reed dominates all Ivy League Schools in PhD Productivity, so does the University of Chicago, CalTech, MIT, Swarthmore, and Harvey Mudd College. </p>
<p>[REED</a> COLLEGE PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]REED”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College)</p>
<p>UNDERGRADUATE ORIGINS OF PH.D.s</p>
<p>PERCENTAGE RANKING OF PH.D.S, BY ACADEMIC FIELD, CONFERRED UPON GRADUATES OF LISTED INSTITUTIonS</p>
<p>Rank
All Disciplines Biological Sciences History Humanities
1 Calif. Inst. of Tech. Calif. Inst. of Tech. Yale St. John’s College
2 Harvey Mudd Reed Reed Reed
3 Swarthmore Swarthmore Pomona Yale
4 Reed Harvey Mudd Swarthmore Amherst
5 MIT Univ. of Chicago Oberlin Swarthmore
6 Carleton MIT Carleton Bryn Mawr
7 Oberlin Kalamazoo Wesleyan Carleton
8 Bryn Mawr Earlham Bryn Mawr Williams
9 Univ. of Chicago Grinnell Haverford Oberlin
10 Grinnell Princeton Univ. of Chicago Pomona </p>
<p>Rank Mathematics & Statistics Political Science Social Sciences Chemistry
1 Calif. Inst. of Tech. Swarthmore Swarthmore Harvey Mudd
2 Harvey Mudd Haverford Bryn Mawr Calif. Inst. of Tech.
3 Reed Reed Reed Wabash
4 MIT Princeton Grinnell Reed
5 Univ. of Chicago Pomona Univ. of Chicago Carleton
6 Harvard Oberlin Oberlin Grinnell
7 Pomona Harvard Harvard Wooster
8 Princeton Univ. of Chicago Wesleyan NM Institute Mining & Tech.
9 Rice Wesleyan Carleton Franklin & Marshall
10 St. John’s College Bryn Mawr Pomona Bowdoin </p>
<p>Rank Physics Physical Sciences Anthropology Foreign Languages
1 Calif. Inst. of Tech. Calif. Inst. of Tech. Bryn Mawr Grinnell
2 Harvey Mudd Harvey Mudd Beloit Bryn Mawr
3 MIT MIT Grinnell Kalamazoo
4 Reed Reed College of the Atlantic Amherst
5 Univ. of Chicago NM Institute Mining & Tech. Reed Reed
6 Rice Carleton Pomona Carleton
7 Princeton Wabash Univ. of Chicago St. John’s College
8 NM Institute Mining & Tech. Rice Haverford Bennington
9 Carleton Univ. of Chicago Goddard Yale
10 Case Western Reserve Grinnell Harvard Wabash </p>
<p>Rank Linguistics English & Literature Area & Ethnic Studies Astronomy</p>
<p>1 St. John’s College Amherst Wells Calif. Inst. of Tech.
2 SF Conservatory of Music St. John’s College Wesleyan Harvey Mudd
3 California State Univ. System Yale Bryn Mawr NM Institute Mining & Tech.
4 Swarthmore Swarthmore Hampshire MIT
5 Reed Bennington Yale Rice
6 Wilson Bryn Mawr Amherst Carleton
7 Grinnell Reed Marlboro Princeton
8 Goddard Simon’s Rock of Bard Reed Haverford
9 Pomona Williams Carleton Reed
10 Univ. of Hawaii at Hilo Carleton Oberlin Harvard</p>
<p>All right. Boys and gals of yesteryear. Now that we’ve got our anxiety, fear, concern, and regret off our chest. Let’s see, school is about to start. For some of us, our kids have 4 months before the applications are due for RD and only 2 months left for EA/ED. It is down to the wire now. What can we do to help? I’ll throw in a few items to get things started. Please bear in mind that some questions here have little relevance to EA/ED applications (then again they may become relevant if the EA/ED decision is deferred to RD).</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Since we are here because our kids don’t have the GPA “fit”, is striving for high GPA in the senior year the highest priority? If so, do we do it at the expense of taking on a rigorous curriculum or an opportunity to take a college class?</p></li>
<li><p>Should they cut down their ECs to focus on getting better grades and test scores, or do just the opposite to increase their chances of getting some recognitions for their ECs, e.g., Intel/Siemens research, state/national title in sport?</p></li>
<li><p>Will applying EA/ED increase their chances of getting in, or will it hurt their chances?</p></li>
<li><p>How could we better leverage their GCs and teachers to help them?</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>Should we maybe make a concerted effort to produce a realistic list of schools at which kids will thrive, even if (heaven forbid) these same schools fall below the top twenty on somebody’s prestige list?</li>
</ol>
<p>I’ll say it again, don’t neglect the “matches,” cuz that’s where most of our kids are going to end up.</p>