- I know that elite college adcoms want to see 4.0/4.0 unweighted and >4.5/5.0 but in a not so perfect world, what is better, to avoid rigorous courses with challangeing teachers or to go with courses where you are bound to score an straight A?
- As most elite colleges/state honors programs usually only accept top 1-2% without hooks, is it worth doing fine arts and sports that are 4.0 courses and bound to push you out of top percentile in a competitive high school since all the nerds are only taking 5.0 courses? Should you drop your wrestling and your viola because they are just interesting extracurriculars and you aren't accomplished enough to be recruited? On other hand you hate academic decathlon but it's double block 5.0 course and you know from your middle school experience that you'll be really good at it, should you switch?
- What after all of these switching and GPA gaming you don't get into colleges of your dream. Is it really worth it?
- How common is it to have a perfect unweighted GPA for students taking most rigorous load in challenging elite highschools where GPA isn't artificially inflated and teachers arent questioned if they have a pattern of scoring low.
I have a few pieces of free advice.
- Drop the dream school idea. Look for a variety of schools where you would be happy to attend, and can afford...and have a decent chance of being accepted.
- Do extracurricular activities that you enjoy.
- If you are aiming for tippy top schools, you want to take a rigorous course load, get excellent grades, and get tippy top SAT or ACT scores. These tippy top schools accept less,than 10% of applicants. Lots of qualified applicants are denied admission.
- Figure out your family finances. What can your family pay annually for you to attend college?
- Cast a WIDE net...meaning sure...apply to tippy top,schools....but also have others where your chances of acceptance....are better. Make sure you have at LEAST one school on your application list that is a slam dunk for admissions, is affordable, and where you would be happy to attend.
Thank you. Do you know what is average unweighted GPA for unhooked elite acceptances?
Is it common for kids who take rigorous load to have perfect unweighted?
Common for what? What are you asking?
Kids who apply to tippy top schools typically have tippy top grades and tippy top standardized test scores.
Many do have perfect unweighted GPAs but not all do. If you look at the common data set on eachncollege website, it will give you the range of GPA and standardized test,scores for accepted students.
I was asking for that data, if you have some links. Thank you poster @thumper1
It’s very easy for you to get that data yourself for each school. Go to the school website. Type “common data set” into the search box…and poof…you will have the data for the colleges that are of interest to you.
SugarlessCandy
Most kids, no matter how smart they are have a perfect 4.0 GPA in high school. in fact, I don’t know of any (not to say they don’t exist.). Elite universities are looking for exception GPA’s as compared to their peers in their HS. In addition, to that they are looking to see that you are taking the most rigorous course load your HS has to offer and again that you are getting A’s. Then they want your child to also have community service, school service, and leadership experiences. Lastly, then you need to score 34 or higher on the ACT and for the SAT is needs to be in the 1400 or higher range out of 1600.
Those requirements are standard for kids with or without a hook. So how do the schools decide on who they take? Well unfortunately, that is very arbitrary. They will look at your essays, and your extra curricular activities. They will determine if your truly passionate about these activities or are you just doing them to look good. They will gather that information from, not only your resume, but your letters of recommendation. Then lastly, no matter how hard you work the schools like to be diverse. They want diversity in race, religion, geography, wealth, and resume. So if the year your D applies they have lots of kids who have IPO’d a company and made millions in the process, but not enough nationally acclaimed saxophone players, well than the sax player is getting in over the kid who IPO’d.
The bottomline is this: work hard! Take the hardest courses and do well. Then find your passion and do something creative with it, so you can put it down as leadership and service. In the meantime, be pleasant to your HS teachers because you will need them to attest to your abilities and get to know your guidance counselor, because he or she will also write a ltr of req. Study your butt off for the SAT/ACT, take two to three SAT 2’s and write a darn good college essay. Once thats done kiss it up to God because its all in his hands.
If your daughter is capable of all of that I then disagree with Thumper and would not drop the dream school idea but always be realistic and understand that its very arbitrary. There are no hard set rules to follow that guarantee admission to the Elites, so you have to apply to some ‘lesser’ schools, but you should absolutely try.
Start by looking at what the colleges themselves tell you what they value. That’s not simply CDS or stats. It’s found by reading as much of what they say as you can.
The top schools look at the actual transcript. An A in History for Dummies simply can’t carry weight when the rest of the competition is taking AP and getting an A and 5 score. No matter how it falsely elevates with an A grade. Same for getting B or C in AP classes. Or stuffing the curriculum with easier AP classes.
Get a Fiske Guide or others, read the colleges’ web info, learn what matters. Of course you take some classes out of interest, some because they’re the right academic level and some for the challenge. Why drop wrestling and viola because you aren’t recruited or national level? (What sort of thinking would that show adcoms?)
You may be looking at this backwards.
Thank you posters for taking time to post here. It’s eye opening and helpful.
I’m not saying this student…or any other…should NOT have a reach school…or a clear top choice.
The notion of a “dream school” implies that this is THE only college that can fulfill a student’s college desires. I do not believe that is true. And because of the seemingly unpredictable (I don’t think it’s arbitrary…but it IS unpredictable) way those top colleges put together their accepted student class…it’s just better not to dream…but to,be realistic.
If a student has criteria they want in a college…those criteria should be sought in all of the colleges on their appllcation list, in my opinion…or as many as possible.
That way…the “dream” can be fulfilled at any number of different places.
When you are looking at colleges with acceptance rates under 10%, it is important to remember that in the 90% who were denied admission…most were very well qualified candidates.
I’m a big fan of cast a broad net. Sure…have a favorite…everyone does. But “dream school”…maybe I just don’t like the wording.
- Selective colleges when asked this question (heard it at college nights every year) answered this question like this, "It's better to get an A in the AP course." Then all the ad coms chuckle and say, you should take the rigorous schedule that is right for you. They don't expect you to take every AP that your school offers. But generally speaking the kids who get into top 10 colleges will have taken on average about the same number as the most advanced kids in their class and the kids who get into the top 20 colleges will have taken slightly fewer or gotten slightly lower grades in the APs they do take. You are judged in the context of your school. I had one kid get into top 10 colleges without any AP English, but he had a full schedule of math and science APs, AP Latin, APUSH and AP Econ as well as extra-curricular activities that were at the level expected. He took those courses because they were challenging to him. His younger brother had almost as many APs, but quite a few B's on his transcript. He got into colleges like U of Chicago (before it got so popular), Vassar and Tufts.
- If you like arts or sports for heavens sake take them. Younger son took two unweighted orchestra courses every semester. I don't think it hurt him. (And actually as it turned out it probably boosted his GPA.) Doing so much music (even at only a workmanlike level) showed commitment to something he loved doing.
- Trying to strategize to get into a certain set of dream schools is a recipe for unhappiness. Take the courses that interest and challenge you. Obviously there are many courses you have to take that are there for your graduation requirement. You may choose to take an AP course over an honors or regular course less out of interest than because of long term goals, better teachers, better classroom experience.
- Everyone is judged in the context of the school. If you go to a school where no one gets a 4.0 it won't be held against you.
Your life will not be over if you don’t get into some particular tippy top school. Dig deeper, sometimes the schools that are a little less popular will have stronger programs for your interests. Sometimes being the top student at a less renowned college will serve you better in the long run. My nephew who had to settle for Rice (an excellent school BTW, but off the East Coast radar), ended up in grad school at MIT where he’d been rejected as an undergrad. He had a fabulous experience in college including being a published author on one of the most important papers to come out in bio in the last ten years.
The elite schools don’t have to answer whether they’d rather have the honors student with an A or the AP student with the B. They don’t have to answer if they’d rather have a sports participant or a piano star. The elite school can pick and choose between applicants who have AP’s with A’s, who can play the piano while twirling a baton. They are elite students because they can run faster, jump higher, and stop on a dime.
I’m not saying a student can never have a B, but overall those trying for elite schools are not making a decision between honors or college prep classes and AP - they are always going for the highest level offered and most often getting As.
For your student, have her do her best. Take the classes she’s interested in whether it is a ‘regular’ level ceramics class or astrophysics, she’ll get the most out of it if she is interested in the class. I don’t think the guy who was first in my daughters’ class spent one instant worrying about whether he’d be first or tenth. He took the classes he wanted to and goes to the state flagship. The girl who was second seemed to be chasing honors. She had more cords and ribbons and medals than #1, but she was still #2
Good tips. Thank you fellow posters.
You are looking at this backwards. Do not try and mold your child to fit into a particular “elite” school because it won’t work and it’s not fair to the student. Rather, your child needs to be who he or she is and find the school that fits.
There is no shortage of students who have perfect unweighted 4.0’s taking the most challenging courses at their high school.
Omg! Just reread my post. Ugh! I apologize for my poor writing. So much for multitasking.
I get your point about letting her pick her courses to suit her interests. I’ll keep doing that.
Just to clear my earlier post, in some schools people take rigorous load and maintain perfect unweighted GPA, but it’s not possible in all schools. At her school, literally no top1-3% student can keep perfect unweighted, even though they make 5s on AP testing and 800s on SAT II.
Well, you asked about "elite"colleges. Those schools have no shortage of the kind of applicants posters are describing: 4.0, rigor, taking math and science courses to an even higher/college level through DE, top scores on SAT/ACT and AP tests.
Not all hs. But when the hs itself isn’t so competitive, elites can expect applicant X is top of that pool, still tried to run that race.
It can be nuts. It’s like wanting to be an Olympic medalist, but not quite that level. Luckily, so many other great colleges out there. Many treasures. You rachet away from “elite,” when it means killer. Get a Fiske Guide. And be sure to run NPCs, to get an idea which may be affordable.
I’ll do that.
Tippy toppy doesn’t matter nearly as much as Happy in the choice of colleges. I agree 100% with the numbered summary in Thumper’s first comment on this thread. For every really brilliant, ambitious, and accomplished high school graduate there are multiple colleges that can provide an excellent education as an entree to a successful life and career – even a greatly successful one. Find a good set of such schools to focus on, figure out the distinctive features that matter to you.