Hi,
What’s the lowest possible GPA that one can have when applying to top-20 colleges, and have no hooks like ethnicity or legacy or athlete, and still get in? Granted, they can have amazing ECs, near-perfect test scores, hardest possible class rigor, great essays.
Is a 3.6-3.7 an expected cutoff?
I knew a 3.3 unweighted (I think he was around 3.6-3.7 weighted) who got into UChicago unhooked. Very big test scores, pretty good ECs, superb, memorable, and unique essays, but it was still a coup when he got in.
A 3.8+ would put you in the league of almost all of the accepted students. Without a hook or spike, there would be very miniscule chance. Even in @marvin100’s example the student had a spike (exceptional writing skills).
The is no GPA that will qualify as a sure thing for any T20 school. But if you look at a section C11 of a school’s Common Data Set “Percent who had GPA of 3.75 and higher” if that number is > 75%, so should yours. If the number is greater than 90%, yours should probably be in the 3.9+ range. There may be exceptions if attending a very competitive, top-ranked HS, but even then, you would need to strive for a GPA in the first decile.
When you talk about GPA’s and what they mean as far as admissions goes, it can vary greatly from HS to HS. For example, my kid’s school issues grades based on a scale up to 100%. The conversion chart on the school profile says that a 97-100% UW average translates to a 4.0 and a 93-96% average translates to a 3.7 GPA. A 96% average at the school (which translates to a 3.7 GPA) would easily place you in the top 5% of the class and some of those kids can and do get into Ivy League level schools every year. At another school, a 3.7 GPA might only place you in the top 20% of the class, and getting into an Ivy with a 3.7 GPA at that school would be much less likely. So, to answer your question, can you get into an Ivy with a 3.7 GPA? It depends on what a 3.7 GPA really means at your HS.
Agree with @TheBigChef It depends on the school since variability of the GPA will defer, in some cases, significantly between schools. One kid from a very tough private school who’s GPA was 3.8 as a recruited athlete had some doubts from the admission’s committee of one of the HYP, but when they asked the regional admission rep for that school, he reassured them it was a very solid grade for that school and eventually was accepted. If your school has Naviance with data of admitted students from your school, it might be a helpful tool to see what GPA and board scores of previous students who were admitted.
Part of the problem is that it is difficult to define what constitutes a “hook” for any particular school.
True, not all colleges will consider the standard hooks (with the most frequently included as a hook being recruit, URM, legacy, development), or will consider them to varying degrees. But an applicant will still know if s/he is unhooked.
(The bigger problem is that a lot of people don’t understand just how few things actually qualify as hooks anywhere–I’ve seen students think that a good SAT score or a Student Council Presidency counts as a hook!)