<p>our family loved Furman(except my older son who is a Davidson graduate-a rivalry thing); beautiful campus, moderate to conservative students, no drinking and a real focus on academics. he and we could not be more pleased. Although son is envious that older brother went to a college(Davidson) that did the laundry for the students-that has been a learning experince so far.</p>
<p>3.7 weighted, 3.48 unweighted. Many leadership ECs, part-time job throughout school year, white female. 1880 SAT (660 math, 610 reading, 610 writing)</p>
<p>accepted:
Indiana University (Kelley School of Business direct admit, attending)
Penn State University Park
University of Oregon
University of Colorado Boulder</p>
<p>rejected:
UNC Chapel Hill (big reach)
UCLA (also big reach)
UC Davis</p>
<p>wait listed:
University of Washington (business major)</p>
<p>community college</p>
<p>S1, 3.46 uw GPA, 35 ACT: </p>
<p>Admitted to:
Reed College
University of WA
Evergreen State College
University of Chicago</p>
<p>WL:
Grinnell College
Lewis & Clark College
Colorado College</p>
<p>Rejected:
Pitzer College</p>
<p>Went to UChicago (with Reed a close second), took no wait list position offers.</p>
<p>idad, youāve got me excited! My son has a 35 ACT and a 3.5-ish GPA, and Chicago is his dream school! Hooray!</p>
<p>The key to UChicago is not the GPA nor the test scores (Chicago lists these as only considered), it has been the curriculum attempted versus the curriculum offered at the HS and the essays. S1 wrote phenomenal essays (I personally never knew he had it in him). Chicago has historically admitted for the faculty, teacher recommendations that describe why a student is great to have in a class donāt hurt either. S1 copied a section of the website that describes what the school is looking for and included it in a recommendation packet given his teachers along with his ābrag sheetā and forms.</p>
<p>Thanks for that additional information, idad. Great approach. And I remain excited!</p>
<p>Good to hear the feedback. Hope more updates will follow, thanks all.</p>
<p>Any Stanford acceptances? :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Interesting. My son has similiar stats (3.75 WA, UW is only slightly less) and ACT 31, some national awards.</p>
<p>His counselor has listed Reed and Unv. of Chicago as reaches and Lewis and Clark as a match. I guess that goes to show the admission process can be unpredictable.</p>
<p>A boy at our school last year got into Harvard and Yale but not Carnegie-Mellon, Duke or Johns Hopkins. I would have expected the reverse.</p>
<p>Thats amazing! So encouraging to hear this.</p>
<p>All of this proves that a 3.5 gpa is very strong everywhere other than CC</p>
<p>Letās be a little carefulā¦</p>
<p>3.5 unweighted with mostly AP and honors classes is very goodā¦and highly regarded by most colleges. </p>
<p>In our school district, a 3.5 UW would mean a kid has mostly Aās and A+ā¦with a few A- and B+ (Orā¦it could be all A & A+ with a couple of Cāsā¦that might be explainable or from 9th grade.)</p>
<p>3.5 with no honors or AP classes, from a high school that offers ārigorousā honors and AP classes, is still very goodā¦but not as highly regarded by ad coms at highly selective schools.</p>
<p>^^ Dadāoā2 - very similar story with my oldest. NMF, but about 3.6+ unweighted, 3.85 weighted, double legacy at JHU and waitlisted. My guess was a courtesy WL and he did not pursue remaining on the list. Also, about 15th percentile in class at good suburban HS. Also, all 5s on AP tests (3 at application time), 2 800s on SAT-IIs (and both in subjects in which 800 was not common). However, another problem was JHU wanted 3 SAT-IIs and son did not think it was worth bothering with a third for that school only. Took challenging course-load but not the most challenging possible. ECs were decent, but I think it was the GPA that made him ineligible at the top schools. </p>
<p>Admitted to:
Lafayette
American (lots of $$)
Franklin and Marshall (lots of $$)
BU
BC
U of Rochester (attending with $$)
State U
Brandeis</p>
<p>Rejected
Tufts (no surprise)
Georgetown School of Foreign Service (did not apply to Arts and Sciences)</p>
<p>^^2boysima, not in our district. A 3.5 unweighted is not considered good and is not likley to elicit much interest from elite colleges (unless special circumstances such as a bad freshman year). Many kids get just about all As with the occasional B+ so have an unweighted average closer to 3.8 or 3.9, with the weighted over a 4. Those are the kids getting into the elite colleges.</p>
<p>It is interesting to see the number of kids in this thread with SAT scores higher than the GPAs.</p>
<p>I have to say a 3.5 unweighted GPA is weak for top schools, however you look at it. DS1 is applying this year, and Iām hoping this is not the all decisive factor for all the top schools.</p>
<p>I think every college is slightly different. When we toured Duke,one of the admissions people said they donāt care a flip about weighted or UW GPA. She said they count up the # of As, Bs, Cs, etc. She said they make a grid for each applicant. I pointed out to her that the grade range is different depending on the state (in our state an A is 93 or better) and she said they were well aware of that and took that in consideration. She also said that they looked at the overall difficulty of the courses you have taken and that APs were not the only route to a rigorous course load.</p>
<p>As an example, she said a kid who has taken a difficult language like Latin for 4 years with decent grades and regular US History would get as many āpointsā as someone who took AP US history and Spanish instead. Same for the kid who doubles up on regular science classes vs. a kid who took an AP science. They also take into account the rigor of each particular school.</p>
<p>My point is donāt assume that the whole weighted vs. unweighted is the only way the adcoms look at applications. They take into account many factors. The reason you tend to hear more about the GPA and test scores is those are quantifiable factors and easy to list. Thereās a lot of non-quantifiable factors that go into making those decisions. Sometimes itās just a gut instinct. Something in the application really clicks with the person reading the application and they persuade the committee to let that kid in.</p>
<p>Iām not saying this is true for every school (and certainly the competition is very stiff at these schools) but we did heard similar things at other top schools. University of Chicago is a good example of a top school that isnāt necessarily focused on the 4.0 student.</p>
<p>Interesting to read about Dukeā¦</p>
<p>Our school emphases that GPA is THE most important thing on the transcript. Other things are tie breakers. </p>
<p>When one reads the stats on the CC boards it sounds almost scary, these kids have an avg of 4.2 GPA! DS is intelligent but his GPA is nowhere near that even weighted.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Oh, yeah. CC is no place for anyone (parent or child) with an inferiority complex.</p>
<p>My sās 3.56 GPA put him in the top 60% percent of his class (341/560) so rank is not a very telling stat for his school, in my opinion. He earned As and Bs in the most difficult program available to him but, then, so did a lot of other students. SAT 1850/2400. His GPA was 3.3 after junior year, when he applied. Big jump senior year (4.0) but too late for college applications but a great trend to take into college.</p>
<p>Applied/Accepted
University of South Carolina (with small merit $$)
College of Charleston (attending. Loving it)
Unversity of North Carolina Asheville</p>
<p>Rejected
Tulane</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>WHAT!!?? Talk about grade inflation!!! Are there really schools where 60% of the students have a GPA above 3.5? If so, then whatās the GPA measuring? Attendance?</p>