Only on CC is does this statement even make sense. This site gives people the weird notion that all college applicants have +4.0 averages, perfect SAT/ACT scores and cured cancer during their high school career, all while being 4 year captain of their varsity team and saving babies in the Sahara. The vast, and I mean VAST majority of students who go to very good colleges and on to lead very successful and fulfilling lives don’t have perfect stats in high schools. They land a wonderful schools that fit them, do well and graduate. And yes, if they say the name of their alma mater to someone, they may say “I never heard of them, where are they located”. But in the end, who cares?
Find the right school for your child, one they are going to be happy in. In my case, it was Yale for my kid. Yet, she has tons of friends that are happy and doing well at a wide range of schools, including some where you can get in with a C average and SAT scores that don’t even hit 1600.
3.83 UW GPA, 31 ACT, 2100 SAT superscored. Accepted U of Portland, LMU, Gonzaga, Willamette (all with significant merit money), also UCSD, UCI, UCSC, UCSB, Cal Poly SLO, SDSU Honors. Waitlisted UCLA, Rejected at UCD, USC and Berkeley. Lots of great options, no decision as of today :).
It would be a good idea for people to include information about each sub-score. All 31’s are not the same! Two reasons: 1) Many colleges now super-score the ACTs even if they don’t state so explicitly. 2) The separate sub-scores have different values to schools.
Since Student A’s overall Composite went up it seems reasonable to think colleges would prefer the scores for Student A compared to Student B but that isn’t true for schools that super-score.
Super Score for Student A: 26 26 32 32
Super Score for Student B: 32 31 30 30 (also see next point)
Different values:
While not all schools are taking this information seriously yet, the 4 sub-scores for the ACTs don’t each have the same predictive power. The last two sub-scores only add noise to the relationship of the ACT composite score to future achievement. The first two sub-scores are reliably correlated with achievement. When the composite is used, the correlation of the composite to achievement is lower than the correlations of each of the first two sub-scores are to achievement because the last two sub-scores lower the reliability of the total composite. The first two sub-scores are more valuable in terms of their power to discriminate stronger from weaker students. In the example above, Student A’s 26 and 26 pale in comparison to Student B’s 32 and 31.
All this to say, provide information about your sub-scores if you want your post to be most helpful to other applicants.
Sr. son got a 31; 3.9 UW. got a tuition-free scholarship to state flagship. Only place he applied. Sort of wishing he had looked around a little more. . . . but DH is glad he will be near us. they are tight.
Have a Jr. daughter; she’s going to hopefully raise her current 30 a little higher this month. We will probably scout colleges out a little more for her. Money is a big one for us though. Middle income/not enough savings here.
Rather than trying to improve overall, it can make sense ( if you are applying to schools that look at the subscores and especially to schools that super-score) to focus on only one subtest-best if it is one of the first two… Take tons of practice tests of that section.
31 single sitting, 32 superscore. Got a 20,000 scholarship to BU, accepted to Bryn Mawr, Wake Forest, St. Olaf (with merit aid) and Kenyon which I attend.
May I just suggest that you have your D take the ACT one more time in the fall? Lots of students, my S included, bump up that score at the beginning of senior year, after having finished up a little more math and just being a bit more mature. After three sittings with 29, 30, 29, S scored 32 in September and upped his superscore to 33. He wound up getting accepted to some pretty great places with good scholarship money to most.
Macalester and Carleton. He did have a higher SAT (2150) and high grades (4.0 uw). Surprisingly high SAT IIs like 780? Also sports and volunteering.
He looks good when I just lay his stats out, and his essays were good, but he is not a stats kid at all. I think his humor was the bigger selling point. He didn’t like taking tests so he just took everything once.
My D was admitted to Cornell College ( IA) , with 22k merit, Fordham with 24k , Loyola Maryland with 18k. Admitted to George Washington but no $$. Her GPA is about 3.6. Several AP classes, but not the ‘most rigorous’ schedule. I think you will find lots of good options for a student in this category, assuming no one has their heart set on a super elite school!
You do know that looking like a student who takes multiple tests in search of a perfect score is not usually very attractive to Adcoms. Probably not going to dissuade him from doing it, but that’s just my two cents
@Tperry1982 If you only send the score report that you want to send, (for those colleges that do not ask for all score reports) how would they know? I think some kids do not take it serious until time has run out then they study for it - get a better score.
Well, I’m the one who said her kid’s grades are “less than stellar” at a 3.5 UW.
It’s not the cumulative 3.5, in itself- that is good, yes - it’s the fact that her transcript has a few Cs in AP classes, mixed with Bs and As in “easy” classes - Band and Phys Ed. She also has a downward trend from her freshman year, when she got straight As, even in AP World History and Honors Algebra/Trig. And it is in danger of going down further… Hopefully, she will bring it back up.
So, unfortunately, to some of the LACs and OOS flagships we had on her list , the 3.5 with the Cs looks less than stellar.
The good news is we have a list of small to mid-sized regional schools she can apply to, that are affordable, a good academic fit, and places I think she’d be happy.
@BeeDAre - I appreciate your input and your addition of more details. I really appreciate all of the input on this thread - it is very valuable. @Tperry1982 - I’m sure you mean to offer good advice, but I’m not quite sure why you keep peeking in here solely to criticize what others’ write…just not sure that is helpful and no one should be made to feel defensive about what they are saying. We already know your kid went to Yale and presumably does not fit the ACT of 30 or 31 requirement being discussed here.
My kid had a 1230 Math and CR total…which is I think a tad less than what would be a 30 or 31 ACT. She got accepted to USD, Santa Clara, U of Sluth Carolina (with a McKissick Scholarship), Salve Regina (with a presidential,scholarship). Her GPA was 3.8 weighted and she was 8 th in a class of 190 or so.
This was in 2006.
I think it’s important to note the year of acceptance…as times are changing at some schools.
A 31 is equivalent to a 1380 and a 30 is equivalent to a 1340 - per the SAT-ACT concordance chart. There is a new 2400 concordance chart published by ACT.org which gives an equivalency of 2060 for a 31 and 2000 for a 30. (Hence the “magical 32” talk, which is equivalent to a 2120.)
DD got a 31 the first time (really a 30.5 but they round off). She also got a 31 the 2nd time (really a 31.25 avg). Her GPA was a 3.97 unweighted and 4.3 weighted.
She was wait listed at the Naval Academy, but accepted into her other schools: UVA; Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo; Pitt; Alabama; GMU. She got some merit $ at CP-SLO, and full tuition plus partial room and board at 'Bama.
Daughter graduated undergrad in 2014. 30 ACT with superscore of 32. 3.8 GPA unweighted. Accepted U of Rochester, NYU, Case Western and Indiana. Rejected Georgetown (double legacy), Northwestern (double law school legacy), Vanderbilt, Barnard and William & Mary. Attended Rochester.