Why does GPA matter so much...

<p>...when the high school you attend plays SUCH a huge role in how your GPA ends up. </p>

<p>I was reading an article today about a boy who went to an inner-city high school, where he had a 3.6 GPA. He got an 18 on the ACT.
I attend a prep school. The grading is done on a 100-point scale, but if my GPA (89.8) is converted to a 4.0 scale it is a bit lower than that boy's 3.6. I got a 34 on the ACT.
Clearly the ease of getting a high GPA varies wildly depending on the high school one attends.</p>

<p>My grades are definitely my main concern in terms of getting into college (my first choice is Duke--I applied ED). I will be competing with so many kids who EASILY got 4.0 GPAs. On paper I will appear weaker than applicants who got scores similar to mine but higher grades due to attending less difficult high schools.</p>

<p>So I am having a really hard time understanding why so much weight is given to GPA when it is not at all a standardized measure of academic performance.</p>

<p>This is why colleges put GPAs and such things in the context of the school you attended. Whether they do this well or not… well, I don’t know enough to say.</p>

<p>To add to the above, colleges also take into consideration your class rank and course difficulty. This is also why standardized test scores play a role in admissions decisions.</p>

<p>massgirl: you must trust in the ability of the colleges to understand the context of the applicant. A 3.6GPA student from an inner city HS may well likely be the valedictorian – considering probably 25-30% of freshmen four years ago will graduate this spring and among these, maybe one in ten will go to a four year college.</p>

<p>This is the case with almost all the high schools in my nearby large metropolitan school district. I would hazard a guess that your school’s numbers aren’t so shocking.</p>

<p>I think it’s a double edged sword. Rank really is the key measure. But while colleges do look at rank in context, they expect much more from kids who have had better access to good education. A 2250 from a prep school kid equals a 1950 from an inner city school kid.</p>

<p>I don’t think rank really helps with the issue. I mean, sure, if you’re at a top school where it’s v. difficult to get all As and you’re like top 10% w/ a 3.6 or whatever that’ll help, but for the most part, if you go to a top school your classmates are likely a higher caliber of student, your school is more competitive, and thus it’s still harder to do well.</p>

<p>I guess just think that even if it’s not really fair, would you really rather have gone to the crappy inner city public school with poor funding and gangs? Cuz you couldv’e done that, you know, and then had a better GPA… Just appreciate that you got a great education in HS.</p>

<p>It does suck though…</p>

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<p>Maybe in terms of EC’s, but not SAT scores. The equivalency you state is far exaggerated, and in fact I doubt they weigh kids’ SAT scores differently depending on the school’s they attended. The SAT is much more an IQ test than it is an achievement test.</p>

<p>^^I don’t think most of the prep schools rank, and even if they did, it probably doesn’t factor in as heavily because the majority of the kids at the better preps are already top 10% public school kids. My son’s GPA is only 3.3 but he has a 2140 SAT. He is definitely not a slacker as all of his teachers will attest; in fact he is an extremely hard worker. Naviance bears out the fact that schools do take things like institutional rigor into consideration.</p>

<p>enfieldacademy: SAT/ACT is also contextually weighted by holistic admissions schools. A rural or inner city kid who gets a 29 ACT will be noticed by even the tippy top schools. </p>

<p>Kid in northern Virginia or Palo Alto with a 29 ACT? No chance.</p>

<p>And my source is 100% reliable.</p>

<p>massgirl – most of the top 100 Unis and Top 50 or so LACs do in fact carefully review each year of the HS transcript and understand what an 89% at a rigorous prep school means in comparison to a 3.6 at an open-admission public high school. Duke adcoms fit into this grouping and follow this practice. I would not be surprised at all if Duke doesn’t have a clear picture of what 89% means at your particular school.</p>

<p>It’s a pretty common perception that a 50% student at a private competitive-admission Harvard Westlake, for an example in my city, would be a top 5% student, maybe even top 3%, at even the nicer suburban HS like Beverly Hills, Palos Verdes, San Marino, La Canada, Pacific Palisades, and others in affluent areas of LA. It’s simply something everyone knows. It’s not the rich kids who populate these top prep schools…it is the highest achieving junior high graduates who test very highly on private school admissions tests and other selection criteria very similar to college admissions criteria.</p>

<p>For this reason, kids from 99.9% of public schools that are not in the top 1% of their graduating class (recruited athletes excepted), are not really candidates for HYPSM. There are a few exceptions in certain high schools that have a high % of elite college faculty children in attendance near Stanford, CA, Princeton, NJ, and norther Virginia where the 1% rule doesn’t quite apply. There are also many Valedictorians from poor quality high schools that do not get into any of the HYPSM, simply because the quality of preparation is so lacking that even the Val is not adequately prepared to produce the kind of work expected of freshmen at elite universities. There is simply so much remedial work to be done that it cannot be done in time to avoid failing. Recruited athletes have the advantage of tutors who “assist” the athlete to keep them from failing, but ill-prepared non athletes do not.</p>

<p>Some publics also do a careful transcript review. Most Publics do not, however. This has been a huge bone of contention in Texas where guaranteed admission to UT is given to top 10% class rank high school seniors. Students from much more competitive affluent high schools, who have taken more rigorous courses, who are in the 15% know that they could have been top 5% at a lower performing high school a few miles away. I mention this ONLY to point out that this treatment of GPA or class rank is the exception. The top schools don’t view GPA=GPA or Rank=Rank… they view it in context and do NOT use a formula where raw GPA is used out of context.</p>

<p>To which kind of school do you intend to apply?</p>

<p>oops… I meant I <em>would</em> be surprised if Duke doesn’t have a clear picture of what 89% means at your school</p>

<p>Thanks so much for your replies everyone. I appreciate them immensely.</p>

<p>@dunninla, your post in particular was very informative. I applied to Duke ED, UMich EA, Notre Dame EA, UNC EA, and Penn State rolling. If I don’t get into Duke, I will apply to Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Emory, Tufts, Wash U, Georgetown, and UW-Madison (only if I don’t get into UMich either). Do you think the admissions officers at these schools are as in-the-know as those at Duke about high schools?</p>

<p>@T26E4</p>

<p>What about a rural/inner city kid with a 34 ACT?</p>

<p>I do. Or, at least, I do for the schools I’m responsible for reading. </p>

<p>At Tufts, for instance, we do not recalculate GPA. Recalculating GPA washes out a lot of the nuance from school to school, and the logic behind recalculating allows for a belief that grades are the same everywhere. And that couldn’t be further from the truth in my opinion. We know that an ‘A’ at one school is different from an ‘A’ at another; some schools grade inflate, others deflate. Recalculation eliminates the contextual approach to academic evaluation that we use; it puts everyone in the same boat academically and assumes that everyone has the same options, the same opportunities, and the same circumstances. But they don’t, so we don’t. And this doesn’t have to be a debate on private vs public, by the way. There are often huge differences between high schools even in the same district. </p>

<p>There are some public schools where an A- average in a strong curriculum would put a student in the VERY top of the class and in a very strong position in our applicant pool. There are other schools where As are as easy to find as rain in Seattle. The context of the environment/school/family is crucial to fully understanding academic achievement. </p>

<p>The OP worries that her 3.6 will be seen as weaker than someone else’s 4.0 at another school. Ironically, it’s precisely for this that we leave your grades alone.</p>

<p>Kudryavka: As I said previously, a 29 ACT would get the attention of top schools. A 34 would be even the more remarkable, no?</p>

<p>You should definitely talk this through with the GC at your school. This conversation comes up often at private schools. I expect that it has already come up at yours and you’re searching for confirmation that what you’ve been told is true. In my experience it is, and further that you’re likely to get very good advice from your GC regarding your chances at each of the colleges on your list.</p>

<p>@T26E4</p>

<p>Well, I’m just saying, I don’t exactly have colleges clamoring at the door trying to get me to enroll, and that’s exactly what I got. The impression it’s given me is that the ACT doesn’t matter nearly as much as plain old GPA.</p>

<p>Thanks for the input. After getting into Notre Dame EA with a TON of Bs, I see that they definitely consider the rigor of your high school.</p>

<p>Congratulations massgirl92! This gives hope to students like me (transferred high schools twice; first HS was one of the largest and most prestigious international schools outside the U.S., and second HS was one of those rigorous college preparatory types that required SSAT scores/other standardized tests, essays, and transcripts for admission - even then about less than half got accepted). </p>

<p>As a result of all those circumstances, my GPA isn’t stellar (but still good enough - roughly 3.8 unweighted), but I’m hoping I’ll be given serious consideration despite it. :)</p>

<p>What about schools outside of the US, the ones whose level of rigour universities might not NOT be familiar with? And what if these schools, like mine, don’t rank? How would admissions determine whether or not a student’s GPA is considered competitive?</p>