I was looking at Data sets from colleges ( including HYPSM) and I saw that 3.75-3.99 GPA are put in the same category.
Obviously a 3.99 > 3.75
But, this implies that a 3.75 is good enough to be competitive. Even viewed in the same light ( but to a lesser extent) as a 3.99 GPA.
So this would indicate that a 3.75 is the threshold that one has to meet, To be apart of the students that has greater headway in admissions? Looking at Harvard’s Common data set:
70.55% of accepted students have GPA’s of 4.0
22.76% of admitted students have GPA’s of 3.75-3.99
So a great number of students are accepted with a GPA between 3.75-3.99.
So you do have a chance! Even applicants with a lower GPA may have a chance to get in as well. But I mainly wanted to point out that a 3.75-3.99 is accepted quite frequently. Not as much as 4.0s. But you are still quite competitive.
This of course does not factor in EC’s, Essays, Recs, awards, test scores, etc. but I wanted to point this out for applicants who think their GPA isn’t good enough.
If Harvard accepts around 2,000 students and about 400 are athletes or applicants with other tags (legacy, development, etc.), there is an obvious source for many of the lower GPAs.
That’s not a slam on athletes. Most who go to these schools are truly bright, capable, talented students with the academic strength to hold their own. But recruited athletes and other tagged applicants do have more wiggle room than others.
Yes, was going to say the same: hooked applicants get a little more breathing room on things like these. I would add students at elite prep schools with known grade deflation. Also students with extraordinary achievement (Olympic athlete, for example, even if unrecruited sport). Children of celebrities. Although I guess these are just variations of different hooks.
But it actually doesn’t matter. Even with a 4.0, your chances are very, very small at any college with a ~ 5% acceptance rate. Whether a 4.0 or 3.7, unless you are hooked, offer something truly unique, or meet an important institutional priority, your chances for admission are pretty low. Not zero. But low. Your odds are only zero if you don’t apply, so you may as well shoot your shot, but always have a backup plan, no matter what your GPA is.
I think some high schools don’t use plus or minus, so a 90 is a 4.0. Which explains why there are so many 4.0 students! Meanwhile other schools call that an A minus or a 3.7. So does it depend on how the college recalculates? They must know this about high schools, as well as realizing some rigorous schools don’t hand out As as easily.
Based on those numbers, over 3 times as many accepted students had a 4.0 GPA than had a 3.75-3.99. With an overall acceptance rate of around 3% that implies maybe around a 1% acceptance rate for the latter GPA category. I’m not sure I’d call that “quite competitive” or “accepted quite frequently”.
(Note: all of the above glosses over the fact that the vast majority of students in that lower GPA category are likely to have a very significant “hook”, and applicants without that have an even more minuscule statistical probability).
It is quite correct you do not strictly need perfect grades for Harvard.
However, I would suggest the even more relevant point is you do not need Harvard.
It kills me that there are kids who work really hard in school, take challenging classes, and get good grades, and then think whether that meant anything depends on their admission to a college like Harvard.
Whereas in fact if you have taken a reasonable college prep course list and have a 3.75 UW, or indeed less, there will very likely be many great colleges that would love to have you. So much so you can likely make all sorts of choices involving affordability, type of college, setting and location, and so on.
And in that sense if you work hard and challenge yourself and get such grades, you are in fact completely fine, indeed more than fine, because your hard work has paid off in a very concrete way.
OK, and then maybe Harvard will be one of those colleges (if you even apply, and you very much do not have to), and maybe it won’t.
But you will in fact be completely fine, indeed more than fine, either way.
The HS my child attended only considered A+ a 4.0 (98 or above). My kid had all As and A+ with one A- and her unweighted GPA was roughly a 3.8 when she applied to college. Context is very important here - their 3.8 is very different than a 3.8 from a school that considers a 90 a 4.0.
Great post. Too many people get hooked on certain schools rather than where they actually would be happy! There are many terrific schools and programs out there. And the truth is not all 4 GPA’s are created equal.
I think that the number of courses also must matter (year courses vs. semester courses vs. trimester courses) and how many core courses a kid carries or for that matter whether non-core courses are included in the way that the high school calculates GPA.
Similar to Juno16’s daughter, D22 attended a school where an A+ = 4.0. But somehow my kid had a higher unweighted GPA (3.88) despite somewhat weaker grades (while most of the kid’s grades were As and A+s, the kid had two B+s and probably 5 or more A- grades across her four years). So I have to imagine that the higher GPA meant that B+s got drowned out by of the total number of courses even though an A+ was only a 4 at her school as well. With 14-17 courses per year, any individual course probably didn’t make much of a difference. You really can’t compare GPAs across schools, even unweighted GPAs. I imagine that is why the admissions offices recalculate.
Good point. Mine mostly had year long classes so a lot fewer courses overall. GPA might also have been a 3.82? Or even 3.83? if you go out to the second decimal place - I don’t actually remember. Just that it rounded to 3.8. I think you’re right that the number of classes is the rest of the difference.