| I haven't caught up on all the posts I've missed on this thread, so forgive me if someone else has already mentioned this. I think that students and parents need to stop thinking of the application process as a kind of race to be won or olympics type competition. By this I mean that in a race .001 better time will win, but a .001 GPA improvement really should not make all the difference. In many schools that rank, the difference between #1-10 in the class can be thousandths of a point in the GPA. Likewise, a 790 versus 800 (or heaven forbid 720) really does not show that one person is "better" than the next. I see that the SAT thread has a debate over the example of a sublime environment. Isn't this somewhat subjective? I love an ocean view; someone else loves the mountains. Is 400 hours of community service that much better than 100? What was the service performed? How much of an impact did it make? How personal was the involvement? In the end, when there are so many 4.0, 1600/2400 candidates, only the intangibles will distinguish one from another. |