<p>I think that it really depends on the particular student and their own personality whether or not this is accurate.</p>
<p>For my S, I think the opposite is true. We figure he would get about a 3.5 GPA regardless of whether he went to MIT or to community college. He feels enough peer pressure to not want to embarrass himself by performing badly. He tends to get higher grades in tougher classes, and lower grades in easier classes. So, he benefits from having the bar raised. At the Top 20 U that he attends, he has had to step up his effort level above high school, and is really benefiting from the interaction with high performing peers, and high quality professors.</p>
<p>^^^agreed. It’s not as simple as saying a kid must be lazy if he has high scores and medium grades. I know one HS senior with test scores sky high and a 3.5 UW, 3.8 W GPS. He is definitely not a slacker. He gets very high test scores in math/science/tech classes, understands Physics better than his teacher, can have a fascinating, informed conversation about history, gets kudos from his creative writing teacher with every paper, but he would much rather study chess, math that isn’t offered in school, or relax than knock himself out memorizing vocab to ace his spanish test or keep track of every single meaningless homework assignment. The first time I heard myself saying, “I looked at your grades online - your grades are slipping. You’ve been spending your time doing math again, haven’t you” in an accusatory tone of voice, I decided to back off and let the kid spend his time in meaningful ways. My older son was the same way and he’s kicking butt in college - 3.93 at the end of freshman year. Not bad. Some kids just do better once they get to college and the grades are all about a few tests, papers, or projects, instead of mundane daily homework assignments.</p>
<p>I 100% agree with PN… but I still have some of the same thoughts as mommaJ… One question in my mind is this… what constitutes middling GPA? Is a 3.5 GPA middling??? In my mind it isn’t. When I think about middling I think about C’s. I guess we will find out soon enough when the results for my Senior S are in. He is at a top private prep that is VERY rigorous and deflates grades. There are a lot of, well to tell the truth a lot of BOYS, who have high test scores and grades in the 3-3-3.6ish range. They get accepted to a lot of top 20 schools… but maybe not top 3 or 4. My S like PN’s S just would rather spend his time on more interesting things than re-editing his English paper for the umpteenth time. He has accomlished a lot…ex. 1200 community service hours, so there is NO way a college is going to say he is lazy. They still might decide they want the higher ACADEMIC achiever, and really they should. It is just hard to tell if he will be in over his head or not academically, if he does happen to get into a higher ranked school, or like mommaj said, he would be happier where he is with more of his GPA peers. He is also one that does better in the harder classes and loves being around intellectual kids. Hopefully the colleges will decide for him.</p>
<p>My oldest was just like Sacchi’s. He did fine in college. I guess I think of middlin’ as the 3.0 kids. They are perfectly capable of doing college work and if they have higher standardized test scores there’s no reason for them not to handle college work and there are many, many colleges that happily accept these kids. These days, however, there are colleges for the 2.0 C kids with the average ACTs/SATs just not the colleges that are actively discussed on CC. The OP’s kiddo is NOT middlin…</p>
<p>The College Board has reams of studies (gigabytes?) on their site supporting the predictive value of the SAT score for college performance. I was surprised by their finding that the writing score is as predictive as CR+M. Not surprisingly, the best correlation was HSGPA+SAT. However none of the correlations were as high as I would have thought. Isn’t 0.6 a fairly weak correlation?</p>
<p>Here is an excerpt under the heading, “Validity of the SAT for Predicting First-Year College Grade Point Average study”</p>
<p>“Among the three individual SAT sections, SAT writing has the highest correlation with FYGPA (r = 0.51). The correlation is 0.48 for SAT critical reading and 0.47 for SAT mathematics. In fact, SAT writing alone has the same correlation with FYGPA as does SAT critical reading and SAT mathematics taken together. As expected, the best combination of predictors of FYGPA is HSGPA and SAT scores (r =0.62),reinforcing the recommendation that colleges use both measures for the best prediction of student success. The correlation of HSGPA and FYGPA is 0.54, which is only slightly higher than the multiple correlation of
the SAT (critical reading, mathematics, and writing combined) with FYGPA (r = 0.53).”</p>
<p>Certain schools do chase high test scores, and you can find them by searching for those colleges that offer automatic ‘scholarships’, i.e., discounts, to NMSF’s. USC is one such college, for example.</p>
<p>So, I spent the summer talking to many admissions officers (very strong and elite southern schools, mixture of private and public) and asking what they prefer: all told me that the academic record fully trumps the standardized test scores when it comes to admissions. I get the impression that colleges are pushing very hard for kids to take the hardest classes available to them at their high schools (as many Honors and AP/IB available, within scheduling reason) and do really, really well in those classes. Next, the recommendations of teachers who know those kids best are highly valued, but again that’s well AFTER the academic record. The SAT is somewhere in the mix but I swear it’s WAY DOWN the list when it comes to weight of whether or not you get into (that) school.</p>
<p>I’d guess the academic record has 50% of the weight in the decision; recommendations, probably 15%, writing ability, maybe 15% and then probably and equal split between extracurricular activities and then the SAT/ACT scores weighing in at 10% each.</p>
<p>Most guidance counselors give the same advice as investment advisors, which is the same advice you can get from Granny Farmer for free: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with a moderate GPA plus strong SAT scorer applying to a Reach school. Who knows? Maybe the band director there is dying for more trombones and applicant happens to have that as the major EC. </p>
<p>But I told my guys to also apply for “Asteroid” schools (I hate the word “safety” because it comes across as “looser”). An “Asteroid” school is a school that would save your heinie if a giant asteroid came from outer space and hit your home, taking everyone (even the budgy) into the great Beyond. There you are, kiddo, with your high school diploma and what you need is a happy place that will definitely take you and where you can survive cheerfully. Put that way, some other things come to the fore.</p>
<p>Perhaps an Asteroid school is one with skiing near by. Or beaches. Perhaps an Asteroid school is one near a favorite uncle – or one that has a great ceramics or writing program. Maybe an Asteroid college has a history of service to others – or is massively eco-aware.</p>
<p>Thinking about an Asteroid college gets the brain out of the “Good-Better-Best” mode of thinking. Now we move to “Happy College-Even Cooler Option-Reach College” planning.
Suddenly that 3 ish or even 2ish GPA is not a millstone around a student’s neck.</p>
<p>kitesurfer… I know that collges preach this " transcript over SAT’s " philospophy, but I am not buying it. The reason being that if you look at the Common Data Set from each school, the kids that are admited to the top schools almost ALL have top test scores and guess what… no GPA;s are listed. It is really surprising. Also if you read Michelle Hernandez’s book, it will open your eyes to how much weight is placed on test scores… A LOT!! I think what they say and what is reality does not match up. </p>
<p>I’m sure plenty of people around here have already heard my story, but I had one of the greatest disparities between test scores and GPA I’ve heard of on this site, and I actually did very well in college admissions, getting into two of my top three choices with enough financial aid to attend either one very comfortably. There’s this idea that GPA trumps test scores. This isn’t true. What’s true is that your <em>high school record</em> trumps test scores. There’s a lot more information on your transcript than just that single number we all love to worship. I had a 3.0 GPA, but all of my bad grades were in my freshman and sophomore years, and I was taking the absolute hardest schedule offered at my school. I had A’s in Spanish IV, Calculus, Chemistry, etc. I had shown I could handle challenging material through both schoolwork and standardized tests. I believe this is why I fared so well despite having a GPA that would make most people in chances threads write me off instantly. People on CC get a lot more worked up about GPA than actual college admissions staff do. The truth is that holistic admissions really are holistic: they’re looking at every piece of information they have available, not just running your stats through a formula (certain public schools excepted).</p>
<p>“People on CC get much more worked up aout GPA than actual actual college admissions staff do”… I think this is absolutely true! I think if you are taking hard classes, are getting great test scores, and have a compelling story to tell, you can get in to a top school, regardless of a not so tip top GPA.</p>
<p>I do agree with much of what was said, and happened to be one of those low GPA, high SAT kids myself. However, this board isn’t the place to preach about the relative merits of the question. It was a simple question, and one that I find to be quite valid.</p>
<p>To answer the OP:
Many state universities offer guerenteed scholarships for students who meet certain SAT / ACT cutoffs. Now some of these have scholarships have GPA cutoffs as well, but it’s a good place to start. </p>
<p>UA is a great example of a school who gives TONS of guaranteed money to high SAT scores.</p>
<p>OP, what are your student’s academic interests?
My daughter fit this profile with about a 3.4 GPA, one C in 11th grade math, very challenging courses, and a 2200 SAT. She was interested in creative writing, humanities, international studies, or anthropology. I asked the advice of a retired teacher who knew a lot about college admissions. This teacher suggested a list that included JHU, Colgate, University of Rochester, NYU, Barnard, CMU, and our in-state flagship. My daughter applied ED to JHU and was accepted.</p>
<p>Some but not all data is available through 2009. Here are the steps to get to the data table I referenced:</p>
<p>Custom table
Undergraduate admissions rates and counts…
Freshmen entered from hs
Fall > select years, 2007,2008,2009
California residents
Berkeley
Admissions rates and counts
Simple table
Academics > hs unweighted gpa</p>
<p>Voila the table, includes # applicants, admits, enrollees, admit rate, yield rate.
Can also choose to see data for SAT scores & other variables.</p>
<p>The numbers I listed are the admit rate, for a given gpa the percentage of the
applicants admitted. Its the ultimate chance me data. It is not the percent of the total admits that are in each gpa range, so it doesnt add up to 100%. </p>
<p>Perhaps things have changed in the past few years, but the data through 2009 seem to indicate that the UCs are almost purely numbers driven, with gpa dominating SAT.</p>
<p>@Planestate, I’m not sure if you’re responding to me, but UC’s admission process is number driven, even if they claim to be holistic. You can tell they have a cut-off line at around a 3.6 or 3.7 just from the admit rates you have there.</p>