Just curious. I go to an academically rigorous private school that’s ranked second in my city and is ranked in the top 100 high schools in the nation.
If I get a mix of B’s and A’s will it look bad to universities even though I go to a hard school? (I’m interested in schools like University of Texas, Georgia Tech, ucla, berkeley, etc but not anything top 10 or ivy league.)
The designation of T-10 is misleading. The most important issues are whether a colleges is a good fit, and whether you can afford it, and these are not used as factors in any ranking system.
So, when deciding whether a colleges is a good fit, academically, look at the stats of the students who are being accepted to those colleges. Mid 50% unweighted GPAs of students accepted to Berkeley is 3.89-4.00 and to UCLA it is 3.91-4.00. UT Austin and GTech aren’t much lower.
The colleges you mention are also all very selective. Acceptance rates of UCB and UCLA are 14% and 15%, respectively. OOS acceptance for UT Austin and GTech aren’t much higher.
So the chances of being accepted with an unweighted GPA of, say, 3.5 to colleges like GTech or Berkeley are extremely low. The problem is that you will be competing for acceptance to these colleges with students who have similarly rigorous academics, but have GPAs that are above 3.8.
A GPA of 3.5 is excellent, and way above average. However, there are some 50-75 colleges which rarely accept unhooked students with GPAs under 3.8. Luckily, there are hundreds of excellent and wonderful colleges which do accept students with these GPAs.
Based on your GPA, these colleges don’t really look as though they will be very good fits for you. The students at these colleges aren’t better than you, nor are they particularly smarter than you. They simply have better abilities in the narrow field of “doing well in a classroom setting”. These colleges are geared towards serving these types of students. These colleges are only “the best” for students for whom they are a good fit. For anybody else, they are far from “the best”.
Stop mooning over colleges based on their rankings in the USNews, or however the colleges have managed to market themselves. Start looking for a college where you will feel comfortable, a colleges at which you will succeed and thrive.
If you go to an academically rigorous private school the best person to talk to is your guidance counselor. He/she will be familiar with college admissions results of students in your academic range from your HS. If your HS has Naviance that would be an excellent source of information as well.
Thank you for your response it makes more sense now. You just avoided the fact that the 3.5 gpa I have is at one of the best private high schools in Texas. I even used to go to one of the top public schools in the state and now that I’ve transferred to the private school the work load is completely different and way harder. It’s also ranked around the 70th top high school in America. So my question was if getting a good not great gpa (3.5 as you said) at a very tough high school will affect my chances at those type of schools and actually help me.
It depends. UCs are more focused on grades regardless of the rigor of your school. Others take into consideration your school. If you come from a well known rigorous school, most colleges will have heard of your school and take its tough grading into consideration.
But the advice above is sound. Talk to the college counselor at your school. If your school sends kids with comparable grades to competitive colleges, s/he will know.
Your counselor, and naviance, will provide the best information as to college targets. Generally, OOS public schools are not a great option for students like you, and you will fare better at private colleges with more holistic reviews, and perhaps relationships to your school.
You will be reviewed in the context of your school. If your 3.5 put you in the top 10% of your peers, you will be fine. If that is top 50%, then you may have an issue.
Talk to your GC. They are the best person to advise you.
As others noted, if you are OOS, the schools you listed are all reaches.
^however, if your high school is very selective, just being in the top half may not be the headwind you think it will. (This is what many students at selective BS discover.) Really, your CC at school can give you much better guidance on this than anyone here can.
I did attend top 10 universities (one for bachelor’s and one for master’s), so I am not sure how relevant my observations are. However, my experience is that most of the students there excelled at mediocre high schools. I did meet a small number of students from really top high schools. It seemed like they were given a little bit of slack. For example there was one student I knew at MIT who was 7th in their high school, but it was a really top high school. Being 7th in high school with no “hook” would not have gotten a student into MIT from an average high school, but did from a really top school.
I think that university admissions will have a pretty good idea of how tough the grading is in your high school. At least universities in your state will know how other students from your high school have done at their university. As such I expect that they will understand how a 3.5 from your school would compare with a 4.0 at a different high school.
I do think that “Georgia Tech, ucla, berkeley” would all be high reaches with a 3.5 even from a top high school.
But I also agree with other comments above that your guidance counselor would know better than I would.
I think for information is needed to give a better opinion. What classes were taken etc. An AP lit teacher gave a comment about his own class. Some were complaining on grading and he asked would rather get an A in the class and a 3 on the AP exam or a B in the class and a 5 on the exam. You would have a lower GPA. I think a general answer is the best your going to get and not all will come up with the same answer.
Whoever said that a 3.5 was a bad GPA? If you score well on your SAT/ACT, I still think UT-Austin is sill a decent possibility. Texas A&M is also a top school too. Both of them go off of class rank. If you’re in the top 10%, you’re an auto-admit to A&M. Either way, you have plenty of great options. When you go out of state, admissions tends to get more competitive, because these schools put preference on their own state residents.
ok thanks
Just for some additional informational, I’m also a 3-year varsity letterman for football and track, vice president of the Jewish heritage club (even though I’m not Jewish), I’m planning to create a club on gender equality heading into my junior year with a teacher already agreeing to sponsor it. - and I’m not sure if this will help but, I’m a mixed racial minority from Tunisia (Berber ethnicity mixed with both black and white) and I’ve lived in 6 different countries throughout my life and I have a very exotic/uncommon last name.
Maybe that might help me a lot, especially if I score well on my ACT/SAT. What are your general thoughts about me getting into the schools I listed, especially if the race part helps?
And by the way, excuse my long paragraph. I’m just trying to make my mom happy because she does so much for me and never received that good of an education from Tunisia. She also has anxiety, high blood pressure, and cries a lot because of her dad dying when she was young and it makes me want to please her as much as possible. I’m hoping to get into schools like UT austin, georgia tech and etc would make her very proud. She isnt strict about what college i go to and doesnt expect me to be ivy league material but getting into a top school that fits me well will make her very happy and at least slightly relieve her stress. But please be 100% honest and give your brutal opinion because I will greatly appreciate it.
You did not mention that you are in Texas. A quick and dirty way to estimate your chances of acceptance to UT Austin is here: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~wang/resources/admchances
Plug in your estimated class rank and your SAT/ACT scores, and see.
BTW, since you are talking about “heading into your Junior year”, I assume that you are a sophomore. Your GPA may change substantially by the time you finish your junior year, so there is no real use in figuring out your chances based on your freshman GPA.
Do well on the rest of your sophomore year and on your junior year, and then we’ll revisit this.