<p>So recently, a close friend of mine attended a meeting with a private college counselor (he’s a freshman, I’m a freshman), and the counselor said this to him. Is this accurate according to your information? It seems a bit sketchy to me, but according to him, she gave a lot of good info to him.</p>
<p>Top Colleges don’t take the time and don’t care to measure each little bitty grade of yours and your SAT score in comparison with other candidates. Once you pass a certain threshold, the intangible factors are really the ones that make or break you."</p>
<p>And please, if you’re going to comment saying that freshmen shouldn’t be worried about college, who says we’re worried? We just want to avoid the short end of the stick.</p>
<p>True . . . to a point
At many schools the difference between GPA for class rank is nearly inconsequential for the top students. My kid has weighted GPA about 4.6 and is ranked in the low 20s. So when people worry that they won’t get in because they aren’t val or sal in that case it’s splitting hairs. It might mean one person had an extra art class that wasn’t on a weighted scale or some other small difference. Similar story for standardized testing. The difference between 730 and 750 could be 1 or 2 questions. Once a candidate has met the threshold (in most cases) a school isn’t going to take the 750 over the 730 just because of the extra tick on scores. SOme kids take tests over and over, trying to get that extra little bump rather than actually having a life. Similarly, some kids pass by on an art or music class or other class that they might really want because the non weighted grade might mess up their rank. So, in essence, still do as well as you can in your core academics, but don’t panic and obsess about the marginal differences. Especially not to the point where when it comes to writing admissions essays about your passions you end up with peer tutoring and Spanish club president to choose from because you were afraid to step out of the box a little.</p>
<p>I think the college counselor is correct. Most top schools could fill their classes with 4.0s and 2300+ kids - but they don’t. They are looking at what you can add to the class, how you differentiate yourself from all the kids with similar grades and test scores, and ‘distance traveled’ (ie, what challenges if any did you overcome to get there). A few Bs or a few missed questions on the SAT just don’t matter that much. Focus instead being the kind of person that an admissions officer says, “I’d like to meet this one. He/she sounds interesting.”</p>