Competitive with 3.86 Weighted GPA?

hsmomstef
Sun, 15 Jun 2008 12:04:53 +0000

Stats only get you into the competition – they give you a chance to be seen by admission’s officers. His 32 ACT will get a look and so will his class rank (top 6%). Admin officers look at rank and test scores before GPA, since GPA varies so much.

He has the stats to get looked at – but how he will stack up regarding rigor of curriculum, ECs, SAT IIs and AP scores, teacher recs, etc really depends.

Schools do like to see an upward trend – and once you get into the “look at this student” pile, they will see the freshman year grades compared to the A’s he earned after that and take that into consideration.

Where he may have trouble is in ECs and teacher recs – ECs because many of the kids applying to the top schools have research, internships, college classes, intel/siemens, etc; teacher recs because if his school doesn’t send too many to selective schools, they may not know how to write a rec letter like teachers from schools that send alot (some of those schools have sessions teaching the teachers how to write a good letter, give them examples and then the counseling office looks over the letters before they are sent in).

Red-Shirt – your stats got you looked at, I just think the competition was fierce!