<p>We have attended over 15 informational seesions with our daughter. At each information session academic rigor, community service. school clubs/sports and early action or decision were the topics emphasized. However, we have found that very little of that could be true. Our daughter was deferred from a private university where her scores were above their average acceptance figures for GPA and SAT scores. She has taken most of Ap courses, additional college courses, very active in school activities as well as community service. The deferred was based on a strict cut off. Friends of her did get in who had very little academic rigor, almost no community service or school involvement. What they did have was a higher GPA (95% of courses were not honor level) and little school or community involvement. So in this respect why aren’t kids told that there is a different standard than the usual admittance policy. Why are they encouraged to apply early to fond that they are held to a different standard. Is it bait and switch? Sure college is a business and business likes the best but tell kids that there are different standards. My daughter would have just gone regular admission if she knew there was a different statement.</p>
<p>It can hard to fathom why a particular admission decision is made. Don’t take it personally, even though a rejection/deferral certainly feels that way.</p>
<p>At most colleges, GPA is far more important than test scores. (Standardized tests can be studied for, and reflect the students best performance on a single day, or a combination of best performances on a few days; GPA reflects the continued performance over 3+ years).</p>
<p>If your daughter’s GPA is considered somewhat weak within the applicant pool (which can happen even with a very strong GPA at competitive schools) – then a deferral usually means that the college wants to see the midyear report with first semester grades before making a decision. So the most important thing a student could do in that setting would be to have a strong fall semester (straight A’s).</p>
<p>If the admit rate isn’t well above 50% in general, you really can’t generalize about who gets in and who doesn’t in any case. They are not making a decision based on which candidates have the highest GPA and test scores – being above average doesn’t get the student in. (An average is just that – the above-average numbers of admitted students are offset by the below-average scores.) They are making a decision among qualified applicants who have a certain threshold of test scores and GPA, based on other, affirmative factors. (What I mean by “affirmative” is that they are generally looking for positive qualities that give them a reason to accept, as opposed to finding reasons to reject – though of course it actually is a combination of the two).</p>
<p>Finally – and I’ve posted this before – a deferral is NOT a rejection. It is merely an extension of time before the decision is made. It provides the applicant with an opportunity to re-consider what is in their application and provide supplemental information to improve it – so basically it can be viewed as a letter from the college that says, “we’re not sure whether we should accept you – is there something more you can tell us about yourself?” So overall, I think the EA applicant is at an advantage because they are being given feedback early in the process and an opportunity to fill in whatever gaps were left with the initial application.</p>
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<p>I’m getting the impression that, more accurately, a balance of GPA and a challenging curriculum is more important than test scores. As we’re seeing over in the “Below 3.6 GPA and Applying to Top 20” thread, a lot of kids with really challenging coursework get into top schools even with imperfect grades.</p>
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<p>Interesting. My son applied to one popular State U that was a ‘stats only’ EA. It’s very obvious they took the 15 or so applicants from my son’s school and ranked them by GPA and took the top 5 kids, deferred the next 5 and rejected the last 5. My son was deferred, even though he had a tougher curriculum (and slightly lower GPA) than a few of the kids who didn’t take a more rigorous curriculum but higher GPAs. In this EA round, you didn’t submit ECs, teacher recs or essays.</p>
<p>I can tell from Naviance that all the kids who were deferred in the past did get in RD. I wonder if other schools rely primarily on GPA for the ED/EA round. Even if they don’t say so upfront. It would make sense to just skim off the highest GPA/Test Scores off the top and throw the others back into the RD pool and then look at them more holistically. Who knows?</p>
<p>I don’t think this is the case for every school but I’m sure it is for some, especially considering that some schools defer 50-70% of their EA/ED applicants.</p>
<p>some very good points. I guess one of my major concerns is that what a college represents at infornmation sessions is not the practice they implement.</p>
<p>MomLive, I’m guessing yes, that some schools with high volume of admits do exactly that, call it a rough sort. Take some basic information and it could vary TBD institution sort into admit, wait, reject. Then they can go back and parse the apps. From the outside there could be some outliers that make no sense, but if the intitial sort is done by one person e.g. each admissions official takes 1,000 apps or some scenario, then that could account for the outliers. Or perhaps the admin does the rough sort…all kids with a 3.5 unweighted moves on. The next person looks at the test scores,sorts and those move to the next person. Maybe they divide by region and school district and parse that way first. We don’t know and I’m sure every institution handles it differently, but it makes sense given the volume and time constraints. My oldest got “caught” in that with the state flagship where kids with lower weighted GPAs and test scores got admitted right away and son got a request for more info. On paper son was above the 50th percentile even unweighting his GPA and he had solid if not numerous ECs. It ticked him off and he never completed the request so no decision would have ever been made. His school and we were convinced he would have been admitted shortly, but it irritated him. It’s a complex system and in the high volume schools lots of room for a miss that to the outside look obvious.</p>
<p>At large state universities, the admission process is by its nature different from that of the most selective private universities. Adcoms may give lip service to the idea that they look at the whole app, but the reality is that they have too many plausible apps to do that (they have a lot of apps at Harvard, etc. as well, but they can throw at least 3/4 of them in the trash immediately on the numbers). So the process is almost entirely numbers driven.</p>
<p>Now, some may look at unweighted GPAs, some may look weighted GPAs, and some may apply their own weighting formula. But they are not going to look at the strength of schedule per se (let alone ECs, recs or essays except in cases that are at the margins). So the bottom line is that AP Environmental Science is going to be just as good as AP Physics in this context.</p>
<p>^^^ totally agree, the high volume app schools aren’t parsing the class titles & curriculum school by school at least at first. More likely that are going science 4 years ‘check’, math 3 years ‘check’, English 4 years ‘check’ and so on.</p>
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<p>I suspect my son will do the exact same thing - he’s pretty mad. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if he didn’t reapply during RD. This school says less than 1/2 of the deferrals re-apply during RD. I’m 100% certain he would get in RD but I think he was applying more or less because his friends were. I doubt a one of them will actually attend this particular school. The fact that it was a ‘stats only’ application (involving almost no work on the student’s part) at a popular neighboring State U made it an attractive place to apply.</p>
<p>MomLive that was our case also. His dad and I “encouraged/pressured” the application because he was our first going off to college and well, know you, you’re “supposed” to do that or so we thought… and the deferral was a surprise to us, too, but was the end of the line for that school and my son. When S2 came along he stuck up his nose because "they didn’t like S1 and he’s smarter than me (he isn’t but you know siblings). My kids love the schools that show the love LOL.</p>
<p>All I can say is that I have never seen the situation described by enough18 at a selective private university. What is more common is that the high GPA - low degree of difficulty students are left wondering why they were rejected in favor of people with worse grades. But, remember, essays and recommendations can matter a lot, and so can things like legacy status. I sincerely doubt that all the college in question did was line up the unweighted GPAs.</p>
<p>Think this way: College admission officers are self-trained psychoanalysts.</p>
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<p>I agree you are less likely to see this with a selective private university. Although, I think it’s probably very common with the State Us.</p>
<p>OTOH, Georgetown U stated in this article that they do rank order applicants by HS and then by GPA for the first read:</p>
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<p>Link to this article:
[Inside</a> Georgetown’s Admissions Deliberations - ABC News](<a href=“Inside Georgetown's Admissions Deliberations - ABC News”>Inside Georgetown's Admissions Deliberations - ABC News)</p>
<p>The article (and the show that was produced by ABC - our HS shows it to parents and students) clearly indicates that Georgetown definitely looks at more than just GPA. However, even the fact that they sort them by GPA within a HS means that there is probably some bias in favor of the higher GPA students. Otherwise, why put them in order of GPA or class rank?</p>
<p>I suspect they order them by GPA/class rank and, then, unless there is a compelling reason to take the lower GPA student from that HS they tend to accept the higher GPA students. Just my theory. I’m beginning to see why some people are so paranoid about telling others where they have applied. It does appear, in some cases, you are competing against your own HS class members first and then with all the other applicants.</p>
<p>Of course, if all applicants from the same HS are equally strong, then they are all likely to get in. From our class (of 70) this year, at least 3 students got into Georgetown EA. They were, however, probably ranked #1, 2 and 3 in the class. Definitely, our top performing students. Georgetown was more a match for them than a reach. I know all these students are hoping for HYPM, et al as their top choices.</p>
<p>Wow, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a school admit that they so clearly compare students within each high school.</p>
<p>My son was deferred from Georgetown, he bears them no grudges - the kid he knows of that was accepted was much higher up in rank. He knew if grades were the first sort he’d get axed. Chicago on the other hand, seems to live up to its reputation to look more at essays and recommendations My older son was a top student stat-wise, but he had enough flaws in his application (and was applying to tippy-top schools as well) that the deferrals were disappointing, but not surprising.</p>
<p>I disagree after seeing the Yale SCEA results. There were not “cutoffs” as far as GPA or scores were concerned…everyone was qualified…sometimes, it’s just luck</p>
<p>Enough, you’re right: I don’t think colleges always tell the truth. One of the reasons is that the information session is partly a marketing ploy to get students to apply. I mean, honestly, have you ever heard them tell a student that he’s really <em>not</em> in the ballpark and shouldn’t waste his $? No… but, clearly, there are students who aren’t in the ballpark. </p>
<p>I don’t know to which uni you applied. State Us are more likely to go straight by numbers than private Us although I have always known Georgetown to weigh gpa particularly heavily. Also, different colleges/universities will also emphasize what they find to be important so that gpa may be more impo at Georgetown, winning a top science award may be more impo at MIT and your religious views may be more important at Wheaton (in IL). However, when you’re talking about ED, there’s also another factor. It seems to me that colleges often use ED to pick certain students. Traditionally, they have used ED for athletes but it’s also used to lock in full-pay students. Some schools may also use it for some particular institutional need but, don’t be fooled, it may not be where they get their all-around strong candidate. (And, contrary to posts I’ve seen, it may not be where they get their URMs either if they have enough applicants.) The school might prefer to look at them in regular admissions so it can compare them to other candidates. </p>
<p>Also, one other thing: what I found (and I have several kids in college) is that, if you’re lucky (and you have a kid with a consistent profile), you can determine the level of college where your kid will or may get acceptances-- but that may not mean your child will get a particular acceptance within that range.</p>
<p>I must disagree with you. I went to the college with my daughter. They told her she was an outstanding student with some of the best recomendations they saw. They loved her rigor and her community service. You may say what you want but you sound more like an admission officer. To say you havent heard this happening at a rivate school is absurd</p>
<p>It’s not absurd. I don’t know what college you are talking about, but this is the first time I have ever heard anyone suggest such a thing, and I don’t believe it. Are you sure you have accounted for other factors, such as sports, legacy, URM status, Questbridge?</p>
<p>For crying out loud, look at the CC EA/ED results threads. They are reported self-selectively, they aren’t a valid statistical sample, but there’s no way anyone can look at them and think that any of those colleges is applying a simple GPA cutoff, much less an unweighted GPA cutoff.</p>
<p>You kind of have the burden of proof here, enough18. You are making an assertion that is contrary to what pretty much every college says (and you are explicitly calling them liars), and what’s more is contrary to logic, common sense, and the self-interest of the college and its admissions department. That alone doesn’t mean that what you are saying isn’t true, but it makes me want to know a whole lot more before I abandon my first reaction, which is that you don’t know what you are talking about and are making a huge extrapolation from a couple of random data points.</p>