<p>It sounds like you have made up your mind about Reed and its lack of grade inflation, so I hope that you find somewhere that’s a good fit for you. I personally love the de-emphasis on grades and the freedom to just do my best without students competing against each other for top grades. I get a pretty good sense of where I stand from professors’ comments. It seems like most people tend to think they are doing slightly worse than they actually are (like I got that president letter thing last year, which was a great surprise).</p>
<p>But in response to your earlier question “Also, I don’t understand how they could have an average high school GPA of 3.95 if they accept over 40% of their applicants. Is that 3.95 unweighted?”
The 3.95 is probably unweighted, because that’s the standard way to report and understand grades (verses dealing with schools’ varying weighting systems). The average would indicate that half of the incoming class is above that (3.96-4.0 on a 4.0 scale) and half is below that. As someone else mentioned, Reedies are somewhat self-selecting and generally know what they’re getting into and admissions is somewhat selective as well.
For transfer students, I’ve heard the acceptance rate is closer to 17%.</p>