Unfortunately, my school has an insanely hard grading system/scale. The lowest grade that I have ever received in a class is an 87 freshman year (School doesn’t use letters). This makes my UW GPA a 3.3, even though I am in the top 10% of my class. Will this completely destroy my chances of admittance to schools such and Vanderbilt, Harvard, and Georgetown, who all have average UW GPAs of around 3.9?
The would know the grading scale from the school profile. Don’t worry.
@brontosaurus05, colleges also look at your class rank and, of course your SATs/ACTs. They do evaluate the high school itself and judge you in the context of your school. That said, though, some schools care about one type of criteria more than others, so look at each individual college/university to get an idea of which is most valued. Your essays, ECs and recs will be extremely important to some elite schools, while stats themselves will be more heavily considered for others.