And lastly: the GPA.
Your parents are gonna say it. Your teachers are gonna say it. You’re gonna say it. The whole world says it. But it’s wrong.
You don’t need a 4.billion GPA to get into an Ivy League.
Now admittedly, you do need a high class rank, most preferably the top 2%. Of course, class rank is not the best measurement for admit officers to see how much you can offer to a college, because every high school is different, and every class of seniors is different. So what you do need is a weighted GPA of above 4.0, an unweighted GPA of at or above 3.75, and a class rank in the top 5-10%. And that’s it.
Also, FYI: Stanford recalculates your GPA into their own scale called the SU6. Essentially the SU6:
-considers only academic (not PE!) courses and
-courses taken after freshman year.
-To calculate the new GPA: A+=A=A-=4.0, B+=B-=B=3.0, etc. Sum all them up and divide by the number of courses.
This SU6 helps admit officers calibrate all their candidates on the same scale, because some schools do 100.00 GPAs, some 5.00 GPAs, etc.
What GPAs did I have, you ask?
Unweighted: 3.86
Weighted: 4.29
Class rank: 11% (like…50/450 something people?)
Stanford’s SU6: 3.91
Thanks guys! Hope you can glean a lot of information from this post. But always remember: if you stop caring so much about getting into college, and you start caring about things you actually like doing, you will get into the college of your dreams and be the best person you can be.
Peace be upon all of you. Good luck.
Robab