<p>I heard that lots of top 50 - top 80 universities prefer students who overcame some hard situation/got some learning experience (i.e. all C’s in 9th grade, then improvement to A’s and B’s in 10th, and all A’s in 11th) to ‘Ideal students’, who always had max grades, GPA e.t.c. Is this the case with top schools? Would they prefer someone with faultless school transcript and 2100 SAT score, or someone who has gone from C’s in 9th grade (as mentioned above) to A’s in 11th grade with the same 2100 SAT score? Assume that course load and other factors are about same.</p>
<p>2100 SAT isn’t that good for top schools…</p>
<p>That’s not the point. Change it to 2300 or 2400, if you want.</p>
<p>1) 2100 is fine/excellent for top50-80; in fact will probably get you some decent scholarship $$</p>
<p>2) No idea about the GPA ?, but I’d be curious to know about that as well…</p>
<p>I think I wasn’t clear enough.</p>
<p>Students applies to top 5 schools.</p>
<p>Student A: Bad 9th grade marks, good 10th grade marks, excellent 11th grade marks, same in 12th grade. 2300 SAT score, EC’s etc</p>
<p>Student B: Excellent marks all the time, 2300 SAT score, EC’s etc (they are equal in everything besides marks).</p>
<p>Question is, would the universities prefer the ‘ideal’ one, or the improved one?</p>
<p>Upward trends are important only when comparing equal GPA’s. </p>
<p>Student 1: 3.0
C fresh year average
B soph year average
A junior year average</p>
<p>Student 2: 3.0
B fresh year
B soph year
B junior year</p>
<p>Student 1 is better. But straight A’s all throughout hs is better than any kind of upward trend.</p>
<p>Well, technically - yes… Question was, what do top schools look for? Ideal students, or the ones who had problems, but had character to overcome them?</p>
<p>^ It depends if the school is stats-heavy or not. Privates prefer students who will contribute to the life on campus. This is not saying that stat-heavy schools (like UCs) don’t, it’s just a comparison between the two.</p>
<p>It probably depends on so many other factors that any answer we could give you would be meaningless and not grounded in reality.</p>
<p>I said that lets say other factors are equal for both</p>
<p>It doesn’t just matter if they’re equal, it matters what they are.</p>
<p>^upward trend…junior year is always more important than soph or fresh…</p>
<p>Right, especially with the course load too…however still based on stats I’d go for the linear A’s.</p>
<p>Ok, thanks. </p>
<p>Khaki, I noted above that lets say they are all equal difference is - upward trend vs straight a</p>
<p>Choklit rain nailed it. Colleges are not looking for problems. The kid who did badly freshman year might have trouble with transitions and repeat the pattern in college.</p>
<p>The best possible candidate anywhere is one who has done consistently well over time.</p>
<p>What Choklit says is exactly right, when comparing two with the same GPA and course load, the one that has the upward trend wins.</p>