What I am trying to ask is, do colleges understand the rigors of boarding school and that student’s GPA’s tend to be lower because the classes they take are very difficult.
Each college has readers by region and HS, and each of these readers knows how to evaluate each prep/boarding applicant within the context of their high school, but understand that boarding school students are only compared to peer BS students–who are also under the same grade deflation. Regardless of that deflation, some of those students ARE earning top grades and are the ones who are setting the bar you will be measured against. Colleges will look at your school profile to understand its rigor but will not confer any leniency by “adjusting” your grades/GPA in comparison with a less rigorous high school. Apples are not compared to oranges.
This question is asked repeatedly here, and we always warn applicants to understand the academic strength of the BS pool as that is the pool you will be evaluated in when it comes time to apply to college. But, never fear, colleges also know that the B+ students from rigorous boarding schools are well-prepared for college work and are good admissions bets as they’ve already lived away from home, dealt with roommates, completed highly rigorous course loads, learned how to study efficiently, handled their own travel, and know how to advocate for themselves and take advantage of help/school resources. They bring more to the community table than just grades/ability to do the work.
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Colleges will be able to see the school profile, which will provide a lot of information about APs offered, or IB diploma courses, what the average GPA is for students in your school, and maybe colleges others in your school have been accepted to. They will consider your transcript in the context of your school and your level of rigor as indicated by your guidance counselor. So yes, they will understand the standard of rigor in your school.
Your transcript is going to be evaluated in the context of what your school offers and by what activities you avail yourself of, if the college is interested in your ECs, but that could depend on other factors beyond school. You have to work with what you have and not concern yourself with things that are completely beyond your control i.e., rigor at other schools that you don’t attend.
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More to the point, rampant grade inflation doesn’t generally exist in boarding schools to the extent of the LPS.
Yes
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As others are saying, if they are seriously considering you for admissions, highly selective private colleges may put a lot of work into understanding your grades in context, including using school reports, other data that can be gathered about schools and in fact your family/residence, regional AO experience, your recommendations, sometimes reaching out to schools, and so on.
I note this basically turns into an advantage for substantively competitive applicants from high schools well-known to a college–they can have confidence they know what they are looking at on your transcript in light of your recommendations. In contrast, even a 4.0 with superlative recommendations from an unfamiliar high school may have some additional work to do to get a highly selective college to be sufficiently confident they have the academic abilities that college is really looking for. This is among the reasons that “test optional” may be a little more optional for some applicants than others.
I would just add there are a variety of colleges, mostly public, where admissions is more formulaic. Usually a 3.9 would be plenty for the formula anyway, though. But in some cases of not such lofty grades, a person who attends a HS with relatively tough grading could actually do a little better with appropriate private college admissions than comparable public, because the private might be willing and able to do more contextual analysis.
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Yes.
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In my experience, definitely yes. University admissions seems to be very good at understanding the differing amount of rigor at different high schools, and the different grading scales used at different high schools and in different countries. Students at the highest ranked universities in the US come from a very, very wide range of high schools.
As one example, as a freshman at MIT I had a friend who had only been 7th in his high school class. Being 7th in his class at a normal suburban high school probably would not have gotten him accepted to MIT. However he had attended a famous high school that was known for math, science, and rigor. If he had attended a more normal high school, he very likely would have been ranked higher than 7th, and his chances of getting accepted to MIT would probably have been very close to exactly the same. I had another friend who had attended a lousy high school in a poor area. He was top in his high school, and probably needed to be given which high school he had attended. As a third example, I attended a high school where no one had straight A’s. Again this did not matter for university admissions. Several of us still went to famous and highly ranked universities.
I do not think that attending a highly rigorous high school will help your chances of being admitted to Harvard or MIT or Stanford or a similar university, but I do not think that it will hurt either.
The one issue that I see is that attending a highly rigorous high school will give you a taste of what it is like attending an academically tough school. This might give you a pretty big hint regarding whether an academically challenging university such as MIT or Caltech is a place where you want to go to university.
Yeah, my two cents is by far the most important sources of college-related value-added from independent private schools (boarding or day) are in the forms of preparation for college, and then helping you identify the best possible colleges for you. I think in some ways these can also translate into some help with admissions as well, but largely just because colleges do tend to like well-prepared applicants who have informed, thoughtful reasons for seeing their college in particular as a good fit.
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