It looks like I will be finishing my junior year around a 3.73 UW GPA, which is very competitive (top 5%) at my school. However, when it comes to a lot of top colleges, it seems like there’s a pretty sudden dropoff at around 3.75 below which almost no one gets in without a hook. Is this a thing impacted by colleges reporting to USNews rankings etc. in the same way as how you basically have to be top 10% in rank to get into these schools? If so, would this be detrimental enough to my application that it would be ill-advised to apply anywhere early decision (as I could probably get above the 3.75 mark by midyear senior year)?
Bump
The Common Data Set tracks the % of students with a 3.75 GPA or higher, so it may be important for some colleges.
There is no cutoff at 3.75. The Common Data Set uses that as a grade divider and that’s why it’s reported that way. Talk to your GC who should have info on where students with grades like yours attended.
There is no cutoff. When your transcript gets sent to colleges your HS will include a school profile (including things like levels of classes, grading system, average grades, etc) so you will be reviewed in the context of your particular HS.
@“Erin’s Dad” the problem is there isn’t really any precedent because it’s only my UW GPA that’s a problem. My Weighted GPA and test scores are both near the top of the class, so my overall application should be competitive, but when I look at naviance profiles for almost every top school (which only takes into account UW GPA) there seems to be basically a sharp line. My GC is new and fairly clueless about such things so I wouldn’t expect her to know about the nuances of things like that.
The question is, because 3.75 happens to be used as a grade divider, does that mean colleges then try to maximize the percentage of admittees over that cutoff and therefore have the difference between a 3.74 and 3.75 actually have some impact in admissions decisions, in the way that it matters whether your rank’s in the 10th or 11th percentile even if you go to a more competitive school? The point is that if it does matter, it might be worth it to wait until the new grades are in to apply so that I could get over that divider and tick the box of “students with over 3.75 GPAs”.
The 3.75 GPA cutoff may matter slightly because that % is reported on the Common Data Set, but either way it won’t be nearly as important as the Top 10% statistic because that gets reported to US News.
When top schools look at your transcript they should have your high school’s profile in front of them as well. If your high school reports class rank and your high school’s profile is fairly complete, colleges will be able to take into consideration just how competitive your school is. When you look at Parchment.com or Naviance there is a strong correlation between having a super high UW GPA and strong test scores and favorable admissions decisions to schools like Stanford, Harvard, or MIT. Unfortunately, I think the bar is just set really high for schools of this caliber. An exceptional application, strong essays and meaningful EC’s can more than compensate for a less than perfect GPA. I wish someone had told my D that she needed a 3.9 when she was deciding between taking 9 AP classes and coasting
I’m not meaning to trample any parades here but you answered a lot of your own question in post #5. If the college you’re thinking is one that is currently attempting to rise in the rankings, then it may be true, especially for unhooked applicants. Let me give an example. When I asked my interviewer for Vanderbilt what was one thing he would change about Vandy, he said that he would change the immense value they put on the US news report rankings. Vanderbilt has been aggressively rising in the rankings, due in no small part to the changes they have made in their applicant selection. He told me about his friends daughter, who was a double legacy and a fantastic student. She was rejected, and when her parents pressed for details they learned it was because she was not in the top 10% of her class at a highly competitive high school, which is one of these ranking “cut-offs” you speak about. Her parents were upset and he was also pretty clearly upset about it. To give you an idea of what kind of applicant she was, she ended up at Princeton…
So the numbers game is very real at a lot of schools. If they are trying to bolster their ranking you better believe that what’s important to US news is going to become important to them in an applicant. I know people who specifically took the ACT instead of the SAT because it’s not used in USNWR rankings. The use of yield to select applicants has also drastically changed the admissions landscape. ED2 programs and the like have become the best way to get admitted to a top school, often at the cost of a financial aid package and up until just this year, colleges were using ordering on the FAFSA to determine preferences of an applicant when deciding to accept, reject or waitlist. The reality is, with few exceptions, colleges are out to protect their dollars and subsequently their standings, most of them are not going to blink about rejecting an applicant that will damage their standing in any way without a building project or other special hook. It’s not a fair process and tbh, it kinda sucks but you can take some comfort in knowing for certain that college rejections and acceptances are not the net worth of your academic capabilities. A lot of times they are simply a reflection of the college’s ambitions to present more superficial prestige, against which many splendid applicants are weighed and found wanting through no fault of their own.
Unless there’s something you can do at this point to change it, I’d try to relax. You’ll find out soon enough but at the end of the day, no rejection is going to change what you’ve learned or who you are. Rejections are really quite arbitrary when you think about the massive scope of 30-40 thousand applicants. I’ve already decided that no matter what happens throughout this month, I’m going to view my rejections as pretty arbitrary. They read my life’s story, some interesting things about me and rooted through my whole academic history, yet could reject me solely because they already have too many applicants from my region or who are involved in my EC’s. It happens and life goes on.
Best of luck !
@cowtownbrown I mostly agree with you, but then that also raises another question if a student’s high school doesn’t rank/decile nor do their school report shows any such indication of class ranks or ‘highest’ GPA. Quite frankly, these type of cases do exist, in which they would fall under no scenario described so far in the posts above (i.e my high school).
^ my high school does not rank either TT