poor gpa/letter grades + ok rank?

Applying to College
1

<p>hi,
I was looking at some admissions stats recently (brown’s) and it seems that contrary to what i’ve seen on these boards, gpa seems to play a huuge factor in admissions, i’ve rarely seen a white/asian, nonlegacy, suburban public school kid admitted to a top 10 college with a gpa under 3.5. It’s rare, in fact, to see peole with under 3.8/3.9 admitted.</p>

<p>Now this brings me to my question, when colleges see your gpa, how much consideration do that take rank into? </p>

<p>Because rank is calculated differently by different schools, some weight honors/ap 1 point, some don’t weight at all. In my case, honors/ap are weighted 1.0, so my rank is pretty decent (top 3-4%), but my gpa/letter grades are pretty poor - 3.7/8 semester B’s + 1 semester C. My schedule is probably one of the most rigorous at our school, although maybe not the most.</p>

<p>I was just looking at the Inside View into Penn Admissions, and “a scattering” of B’s was enough to be considered poor, that’s a bit disconcerting. Is this exaggerated? What should I do? :frowning:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=247211[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=247211&lt;/a&gt; (Inside view into Penn Admissions)</p>

2

<p>anyone :)? (bump)</p>

3

<p>Even if you had all A’s you still can’t be sure about being accepted. What exact effect your B’s will have is hard to say because we don’t know how you stack up against other applicants. But it is likley that there will be plenty with few or no B’s on their transcripts. So, you need to have to have other factors going for you to gain the admission, otherwise you are doomed. It is always what you bring to the table versus your competitor. And your competitior is relentless! In an info sessions I heard Brown give the standard answer to this question: “Is it better to get B in an AP or an A in an Honors course?”<br>

Make sure that you have a couple of safeties that YOU’D LOVE to attend. (I am doing that although I don’t have any B’s on my transcript. That is because, I consider prestige schools are a reach for everyone of us.)</p>