The effect of "low" prep school GPA and class rank on college admissions?

<p>There’s no doubt in my mind that my kids would get a superior education at a prep school; however, one thing that worries me is how their prep school transcript could actually hurt their chances of admission to some colleges. It’s my impression that many of the very large state universities simply apply a quantitative formula that crunches GPA, class rank, and SAT score. Essentially, if they crunch your numbers and you don’t meet some predetermined minimum, they don’t look any further.</p>

<p>Take a student who would have been in the top 5% of his class in a mediocre suburban public high school, with, say, a 3.8 GPA in the toughest curriculum they offer, including multiple AP classes. At a competitive prep school the same student might be in the 50% percentile of his class, and have a 2.8 GPA (or whatever the 50th percentile GPA might be – perhaps it’s lower…), and may not have been eligible for the AP classes at said prep school ( or they don’t do AP). That low class rank and GPA will really hurt, unless someone is taking into account where the student went to school.</p>

<p>Obviously, middle of the class at Exeter isn’t too shabby. But does anyone account for that? Even if the kids go to lesser tier, less well-known prep schools, (say, for example, Fountain Valley School of Colorado, which happens to be geographically convenient to us…), even there, the class rank and GPA are bound to take a significant hit, relative to what they might have been at the mediocre suburban public high school. Is this accounted for?</p>

<p>Will prep school impair the ability of a student to gain admission to his competitive enormous state university?</p>

<p>(In our case, “competitive enormous state university” means the University of Texas at Austin, and perhaps y’all can comment on admission to UT Austin, coming from prep schools, but I think this is a relevant question for other competitive state universities as well, e.g. Berkeley, UCLA…)</p>

<p>I can’t speak for prep schools, but my public high school is ranked in the top 100 nationally by Newsweek, and we’re sending many students to Cal and UCLA, our competitive state universities. </p>

<p>Take a look at your local public schools, and if there are any outstanding ones, they’re going to work out. :')</p>

<p>If we had an outstanding public high school, I probably wouldn’t be entertaining the idea of letting my kids attend a prep school.</p>

<p>But would that actually end up hurting them?</p>

<p>Colleges look at class ranking in terms of each school.
They understand that if a kid goes to a competitive school, class ranking is skewed.</p>

<p>D had 3.7 gpa unweighted and was 39 in class. When we talked to various colleges, they said they looked at her ranking in regards to her particular school. Basically they saw that she had a great GPA in a very high achieving school. It did not hurt her chances at all. But then again she didnt go the a HADES school.</p>

<p>In general, colleges that know your private school will place those “lower” grades in context with your school. That means that a 3.2 at a particular school known for rigor and with a high level of successful college performance by graduates will NOT be a disadvantage for the colleges familiar with your school.</p>

<p>That said, there will be colleges that either do not know your school or are so big that its difficult fro their admissions systems to appropriately credit what looks like alower GPA. In those instances, standardized test scores and recommendations will help offset that disadvantage.</p>

<p>We let the chips fall where they may with our child’s private high school and are relying upon colleges to put grades in the context of the school. The education was more important than maximizing potential college acceptances at the largest number of colleges.</p>

<p>A relevant question for your potential private high school would be to ask how many schools their college counselors follow.</p>

<p>Kei</p>

<p>If you are open to the idea of sending your child to a prep school, why so “obsessed” (you know what I mean) with University of Texas at Austin. There are tons of excellent colleges out there. If you are considering in-state tuition, wouldn’t it make more sense to stick with your public school even if it’s not “outstanding” and work hard to get a higher GPA, which is easier as you have realized?</p>

<p>You have pointed to a tough quandry b/c college chances may be better if top 10% at PS than middle of the class at BS. The way we came out was that high school was so important and in many ways more formative and influential than college can be. We wanted to ensure the best experience during those years and look at experience in BS as shaping D/S in so many ways: establish a lifelong love of learning; challenge by peers; social maturity and growing confidence with independence; getting along in a community; opportunities for sports, drama, other ECs, and the support and direction from a community of faculty who know teens better than I could ever hope to. It’s not right for everyone but there are a wealth of upsides to consider.</p>

<p>PAParent: “If you are open to the idea of sending your child to a prep school, why so “obsessed” (you know what I mean) with University of Texas at Austin. There are tons of excellent colleges out there.”</p>

<p>If I’m obsessed with something it would be getting my child the best secondary and and postsecondary education possible, i.e. prep school followed by Ivy/Stanford/MIT. It’s plausible that they won’t manage to gain admission to Ivy/Stanford/MIT or a handful of very close 2nd tier schools. In that case, given that we’re Texas residents, the logic of UT-Austin is inescapable.</p>

<p>PAParent:“If you are considering in-state tuition, wouldn’t it make more sense to stick with your public school even if it’s not “outstanding” and work hard to get a higher GPA, which is easier as you have realized?”</p>

<p>That’s essentially the dilemma we’re facing. That said, I make a good living, and I am fortunate that I can afford to send the kids out of state to the expensive private school of their choice. But that doesn’t mean I think it’s worth it. Once you get out of the elite 15 or 20 (we could argue any given school, but you get my drift…) universities in the country, I’m not sure it makes any sense to pass up in-state tuition at UT.</p>

<p>Soccer_Dad, I get your point. Getting into ivy+SM is daunting no matter where you are and whether a BS can help is questionable, so your concern is legitimate. I think it may help to talk to an admission officer at UT system and ask the exact question you posted here. I personally want to know the answer as well. If no matrix of GPA and school you attend is considered, I honestly think PS is a better option in this situation. The competition would be much less and the chance of getting a high GPA would be greatly enhanced.</p>

<p>Soccer_Dad, you have a very specific question. Many prep schools list college acceptances, or matriculations, in their viewbook or on their website. You can check the schools you’re considering, to see if they get students into UT. This would be a wonderful question to ask during the admissions interview.</p>

<p>There’s a further question, though. Once a student gains admission to a college, how will he fare? Stanley Fish raises the question of college students’ lack of writing skills in a New York Times blog post: [What</a> Should Colleges Teach? - Stanley Fish Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/what-should-colleges-teach/]What”>http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/what-should-colleges-teach/). </p>

<p>Private schools in general place a greater emphasis on writing skills than public schools–although that’s an overgeneralization, I know it’s true for our local public system. College admissions is a lottery, with no guaranteed outcome. I know what my child won’t receive in our public system, and I feel that a true, “college-prep” experience in high school is worth a theoretical loss in class rank.</p>

<p>You should consider another question, though. If your children were to attend St. Paul’s, or Deerfield, for example, would they want to attend UT? What proportion of a prep school’s graduates return to their home state for college?</p>

<p>My question is why would you want to send a child to a college that only looks at numbers when determining admission. Don’t get me wrong, UT@A is a great school for many specific subjects, but I can’t imagine my 8th grader honing in on the exact college he wants to attend at this stage in his education.</p>

<p>While the effects of grade deflation on college admissions is certainly a very valid concern, I think the benefits of the entire BS experience far outweigh any disadvantage it places a student in state school admissions.</p>

<p>Just my opinion. Feel free to completely ignore. :)</p>

<p>Unfortunately, large public universities (including about all state flagships) admit about 90% of their freshman purely by the numbers (lets say I have inside info and leave it at that). It is a small percentage of kids on the edge whose files actually get looked at. When you have 10K+ applications land in your inbasket, the army of admissions officers and committees can be a bit much, so the obvious yeses and nos are presorted by GPA, SAT/ACT, hours in and EC, # of varsity sports played, etc.</p>

<p>The question for the OP is whether his kid’s GPA will be high enough to get into that hand-reviewed category? The good news is that most “admit by numbers” schools have a factor that they use based upon the rigor of the school that they use in their calculation. The students from the onsie-twosie schools that don’t send many to that school (OOS and small privates), typically get the hand-review process anyway where they actually read the transcript and decide that the kid went to a very rigorous school and deserves a break on the GPA.</p>

<p>Personally, if I were the OP with a question about matriculations, I’d start with the prep schools and see if they have a history of applicants to UT. If so, they should be able to tell him where in the graduating class (rank) they were successful and where they were not. He should be able then to guesstimate (based upon his kids stats compared to the spread) whether the odds look good. If the bottom quartile is getting rejected from UT and the upper 3 quartiles are and his kid is average to above average on the admissions scale at the prep school, I’d not sweat it.</p>

<p>That being said, 3 or 4 years at a prep school is a long time to project anyone’s future. Lots of life happens along the way.</p>

<p>Perhaps it would be worthwhile to post the question on the College Admission section of this forum. There you might find students and/or parents that recently encountered this dilemma first hand and that can offer a candid perspective. </p>

<p>For what it’s worth, one of my dear friends went to the University of Texas at Austin after Deerfield. He was a National Merit Scholar and enrolled in UT’s Plan II Honors program. He speaks VERY highly of the education he received at the University of Texas.</p>

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<p>Soccer Dad:</p>

<p>My daughter is living though this nightmare right now. She attends a prep school that sends ~ 35% to Ivies, doesn’t have grade inflation, and doesn’t weight honors or AP courses at all. Her GPA slid quite a bit freshman year, but naviance data seemed to indicate that the private colleges most students at her school covet understand what is going on.</p>

<p>Problem is, my daughter seems to be developing a preference for big public schools.</p>

<p>Periwinkle’s fabulous advice, to ask while applying, is a great first step. We’re also doing it on college tours. From what we gather, Wisconsin, Michigan, and UCLA get it. UCSD doesn’t seem to. Right now, we’re wondering if there’s any leeway in Alabama’s astonishingly generous OOS merit scholarship.</p>

<p>I don’t know about Texas, sorry. But I would say this. If you find a high school at which “there’s no doubt in my mind that my kids would get a superior education,” send your kids there and worry about college later.</p>

<p>Before we decided to send our son to prep, we debated this as well. We decided to call his top 3 colleges. 2 said they look at the school when evaluating GPA and one said it is purely by the numbers…
As said already, it seems to depend on the institution.</p>

<p>Hmmm…I’d say Michigan State is a big pubic university and when my daughter was recruited by them, we sat and spoke with the head of admissions. She told us that they recalculate all gpa’s and rankings based on the academic rigor.</p>

<p>I went from prep school to a big state school. At these huge schools the admissions process has to be by the numbers given the amount of kids applying. Rigor and school difficulty can potentially offset average stats depending on the college’s evaluation process. Some state schools recalculate grades to help evaluate students while others will leave as is. The Texas system certainly presents more difficulties or ease depending on where a student actually winds up in class rank. Something to look at is whether the past applicants were instate or out of state to any state school. The college counselors will have this info, but will probably not divulge it unless you actually attend their school. Different states have different ratios which can be the difference between a safety and reach. Another factor to consider with state schools is whether they have rolling admissions. A student who applies in September may have a better chance than one who applies in January.</p>

<p>This is all what ifs. You don’t know what ur kid will get I either school. a 2.8 is abysmal and means it’s too hard.</p>

<p>collegebound1414: “a 2.8 is abysmal and means it’s too hard.”</p>

<p>Is it though? It doesn’t mean squat unless we have some grasp of the grade distribution. I don’t have a clue, but I, perhaps naively, supposed that A’s and B’s would be harder to come by at prep school. What would approximate the 50th percentile GPA at most competitive boarding schools?</p>

<p>Thank you, everyone, there is great advice here!</p>