<p>I know more of the kids who graduated top of the class and then fall short, drop out, don’t finish whatever. The skin-of-teeth kids tend to know that they are going to need to work to keep up. They don’t need Mom nagging and they know they can’t coast.</p>
<p>@mathmom If your son can do it over again, would he still choose the same school or the same academic track? B average is not bad, but it may have already limited his opportunities both inside and outside of his school. </p>
<p>Oh yes, I think he would, but he says he should have majored in history. He’d have taken most of the same courses, but even if he’d still chosen Arabic as his foreign language, he probably wouldn’t have taken as much of it! (Or spent his entire junior year in Jordan.) Actually if he could count his grades from his time abroad he’s got much better grades, but Tufts just counts them all as “credit”.</p>
<p>Only on CC can someone graduate with a B average from a top schools and have to go down in sackcloth and ashes or be relegated to being one of the great unwashed.</p>
<p>Agape; are you saying that a student who is accepted to Princeton not attend because of the cap on a number of A’s a professor can give? The reality is that 65 % of the students will not graduate with a 4.0 gpa. because even at Princeton , the person with a 2.0 gpa still gets a degree.</p>
<p>At every school, 49.99% of the students will graduate at the bottom of the class whether they were admitted at the top of the pile or by the skin of their teeth.</p>
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It depends how you define “getting in by the skin of your teeth” and “fall somewhere in the middle.” There was an interesting study at Duke a couple years ago that looked at these effects, which is at <a href=“http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/grades_4.0.pdf”>http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/grades_4.0.pdf</a> . They found that certain groups were far more likely to drop out of challenging math/engineering/economics majors and switch to humanities than others, such as URMs. When they added controls for the different parts of the application, the other parts of the application were able to explain nearly all of the difference in rates for different races. SAT scores had a near negligible contribution to dropping out of these major, a smaller contribution than LORs, essays, and almost all other parts of the application. Surprisingly, GPA also did not have great influence on dropping out of the major, when adding sufficient controls. The most influential factors were gender and strength of HS curriculum. URMs admits tended to have a weaker HS curriculum (and weaker almost all other portions of application). A significant portion of women were dropping out for other reasons that did not correlate well with HS academic achievement or curriculum, so it could not be explained by portions of the application. When most people say, “getting in by the skin of their teeth”, I expect the mean being on the lower side of stats, rather than having a weaker preparation via their HS curriculum than most of the entering class.</p>
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No. I think it is prudent for sub-par applicants to consider forgoing high reach schools because these schools may not be good academic fit for them. Like I said, a B average is not bad, but it will be difficult for 3.0 students to find research and internship positions when there are hordes of 3.5+ classmates competing for them. Obviously, if the name on the undergrad degree is the ultimate goal, then you’re right, a 2.0 Princeton grad is still a Princeton grad, but that student will have a hard time getting into a respectable graduate or professional school. </p>
<p>I think you touch a nerve here. May be the real question is – “Is getting an elite college degree more important than doing well in college?”</p>
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<p>But is it necessarily a given that a student will have a lower GPA at an elite school, since the elite schools have higher grade inflation. For example, a given student might get a 3.2 GPA at an elite school or a non-elite school.</p>
<p>However, the 3.2 GPA at an elite school would be below average at that school, but a 3.2 GPA at a non-elite school would be above average at that school. Perhaps the relative comparison might have some effect on the student.</p>
<p>I think it very much depends on what you want to do with your degree. I don’t know anyone who found they couldn’t hack it at an elite school, even if it was a reach for them. I do know people who couldn’t cope in certain majors that they might have been able to stick out at a lesser school, and people who didn’t wind up doing well enough to get into the top law or med schools. </p>
<p>One never knows, however, if the person would have gotten into the better law school coming from a lesser school either. A given student would probably have a better GPA and percentile ranking at Rutgers than at Princeton - but Harvard Law is also going to take more Princeton grads than Rutgers grads, so it isn’t clear that that student would have done well enough at RU to get in anyway. For argument’s sake, if you needed to be in the top 25 % of your class at Princeton to get into HLS and the top 5 % of your class at Rutgers, it wouldn’t actually have done any good for the person smack in the middle of the Princeton class to have finished in the top 6-10 % at Rutgers. </p>
<p>And, of course, if you really want to go to the better school, it is worth the risk that you’ll wind up at Georgetown rather than Harvard law. I don’t actually think that people who do poorly at elite schools would generally have been stars at their safety either, so I doubt that the difference in outcome is going to be all that dramatic.</p>
<p>Why is the world divided into research and internships? There are dozens of things that grownups do that don’t require either of those things.</p>
<p>There are tens of thousands of people who are employed happily today who graduated with a below median GPA (by definition- there is a median and half the students will be below it) and I didn’t notice hordes of “I graduated from a reach school- help me” signs at the local homeless shelter. No, you’re not getting into medical school with a 2.5 GPA, but only on CC do hordes of HS students consider medical school the be-all and end-all of a college education.</p>
<p>I wonder the same thing about the frenzy surrounding standardized testing. If you have to prep for years, take courses, hire tutors, and take both the ACT and SAT repeatedly to get a baseline score for admissions to a certain college, is it possible that you may be in over your head if you do get admitted?</p>
<p>I think it depends a lot on the personality of the student, and the reason why the school is a reach. Does he rise to challenges? Or is he a perfectionist who will drive himself crazy if the competition level is too high? </p>
<p>My S got into an Top 20 U (Wash U in St. Louis) ED, and I think would qualify as “by the skin of his teeth”, given that his GPA was quite low for the school, although his test scores were high. He had about a 3.5 UW GPA in HS (with a heavy AP/honors courseload, and with a Top 10% rank, which was based on weighted GPA). In college he has managed about a 3.4 GPA. Would he have been better off going to a less selective school? Hard to say, but I don’t think so, since he tends to rise to a challenge, especially if he finds the topic interesting. I’m not convinced that his GPA would have been any higher at a less selective school, since for him the difficulty level of a class and his grade in it are not very well correlated. (This is a kid who got a 5 on an AP exam where he got a B- in the class.) He did have a period in college where it was a challenge for him to adjust to being at a school full of super students. I think he would get better grades if he was willing to devote more effort into it. He spends a huge amount of time on an EC, at which he excels. Sometimes I wish he would devote that energy into classes instead… He will graduate next month, and will attend a Top 20 law school in the fall, with a good scholarship. With better grades, he probably could have gotten into a higher ranked law school, but I don’t think that going to an easier college would have necessarily meant that he would have had a better GPA. </p>
<p>My D is very different however. Her HS UW GPA was only slightly lower than her brother’s, but she worked hard for it, unlike him, and had slightly fewer AP/honors classes. She is also much more of a perfectionist. Her HS grades were very correlated to how hard the class was (for her). In her case, I think it would have been a really bad idea to attend a super reach college, and that her grades would suffer if she did so. She attends a college where her stats put her about in the middle of the school. She has to work very hard, harder than in high school, but I think the difficulty level is manageable. </p>
<p>So, it really depends on the student and his/her individual circumstances. I think it is a very valid issue to be concerned about and to consider as a factor in the school decision.</p>
<p>The OP is assuming a kid needs a high GPA to realize the “joy of college”. My D2 is a freshman at a very intense STEM school. It is kicking her tail academically for a variety of reasons. One reason is because her prep going in was not so great compared to her peers, and she is working crazy hard. She has passed her classes so far, and at least it doesn’t look like she will be on academic probation after her first year. And her GPA is nothing to write home about.</p>
<p>But she LOVES her school. I could not imagine her more ‘joyous’ than she is at this college. She just landed a summer research opportunity so she can stay on campus this summer, and she is thrilled.</p>
<p>Grades aren’t everything. This school is a sort of crucible, and it is definitely molding her – but for some students that is what they want. She got into schools where she was high in the pool academically, where she would certainly not be working as hard, and would be getting higher grades. But she would not trade for one instant. So you need to know your kid… and you need to let them take a risk on a tougher environment if they are sure that is what they want.</p>
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<p>I hope this doesn’t mean that 35% of the students at Princeton will graduate with a 4.0 GPA?</p>
<p>"Watching some kids, who got in elite colleges by the skin of their teeth, suffer and still fall short of making average grades make me think that the craze to get our kids to the highest reach possible is detrimental to their development and robbing them of the joy of college. "</p>
<p>I don’t know how it is for non-pre-med majors who get in this way, but I can tell you that we often see premeds posting in the premed forum about how their college grades are now not med-school-worthy. A review of their posting history often reveals that these students were average or below-average admits. That can make it very difficult to be the ones who grab the A’s, especially in the weeder classes. </p>
<p>But the above applies to any premed anywhere…not just at the top elites. The ACT 29 premed at UCLA or UMich will likely find himself in the same situation. </p>
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At highly selective colleges, it’s not just the few who get grades towards the top of their class that get admitted to med school. In another thread, I looked at the med school admissions results for different undergrad schools, as posted by MD Applicant members. At selective colleges with notable grade inflation, the average GPA of students who were admitted to med schools was not much above the average GPA of the overall class. At Stanford, the average GPA of students admitted to med school was actually lower than the average GPA of the overall class. When searching for specific GPA ranges, there was surprisingly little difference in acceptance rate between applicants with high and low GPAs. For example, acceptance rates by GPA for members who did their undergrad at Stanford is below. </p>
<p>3.75 to 4.0+ - 82%
3.5 to 3.75 - 85%
3.25 to 3.5 - 70%
3.0 to 3.25 - 80% (small sample size)
Below 3.0 - 100% (2 out of 2)</p>
<p>Some of the lower stat acceptances appear to involve either re-applying or a delayed application after graduation. For example, one member received a 2.91 science GPA and 2.95 overall GPA, which she implies relates to working 35-40 hours per week while a student. After graduation, she received a masters in a medical related field where she achieved a higher GPA, worked in a medical related field, did hundreds of hours of medical related volunteer work and many hours of physician shadowing, then applied and was accepted to med school. Some of the top stat lack of acceptances may relate to incomplete self-reported information, such as not updating profile to list acceptances.</p>
<p>My son got in to a top twenty school off a waitlist. Does that count as skin of his teeth? He is doing really well and loves his classes. His friend who got into an elite LAC as a football recruit is doing great too. Does this thread have something to do with feeling like some students don’t deserve their admittances? I think there are lots of individual variables that make it hard to make sweeping generalizations.</p>
<p>I think the first question should be: by nature, will he/she thrive as a big fish in a smaller pond or a small fish in a bigger pond. Some kids need to be one or the other- leader of the pack versus elevated in their own thinking by the level of others. Rarely do future contacts ask about college gpa. They look for evidence you’ll be a savvy contributor in the workplace. (Real life is about a heck of a lot more than classroom grades.)</p>
<p>D2 got into a reach, a great school- oops, with grade deflation. She struggled. Several times we asked ourselves if she should have been at an easier place. Even she now says, no. She’s about to graduate, “by the skin of her teeth.” But man-oh-man, has she been educated- and empowered. Her sheepskin will not include her gpa. What she personally and intellectually gained there will never be lost. </p>
<p>Does this mean I think all kids should reach? No. But our eyes should be open. </p>
<p>I have a kid who is a strong student. She got into her first choice program, but was certainly in the bottom 20% of the class mathematics-wise. (She received her only B in high school in the senior calculus course while the average student accepted in the program has an A, if not an A+ average).</p>
<p>Since the school caps the number of As in any course to 25% of the class, she ended up with a C in all compulsory quantitative courses in all years of her program without fail. As a result, she missed out on all internships because campus recruiters only interview those with an A average. I don’t think she has ever regretted her decision though.</p>
<p>Thinking back, I am still amazed at the consistency of the high school grades across the province, and I am still amazed at how this can all be done without standardized scores.</p>
<p>My husband and I just had this conversation the other day. It really depends on the child.</p>
<p>We have one who would have been fine, and thrived, had he gotten into, say, Stanford (where he was denied). I wouldn’t question for a minute that he would rise to the occasion because he has risen to any challenge, and has the intellect and personality to do so with joy and ease.</p>
<p>My third, who is a junior right now, is not the same person. She is considering playing her sport at the D3 level, and has had multiple contacts from coaches. The highest ranked LACs are D3 in this sport, and after flirting with continuing the recruitment process with a couple of those colleges, she has focused more on colleges where she falls in the middle stats or even a bit above the middle stats of admitted students. Why? She’s smart and able, but her natural abilities place her more comfortably in a different place. In high school she has always been just below the top kids. Never quite good enough. A very strong student, but not the very top student who would be admitted to Swarthmore on her own academic merits. If she got into Swarthmore (NOT an actual choice, but on par with the LACs recruiting her) she would be always having to work harder to keep up. We (and she) would like her to experience being a top student, with the opportunities that come with that. Chances for merit scholarships, chances that, frankly, would not happen for a jock who got in by the skin of her teeth. </p>
<p>The difference between my kids, of course, is that there really aren’t any colleges where my son couldn’t do well. We could say he “got in by the skin of his teeth” (OOS at UNC-CH, and thriving), but it is just because it is so hard to get in for all OOS kids, not because he doesn’t belong there academically. My daughter at Swarhmore (again, just an example LAC, not those actually recruiting her) would truly have gotten in only because of the sport, and the college wouldn’t be a good fit for her either academically or in terms of her personality.</p>