thank you
It certainly won’t help, especially for an ultra selective program like Huntsman. Are you taking Calc BC and is Wharton your default if you don’t get Huntsman?
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If it’s submitted, it will be considered, and if it’s below the 25th percentile it will hurt, not that it can’t be offset by a hook or other achievements (after all, there are admitted students in that 25th percentile).
Did you mean to respond to me? This is good info for @unsweet.
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Thank you for tagging the appropriate person.
Usually? No.
Apparently someone got a likely letter for wharton? I’m not really sure how
recruited athlete?
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5 students applying from my school, how important will GPA be (esp for Penn)? I understand holistic but I also understand GPA comparisons are important too. If im 3/5 or 4/5, am I severely disadvantaged no matter what?
GPA is very important to Penn, as is the rigor of the courses from which the GPA is derived.
If it wished, Penn could probably fill its entire class with students with perfect GPAs. But according to the latest common data set available, 52% of enrolled first-year students had a GPA of 4.0 on a four-point scale, and 36% had a GPA between 3.75 and 3.99. You can infer that the small percentage left were admitted on the basis of institutional priorities (e.g. recruited athlete, family of major donor, etc.).
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They care more about the grade trend. I’ve observed that low GPA kids get in freqently (3.6’s) while high GPAs get rejected, but the low GPAs have a positive upwards trend
Of the 5 top 20 schools that published GPAs, UPenn has the lowest amount of 4.0 UW admitted
Stanford: 75% had a perfect 4.0. : They use “SU6” GPA, which doesn’t take freshman year.
Harvard: 72.9% had a perfect 4.0.: Expected
JHU: Whopping 70% had a perfect 4.0. Could be explained by a lack of legacy/athlete admission? Although I doubt that since JHU is an academic killer school
WUSTL: Whopping 67% had a perfect 4.0.
UPenn: only 52% had a perfect 4.0
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The question was, is GPA important to Penn? The answer is still yes. Penn puts it in the highest category of consideration in the CDS. Can you have a less-than-perfect GPA and still get in? The answer to that is “yes” as well.
As I stated, Penn (and the other schools you listed, for that matter) could admit a class filled exclusively with 4.0 students…but they don’t.
Still, 88% of Penn’s last entering class had a GPA of 3.75 or higher – with the expectation of a rigorous course load. At UChicago, 86% of the class was 3.75 GPA or higher.
All the other schools you listed are at or above 90%, with Stanford topping out at 94.1%. (Princeton, which was not on your list, is at 91.25%)
Of the schools referenced so far, that leaves a range of 6-14% of the entering class having a GPA below a 3.75. That 6-14% must have a hook or something very extraordinary going for them.
In the final analysis, we are talking about schools with single-digit admit rates. All of them value strong high school GPAs, though GPA alone never tells the whole story, to be sure.
Anyway, back to you, Penn ED applicants. Good luck!
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Disregarding ED1 admits, it would more be like 92-95%
I think we could go back and attempt to re-base everything using slightly different variables, though the data would be sparse for isolating ED effects on GPA averages across institutions. None of this advances @noedrea’s understanding, however, and this slicing does not change the main point.
@noedrea, we don’t have insight into what you have going for you. We can say that GPA is very important to Penn – on that there is no disagreement. Your materials are submitted and you cannot change your stats at this point, so wish for the best and focus on things you can control, including preparing contingencies for RD and ED2 (though I hope you won’t need them).
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@Metawampe & @Amy_C, thanks for the insight! Everything is greatly appreciated.
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Does anyone have an idea of what % of ED admits are legacy/recruited athletes?
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936 students are recruited athletes at Penn, or 9% of the undergraduate population, according to a survey conducted by the Washington Post. If you assume the incoming class will contribute an ordinary share of athletes to the school, and you also assume most recruited athletes apply ED, I’d say you’re probably looking at something in the neighborhood of 200 of the admitted ED group of ~1200-1300 being recruited athletes. Someone else might have better data, though.
In 2017, the Daily Pennsylvanian reported that 25% Penn’s early admits were legacy. College Transitions says it was 22% two cycles ago. So assume somewhere between one-fifth to one quarter of the accepted ED group is legacy.
rip chances. quarter ED accepted pool is atheletes, another quarter is legacy. I applied CAS and like 90% of atheletes will be in CAS
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One of my athelete friends got a conditional acceptance, based on first marking period grades. They will probs ask for them if they want you, and your grades weren’t perfect before senior year
On a percentage basis, mid-to-high teens for recruited athletes, but you get the idea. Even without athletes and legacy candidates in the mix, it is a reach school. Hope for the best, and have a Plan B (and C, and D…)
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