True. In our case there was genuine interest - impressed by Open House in fall - and effort on essays. Who knows. DD has been accepted into honors at multiple higher ranked engineering schools so everything worked out.
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other options? im sure a lotā¦
I think our kids may go to the same magnet school. Once my son was accepted to UMD Clark school of engineering IS (still disappointed about no honors/ only scholars with 1520 SAT 3.98/4.9 weighted GPA 14 APs), we had him withdraw his VT app since UMD was first choice.
My son also adored VT when we visited but looking at Naviance it looks like this year they may have even yield protected more kids. The whole college process is maddening.
Iām seeing very high GPAās from Virginia. I think that the GPA average varies a lot by state and region. For example, the average UW GPA at my kidsā OOS high school is a 3.4 and the average weighted is a 3.5 because where we live, an excellent school district, it is not possible to take honors from freshman year. There are only a small handful of honors courses (a couple math, 4th year language) and most APās are not available until Junior year (I can think of 2 offered to 10th graders). I wonder if this places our kids at a disadvantage applying to east coast and mid-Atlantic Schools. My D25 waitlisted. I also know that in the Boston area honors courses that boost GPA are offered starting in 9th grade, and they are really just the same as unweighted college prep classes at our school where everyone goes to college. I can only hope that admissions officers are aware of this but itās an optimistic assumption. The grades I see on CC are insane.
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Admissions officers are very much aware of it. Each school sends a school profile which covers things like average GPA for that class, APs offered, etc. - to help the AO see how the applicant falls compared to their classmates. This levels that playing field as much as possible - so your student is compared against their classmates vs someone from a school with 4,000 APs. Some colleges will even redo the GPA using their own valuations to help level it as well.
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Anyone know if students are admitted off the waitlist based on space availability at the major level or college/department level?
- wondering specifically for Pamplin
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Yes, thatās good that they look a the school summary, and we really like how some schools use an SRAR and/or recalculate. These differences make it less useful to compare stats on here on CC, or to use national averages from college ranking sites. I really donāt envy the admissions officers trying to compare with 57K applications. The previous poster to whom I was responding, Vjtlm, surmised that the average high school GPA is 3.8-4.0. I really hope that is not correct, because unless itās on a 5.0 scale that is massive grade inflation, even a 3.5 is inflation IMHO.
@pancake2 ā¦ now there is one thing the Dept of Ed could doā¦ like have kids report GPA (straight up, whatās your grade 4.0 out of 4.0) and then QPA (which cannot go to 10 or 8 or whatever)ā¦ but somehow a QPA can reach maybe 5.0 for each school regardless of schoolā¦ so if one took all the hardest classes IB/AP/whatever and received high marks then get 5.0
My sonās GPA is 4.0 and his CR is #1. BUT his QPA (quality point average) or GPA-weighted is like 4.8ā¦ not 5.0ā¦ but thatās because the school has mandatory non-IB/AP courses like gym or religion or whateverā¦ so does a QPA or GPA-weighted of 4.8 sound bad compared to someone with a QPA GPA-weighted of 5.0?
Blah. Our kiddos private LS/MS used GPA/QPAā¦ and we thought it was obvoius that all high schools should use it too.
Am I missing something here? I assume a WGPA of 5.0 is impossible unless all courses at a high-school are at AP level. And I assume no school in the US offers courses all at AP level
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Yeah ā¦ right ā¦ I agreeā¦ so my older S23 had a WGPA of say 4.85 when all said and done, and several of his now college roommates had WGPA of 5.0ā¦ and Iām like how did they do that? Did that high school have AP gym? I just donāt get it.
It really depends how a school weights their grades. In South Carolina, if a student gets a 100% in an AP class that is weighted as a 6.0 and a 90% in an AP class is a 5.0. In my opinion, when we want to compare students, we should look at unweighted GPAs and how many AP/DE/IB/H classes kids have taken.
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South Carolina has a statewide GPA calculation and the highest weighted GPA goes to 6.0 (if one took all AP classes and got straight As). So, depending on the state, a weighted GPA of 5 is entirely possible.
ETA, looks like @fallwasbrutal and I had the same thought a minute apart
IIRC, VT does not look at GPA at all. Instead, they look at individual grades and course rigor. The VT short answer essays are very important, as is the major for which you apply to. Some majors have acceptance rates in the 80s and even 90s, while some are obviously much lower.
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Thanks for all the clarification on WGPA. Did not know that some states can go up to a 6.0 score.
I am really glad to have only one kid, I would not want to go through this process one more time 
She has several so far. All the kids will find their place, even if it wasnāt where they expected.
If youāre in MoCo that is likely.
In our county in MD, all honors and AP classes are graded on a 5.0 scale. So 50% of the students in our high school have weighted GPAs of 4.50+. Iām sure the 40 or so colleges that all the kids want to go to are well versed in the peculiarities of grading in most large school districts.
Congrats BTW. UMD is definitely in the running for DD as we enter regular decision season.
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Welcome to the crazy world of new age grading. In our large school district (160,000 students in county public schools), all honors and AP classes are graded on a 5.0 scale. So weighted GPAs are out of control - 50% of students have a 4.50 or higher WGPA.
On top of the honors/AP equivalency, the county also limits grading to whole letter grades, no plus or minus, and grades the quarters separately. So if you earn a B in the first quarter and an A in the second quarter your final grade for the semester is A. Only semester letter grades are included on transcripts. So GPAs are out of control - 67% of students have a 3.50 or higher GPA.
Not really Ideal. My daughter got a c+ final grade in her AP Calculus and a 5 on exam. Teacher graded hard to make sure kids put in the effort to pass the exam. There definitely is no real way to compare GPAās across schools. All teachers do not grade the same. She had another AP class where she had a final grade of A+ and got a 2 on the exam. Then the crazy thing to confuse everyone after all this she got into honors college here and elsewhere she applied. I truly believe they go by rigor. When we visited our school recruiter he stressed the course load they take not the grades is what they look at. They want to make sure you can handle college. I also really thing the main factor is the competition in your major too. Engineering is almost like flipping a coin. Heck my daughters valedictorian applied and got in with some merit money but no offer for honors college. I think that was because they figured they are not going and the major is so competitive they did not stand out and they want a diverse group in honors. The first reaction for them was they did not give me money or honors so off the list. I truly think VT has this down to a science much better than other schools.
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