People use it all the time but it seems to be a label people give themselves or their student.
What makes one confident to say they are “high stats?”
Every high school is different so again, what may be high stats at one school might be seen as not equivalent at another high school.
Is there an SAT or ACT score that hits the threshold to be deemed “high stats?” What do you see as that score?
Just seeking to understand.
Because I have been looking for an opportunity to put a poll in a post!
0 voters
Personally, I would call someone high stats, who had a perfect GPA and a 1550 or higher on the SAT or the equivalent ACT.
(sorry, I was messing around with the poll to see if I could add an option, but it looks like I can’t. Thanks for letting me explore this!)
High stat to me is 3.9+ UW and 1450+ SAT or 33+ ACT.
To me, it’s 3.9 UW GPA and 1500+ SAT. Give or take.
I chose other because I would define high stats as having stats that are competitive at most highly selective universities. To me that is 1530+ SAT, 34 (or maybe even 35)+ ACT, 3.95+ UW GPA (usually), and…most importantly…high, high rigor.
There are a few places where a 1530 wouldn’t cut it, such as MIT in many cases, but for the most part a reasonably balanced 1530 will be above the bar at almost any school and will keep AOs looking at the remainder of the application.
This doesn’t mean kids with lower stats won’t get accepted at these highly selective universities, but I wouldn’t call the student a “high stats” applicant.
For me: 3.9+ UW GPA and 1550+ SAT / 34+ ACT.
Concordance tables list a 1540 as a 35. So I think a 35+ makes more sense, no?
That’s true. I hadn’t checked that.
My definition: 4.0 UW, 1500+ SAT, highest rigor of classes offered, top decile.
Agree with @momofboiler1. 4.0 UW, 1550+ SAT but also highest rigor and top 5-10% in high class class, so compared to school high performer.
GPAs are so inflated, and 5.0 or 6.0 scales are so common, that I now pretty much ignore GPA and look for class percentile, although so many kids report, “My school doesn’t rank.” I’d say high stats means better than top 5th% in a good school, ACT of 35 or higher, SAT of 1550 or higher.
How many times do we see a GPA of 4.0, but when we press, we find out that it is only top 25th%, since honors and AP are given an extra point, or even two!
Very few kids in our state take the SAT so I will go with ACT. I would also say it depends on where you are applying (for example a high stat kid going to Univ of Alabama may be a 31 or 32). But for your selective schools up to 30% acceptance, I would have said a 33 for class of 2022, but I would say 34 for 2024.
Definitely a 4.0 for GPA.
I think it can depend on the context of the high school and location.
In a well-funded school district, to me high stats means a GPA of 93+, in a lot of honors/AP/IB courses, and, if they take a standardized test, at least a 1500/34 SAT/ACT.
Well funded or highly competitive private and I would agree. There are privates where 93 and 1500 would put you in top 30% of class but the kids get in to top 25 schools regularly.
Yes, I wasn’t thinking of privates.
Yes I figured we were on the same page. It is a great question that we have had in the house. On another post for a highly selective school I mistakenly referred to 1450 as not high stats and a poster took offense, pointing out that it is 97%.
They may have taken offense to it but they are mistaken if they think that 1450 is “high stats” for the T30 or for T20 LACs.
Personally I would classify “high stats” as the scores necessary to be in the hunt anywhere; basically top 1% numbers. That would be something like a 3.9+ UW with high rigor along with a 99 pct. SAT/ACT score which would be 1530+ or 35+ for 2023.
Agree with others: to me high stats is in the range to have the best shot one can, anywhere in the country, so 4.0uw, 1550+. Of course the ability to jump the tough hurdle of elite admission that high-stats kids often chase probably relates to rigor and rank (re HS peers) more than exact gpa or score, and that IMO is where kids’ expectations of admission can have false hope if they are merely “high stats” but do not have the rest.
“Average excellent “ to me is more the term for 3.8+uw/1400+, though maybe with post covid grade inflation and TO that needs to be 3.9/1450 now?
This is the term that I have wondered about. At the end of the day any of the “high stats” or “average excellent” kids are qualified students and that is where the “extras” come in to play. a 3.9 with 1450 is a few steps away from “high stats” but they may be gifted athlete or musician or created a great community organization.
To me it is relative to whatever colleges we are talking about, and also somewhat contextual too.
So I agree a high stats kid for the most selective colleges from a highly resourced school has very high rigor, near perfect grades, and a 35/1550+. But there are some important qualifications in there.
Incidentally, I think there is a lot of nuance to rigor when talking about the most selective colleges. I think even taking a lot of AP classes, for example, may not count as maximum rigor for the most selective colleges, because in fact there are kids with even more rigorous curriculums than that. That doesn’t mean you can’t get admitted to the most selective colleges that way, I just don’t think you necessarily will get the top possible credit for rigor, and I think that helps explain some of what we see in admissions rates by different types of secondary school even controlling for test scores.
So to me the poll is not quite nuanced enough, because I think there are circumstances where a 3.9, say, could lead to a higher internal academic rating than a 4.0, even if the latter involved a lot of APs or such, if that 3.9 was from an even higher rigor program.