<p>Private religious high school; took 7 APs (all that school offers) and the rest honors</p>
<p>With upward trend- 3.67 freshman yr, 3.78 soph, 4.0 junior</p>
<p>After seeing trends this year, the most important factor is SAT/ACT score. Less GPA, universities are catching on to how inflated some high schools’ grades I’ve become.</p>
<p>Coste, I have to agree and disagree. I think they’re catching onto inflated grades, but I don’t think SAT is the most important to them. I think that rigor is the most important part to most colleges, and then they’ll look at the school report along with the grades to determine how they did in the class. Most colleges know that the SAT isn’t the best predictor either.</p>
<p>Admissions deans at leading colleges and universities pretty much all say the single most important part of an application is the transcript. Notice, they don’t say GPA, they say transcript. Then standardized test scores and recommendations.</p>
<p>Elnamo, your problem will be that a lot of your competition will have had pretty much all A’s since the ninth grade. You’ll have to show them something in your essays and your teachers’ recommendations that makes them want you more than the thousands of 3.9+ UW applicants. (Which is pretty much the same answer that many posters, including me, have been giving you literally for months.)</p>
<p>A 93 average will not help you, but it will probably not eliminate you, either. What will you bring to the table that will make selective colleges want to select you over other applicants with better grades?</p>
<p>Will it help that my cumulative average for the core classes is a 94? (My total GPA is brought down by 3 religion classes I had to take each year in which I got A minuses)</p>
<p>Ninety-three and 94 are, for all practical purposes, the same average.</p>
<p>What matters a lot is whether you have a lot of classmates with a higher average than yours. If you have, that’s a problem.</p>
<p>It would be hard for them to assess my school/grade bc my grade has 17 people and I am 2nd. #1 has a 94 total</p>
<p>OK, then. You’re basically at the top of your (very tiny) class. The nice thing about most of the uber-selective colleges and universities is that they will take the time to pore over your essays and your transcript and your school profile and your recommendations and all that stuff in order to get a sense of who you are.</p>
<p>You’re not a shoo-in, but virtually nobody is. (Well, some day, if she has good grades and SATs, Malia Obama will be, but almost nobody else has that kind of hook.) But neither are you out of it.</p>