Georgetown if you are from DMV
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Anonymous
Bump up the ACT and extracurriculars. Not having any activities listed in that section of the common app is going to really bring him down. |
Anonymous
At a recent national college counselors event, the advice was that a high stats kid who hit 1500/34 makes it to the sweet spot for most selective colleges. I guess we can argue that particular colleges have different sweet spots, but the experts’ consensus seemed to be 1500/34 as a target. It’s very doable if you are coached correctly. For our DC, it worked to get the result we wanted. |
Anonymous
| DS with a 1530 (800 math 739 english) and great ECs was denied. SAT optional world has really shifted things. Also it’s tough when your school doesn’t weight the gpa for rigor. |
Anonymous
. 730 correction |
Anonymous
| I grew up an hour from Georgetown and loved it. Very diverse student body and lots to do on campus and for internships. I went home for major breaks and sometimes my parents would visit to take me to dinner. One summer stayed in a rental house off campus! |
Anonymous
As the parent of a private school kid (privates don’t give extra weight to certain classes) it’s not a factor at all. First, colleges ignore weighted gpas. They want the unweighted and then list of AP and/or honors classes from all applicants. The weighted gpa is a gimmick designed by public schools to attempt to make their students look better. Since all schools that give extra points for some classes do it differently (some give .5 to an AP class, some give 1.0) it is absolutely meaningless. Dont sweat it PP. |
Anonymous
High schools that rank their students do so via weighted GPAs. And it’s not “a gimmick public schools do to make their students look better” (  :roll . At my high school there were kids taking Algebra II as seniors while kids in the same grade were taking linear algebra. Gee, I wonder why weighted gpas would be necessary in that case.
I know you think you can buy everything, but you can’t. |
Anonymous
So tough when you purposely choose to send your kid to an expensive private high school. |
Anonymous
I'm really sorry your child didn't get in. It's a really tough year but you should know that schools recalculate your gpa especially at highly selective schools. And GT is it's own animal even within the college admission process. Some only calculate your gpa on your core classes. The also take rigor into consideration as someone else noted ... multivariable calculus definitely is more challenging than algebra ii. |
Anonymous
PP you replied to. Thanks for the advice. Did you help your child with his reframing, or did you hire a college admissions /essay coach? I was prepared to spend money on ACT tutoring, but not necessarily on essay help... |
Anonymous
I don't think you understood the PP's post. The colleges all calculate things differently, so yes, obviously the student taking linear algebra will be seen as taking a more rigorous course than the one taking Algebra 2. That said, the colleges apply their own weighting, not dependent on what a high school weights. |
Anonymous
I did the help with reframing. There is no need for an introverted child to leave the EC section blank. We listed kid’s hobbies as ECs and did that strategically so that it painted a picture of a kid who has passions. It felt a lot truer, more accurate to who he is than just having him join rando clubs at school. Start early. That way you have time to patch up any holes you see in the story you want the ECs to tell. He can do a couple of extra things as needed. It is not that hard. |
Anonymous
Back to OP’s question. We live in MoCo and my DS is a sophomore at Georgetown and loving it. I know this primarily because the automatic metro card refills often, and when we finally saw him at Thanksgiving he graciously gave us a glimpse of a few of. He things he’s involved in. I think being familiar with the region and metro has been a real benefit. Last year during virtual freshman year, he moved into an apartment in College Park with his older brother and two other friends. They were completely independent all year, and I know he met up with other Georgetown freshmen whose parents moved them into apartments/hotels in DC last year. Last year he really did his own thing all year. This year he’s relaxed a little more and will occasionally ask to borrow a car to take friends hiking or skiing. I think that being in a somewhat familiar area, but completely independent from “home” and parents was a great choice. He’s very mature and confident about all of things he’s involved with, finances, connections, etc. He’s in SFS and likely to end up in a government job, so all around great choice. |
Anonymous
Have back up schools. |
Anonymous
| Others may disagree, and I get that, but I’d say that it’s a reasonably good enough school to justify sticking around as a local. |