Sky-High GPAs at Virginia State Schools? Time to Ground Expectations and Open Doors

[Anonymous]

Pp- and the B+s were in an English and History- not electives .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son had three B+ grades on his transcript and was still admitted to VA Tech for engineering this year- do not rule out your child if they don’t get all As! It doesn’t just depend on their grades!

Just curious, did he submit a very high SAT/ACT score?

[Anonymous]

Having read the first ten responses or so I can’t believe no one has said the GPA requirements have moved up with grade inflation in the public schools.

OP, without retakes and grade inflation your kid would not get a B+ in their class, they’d get a C or low B. Ten years ago your kid still would not have received an offer from tech or UVA. The school is not inline with their abilities and/or academic performance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 4.3 NOVA kid was waitlisted at JMU as were several at the high school. Much lower out of state required though. Many of those same students were admitted to Tech. Weird year.

How on earth did that happen?

Yield protection

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having read the first ten responses or so I can’t believe no one has said the GPA requirements have moved up with grade inflation in the public schools.

OP, without retakes and grade inflation your kid would not get a B+ in their class, they’d get a C or low B. Ten years ago your kid still would not have received an offer from tech or UVA. The school is not inline with their abilities and/or academic performance.

Agree, it’s a reflection of the grade inflation and retakes in public. My kids all went to different private schools in VA that did not offer all the weighting and retake options. All got into VA colleges with GPAs below the 25% ranges for GPA, and lower test scores now that those are also skewed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 4.3 NOVA kid was waitlisted at JMU as were several at the high school. Much lower out of state required though. Many of those same students were admitted to Tech. Weird year.

How on earth did that happen?

Yield Protection.. I mean.. Yield Management

[Anonymous]

No one has mentioned that funding to public universities in Virginia has dropped a lot in the past 20 years. So our taxes are actually paying far less of the operating costs at these universities. Guess how they make up the lost funds? Out of state and international student’s tuition. Let your elected leaders know that you want the universities funded at a higher level and that you want more than a 2/3 in state population. Californians, Texans and North Carolinians demanded this change and got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son had three B+ grades on his transcript and was still admitted to VA Tech for engineering this year- do not rule out your child if they don’t get all As! It doesn’t just depend on their grades!

Just curious, did he submit a very high SAT/ACT score?

Yes- he had a 1500 with an 800 on the math section.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having read the first ten responses or so I can’t believe no one has said the GPA requirements have moved up with grade inflation in the public schools.

OP, without retakes and grade inflation your kid would not get a B+ in their class, they’d get a C or low B. Ten years ago your kid still would not have received an offer from tech or UVA. The school is not inline with their abilities and/or academic performance.

Agree, it’s a reflection of the grade inflation and retakes in public. My kids all went to different private schools in VA that did not offer all the weighting and retake options. All got into VA colleges with GPAs below the 25% ranges for GPA, and lower test scores now that those are also skewed.

The GPAs are so misleading at this point. Parents thing their kid with a 4.0 is a top student, but they don’t realize there’s a kid with a 4.8 in the same class as their kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having read the first ten responses or so I can’t believe no one has said the GPA requirements have moved up with grade inflation in the public schools.

OP, without retakes and grade inflation your kid would not get a B+ in their class, they’d get a C or low B. Ten years ago your kid still would not have received an offer from tech or UVA. The school is not inline with their abilities and/or academic performance.

Agree, it’s a reflection of the grade inflation and retakes in public. My kids all went to different private schools in VA that did not offer all the weighting and retake options. All got into VA colleges with GPAs below the 25% ranges for GPA, and lower test scores now that those are also skewed.

The GPAs are so misleading at this point. Parents thing their kid with a 4.0 is a top student, but they don’t realize there’s a kid with a 4.8 in the same class as their kid.

+1 especially if the school did away with ranking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't wrap my head around why Virginia state schools like UVA, Virginia Tech, and JMU are setting their GPA requirements so high. For instance, UVA wants a 4.3, Virginia Tech a 4.0, and JMU a 3.5.

Oh my goodness. Universities want GPAs that exceed 4 from Virginia schools? Everybody gets a 4 weighted in Virginia if you even show up to class.

+100
The admissions dean at UVA has said on blogs there are high schoolsin VA where 80% of the class has over a 4.0 weighted. So yes those schools one needs over a 4.5 at least(4.3 is merely average!). Other schools show clearly on Naviance that weighted 4.1 is enough for UVA. A 4.1 is still the top25% of these privates, which only add 0.5 for honors or AP, giving a median gpa of 3.8 for the class, with that median amount being plenty to get into VT or JMU.
GPA is in context. Your kid not getting into UVA is because they were out-performed by rigor or grades or both, by many students from the same high school. UVA in particular does not yield protect or play games, but they do want the top students in the context of the high school. Depending on the high school, that could be around 10% or around 30%(ie TJ) as the minimum bar to clear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't wrap my head around why Virginia state schools like UVA, Virginia Tech, and JMU are setting their GPA requirements so high. For instance, UVA wants a 4.3, Virginia Tech a 4.0, and JMU a 3.5.

Oh my goodness. Universities want GPAs that exceed 4 from Virginia schools? Everybody gets a 4 weighted in Virginia if you even show up to class.

+100
The admissions dean at UVA has said on blogs there are high schoolsin VA where 80% of the class has over a 4.0 weighted. So yes those schools one needs over a 4.5 at least(4.3 is merely average!). Other schools show clearly on Naviance that weighted 4.1 is enough for UVA. A 4.1 is still the top25% of these privates, which only add 0.5 for honors or AP, giving a median gpa of 3.8 for the class, with that median amount being plenty to get into VT or JMU.
GPA is in context. Your kid not getting into UVA is because they were out-performed by rigor or grades or both, by many students from the same high school. UVA in particular does not yield protect or play games, but they do want the top students in the context of the high school. Depending on the high school, that could be around 10% or around 30%(ie TJ) as the minimum bar to clear.

A majority of these kids with over a 4.5 aren’t putting UVA as their no. 1 choice. That is the hard truth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The reality also is that a state public university needs to accept students from all over the state. When I was at UVA, a very very high percentage of students came from NoVA — and that is still the case. For many of them, it clearly was HS a 2nd time and they had the same friends from home at UVa.

In Craig County, if any HS student gets accepted to any college, their name and school is posted on the HS sign board out front (meaning only maybe 10-12 per year go off to any college).

In VA Beach, where the public schools are fine but the parents are less obsessive, getting in to UVa often will get a student’s name on the sign board (yes, it is a bit uncommon, so still notable).

In FCPS, UVa attendance in particular is not atball uncommon. Every FCPS HS sends bunches there every year, and the typical HS kid goes to college somewhere.

This is comical. My DS went to school in VB and is at UVA but there are no sign boards. 😆. Lots of kids go to UVA there and always have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having read the first ten responses or so I can’t believe no one has said the GPA requirements have moved up with grade inflation in the public schools.

OP, without retakes and grade inflation your kid would not get a B+ in their class, they’d get a C or low B. Ten years ago your kid still would not have received an offer from tech or UVA. The school is not inline with their abilities and/or academic performance.

Agree, it’s a reflection of the grade inflation and retakes in public. My kids all went to different private schools in VA that did not offer all the weighting and retake options. All got into VA colleges with GPAs below the 25% ranges for GPA, and lower test scores now that those are also skewed.

The GPAs are so misleading at this point. Parents thing their kid with a 4.0 is a top student, but they don’t realize there’s a kid with a 4.8 in the same class as their kid.

Just wanted to put in some context.

The GPA ranges cited by OP sound like our FCPS school (Mclean/Langley) for weighted GPAs of accepted students. If you max out on APs in FCPS, you can get a 4.5 weighted GPA at the max, not including DE courses. LCPS and other systems have different ways to calculate weighted GPA so the max rates are higher.

Our dingbat FCPS school counselor told us that with a weighted GPA of 4.3 and an SAT of 1500+, DC was guaranteed to get into UVA. From past experience with previous DC, we didn't believe her at all. But DC did get in. DC had 4 Bs on their transcript when they applied.

Anyhow, at our school, about 25% of the graduates had weighted GPA of 4.0 or above, at least according to this year's graduation program listing the honors graduates (wGPA 4.0 or higher).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't wrap my head around why Virginia state schools like UVA, Virginia Tech, and JMU are setting their GPA requirements so high. For instance, UVA wants a 4.3, Virginia Tech a 4.0, and JMU a 3.5.

Oh my goodness. Universities want GPAs that exceed 4 from Virginia schools? Everybody gets a 4 weighted in Virginia if you even show up to class.

+100
The admissions dean at UVA has said on blogs there are high schoolsin VA where 80% of the class has over a 4.0 weighted. So yes those schools one needs over a 4.5 at least(4.3 is merely average!). Other schools show clearly on Naviance that weighted 4.1 is enough for UVA. A 4.1 is still the top25% of these privates, which only add 0.5 for honors or AP, giving a median gpa of 3.8 for the class, with that median amount being plenty to get into VT or JMU.
GPA is in context. Your kid not getting into UVA is because they were out-performed by rigor or grades or both, by many students from the same high school. UVA in particular does not yield protect or play games, but they do want the top students in the context of the high school. Depending on the high school, that could be around 10% or around 30%(ie TJ) as the minimum bar to clear.

A majority of these kids with over a 4.5 aren’t putting UVA as their no. 1 choice. That is the hard truth.

That is not the truth though. My DS graduated with a 4.6 and UVA was his ED choice. He was 3% of his class.