Is GPA the most important?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are still not able to comprehend that with a mid-year GPA from TJ 4.4X, SAT close to 1600, very good ECs, my child got rejected from all Ivies applied, waitlisted in a few T20 schools mostly private and UVA. We are trying to understand what went wrong. Really bothering us for the last couple of months how this can happen with this profile. Was GPA too low?. Did rigor matter at all?. They take the hardest courses but kids from other schools get into T20 schools with less grade or rigor.

What is your kid’s relative ranking in class at the end of their junior year? I saw somewhere the GPAs and corresponding rankings of TJ students. If memory serves, the tippy top kids have 4.6x, and there’re lots of 4.5x kids (I think at a place like TJ, there’re lots of very smart kids with very similar profiles, so your relative ranking may drop a lot with just a slightly lower GPA). So unfortunately if your kid is not within the top 20% or top 30%, getting into an Ivy or T20 might be tough.

In my son’s decent private high school, only the top 5% kids academic-wise get into the T20 or T30 colleges (if we don’t count the athletic recruits).

Hmm. This is why everything is so high school specific. At our high school top 40% that’s into T 25.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are still not able to comprehend that with a mid-year GPA from TJ 4.4X, SAT close to 1600, very good ECs, my child got rejected from all Ivies applied, waitlisted in a few T20 schools mostly private and UVA. We are trying to understand what went wrong. Really bothering us for the last couple of months how this can happen with this profile. Was GPA too low?. Did rigor matter at all?. They take the hardest courses but kids from other schools get into T20 schools with less grade or rigor.

You would have been 100x better off attending a lower resource school. I am not sure why TJ parents haven't grasped this yet?

It's always a balance. Bright students between 14-18 still need a peer group and good teachers to really succeed. Dropping some brainiac into the worst high school in East St. Louis isn't doing them any favors, both in life and for college admissions.

That being said, the TJ catchment area encompasses some perfectly good non-magnet public schools. So choices are being made. At the T20 level, you are always competing against classmates for those spots. And you have to distinguish yourself in some way. But I'm surprised this student was waitlisted at UVA. What are they doing in Charlottesville? I know they need to take students from all over the state and not just NOVA, but c'mon. A 4.4 and and a near 1600 from TJ? Really?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents on DCUM often fail to understand that class rank is the most important criteria. Grades and rigor obviously determine that, but can’t look at grades in isolation because of grade inflation. Second most important is quality of extracurriculars. Test scores matter, but much less than the other two.

Bullshit. The overwhelming majority of high schools don't even rank.

Every school that provides grades, ranks. It’s just a question of whether the high school itself does the arithmetic. If 10 students apply from one high school to the same college, it’s trivially easy for the college to put them in order from highest GPA to lowest.

[Anonymous]

We have about 15 applying to Penn this year. DC didn't get in with top gpa and score. Among the five who are accepted, there is one unhooked kid whose gpa is at the lower end of the range, but I guess Penn likes her narrative better. No national award. Scattergram shows acceptance from 3.7 to 4.0.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents on DCUM often fail to understand that class rank is the most important criteria. Grades and rigor obviously determine that, but can’t look at grades in isolation because of grade inflation. Second most important is quality of extracurriculars. Test scores matter, but much less than the other two.

Bullshit. The overwhelming majority of high schools don't even rank.

They don’t rank explicitly, but there’s implicit ranking: is this kid top 5%, top 10% or the very best 2-3 kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are still not able to comprehend that with a mid-year GPA from TJ 4.4X, SAT close to 1600, very good ECs, my child got rejected from all Ivies applied, waitlisted in a few T20 schools mostly private and UVA. We are trying to understand what went wrong. Really bothering us for the last couple of months how this can happen with this profile. Was GPA too low?. Did rigor matter at all?. They take the hardest courses but kids from other schools get into T20 schools with less grade or rigor.

What is your kid’s relative ranking in class at the end of their junior year? I saw somewhere the GPAs and corresponding rankings of TJ students. If memory serves, the tippy top kids have 4.6x, and there’re lots of 4.5x kids (I think at a place like TJ, there’re lots of very smart kids with very similar profiles, so your relative ranking may drop a lot with just a slightly lower GPA). So unfortunately if your kid is not within the top 20% or top 30%, getting into an Ivy or T20 might be tough.

In my son’s decent private high school, only the top 5% kids academic-wise get into the T20 or T30 colleges (if we don’t count the athletic recruits).

Hmm. This is why everything is so high school specific. At our high school top 40% that’s into T 25.

Exactly! The OP should have an idea of what relative ranking at TJ would have a fair chance of getting into Ivy/T20 by referring to Scoir or talking to their school college counselor or looking at the TJ college outcomes from the previous couple of years.

[Anonymous]

Yes, GPA most important.
Yes, rigor matters.

Top at TJ is best.
Top at another school is next best.

Don't go to TJ or magnet if you won't be in the top half, ideally top quarter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents on DCUM often fail to understand that class rank is the most important criteria. Grades and rigor obviously determine that, but can’t look at grades in isolation because of grade inflation. Second most important is quality of extracurriculars. Test scores matter, but much less than the other two.

Bullshit. The overwhelming majority of high schools don't even rank.

It’s so funny when parents here keep positing the same question over and over and then reject the answer. It’s rank, ecs, and possibly lukewarm rec leaders (ones that say “good” things about kid academically but little else).

[Anonymous]

Rank is not hard to figure out:

School profile often has the top gpa. If it doesn’t - like tj now- is used to. So it is easy for schools to know where a kid falls. And “compared” to your peers means compared to every applicant from every year from your HS. So if a 4.6 applied one year and a 4.4 applied one year, the 4.4 falls short.

[Anonymous]

Depends on high school and colleges. For a very small number of colleges, they only take kids with gpas in a very small cluster, regardless of the rigor. For most colleges including a number of ivies, they take a wider range. GPA is one important factor, but not the most important factor.

[Anonymous]

It’s the school, county, and major. There’s been a sprinkling of less then perfect gpa Ivy acceptances.

[Anonymous]

I was always told it is not stack and rank by design.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are still not able to comprehend that with a mid-year GPA from TJ 4.4X, SAT close to 1600, very good ECs, my child got rejected from all Ivies applied, waitlisted in a few T20 schools mostly private and UVA. We are trying to understand what went wrong. Really bothering us for the last couple of months how this can happen with this profile. Was GPA too low?. Did rigor matter at all?. They take the hardest courses but kids from other schools get into T20 schools with less grade or rigor.

Ivies hate TJ. Sorry. Don't shot the messenger. It is what it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are still not able to comprehend that with a mid-year GPA from TJ 4.4X, SAT close to 1600, very good ECs, my child got rejected from all Ivies applied, waitlisted in a few T20 schools mostly private and UVA. We are trying to understand what went wrong. Really bothering us for the last couple of months how this can happen with this profile. Was GPA too low?. Did rigor matter at all?. They take the hardest courses but kids from other schools get into T20 schools with less grade or rigor.

LOL. Demographics? Hook? Legacy?

Rigor matters a lot. Not only for getting into college and tough majors, but actually being able to handle it.

I stopped worrying about it because my kid was from MCPS STEM magnet program. Developed apps, was co-author in a research paper, 4.8 wGPA, 4.0 unweighted GPA, really rigorous courses, perfect SAT, 12 APs with 5's, Aced PSAT - NMS scholar, impressive volunteering, impressive ECs. Wanted to do CS. He applied to 5 colleges. And got rejected from MIT his first choice (as he had also expected), because he refused to apply to Applied Mathematics etc at MIT instead of CS. No problem, went to UMD. Chose it over U.Mich (too cold) and G.Tech (not gender balanced ha ha). Has done extremely well in college, amazing internships and a plum job offer in hand.

You are going to make yourself and your kid crazy if you start comparing why someone got into college. Totally worthless exercise. Thankfully, my DC's stats were so amazing and ECs so impressive that I never had a moment's doubt that there was any weakness in his application from his side.

MIT chose whoever they wanted to choose and I am 100% sure that there were many applicants who got an offer who did not have his academic or EC record. But, so what? I see more and more students from his HS magnet cohort not caring where they get in because they end up doing very well wherever they go, get really great internships and they all are landing in prestigious and well-paying jobs. And all of them are from donut hole families and so their college is costing them peanuts - and they are using that money to travel internationally with their friends.

The aim is to overall win at life - Health, happiness, family, friends, passion, being a good and giving person and finally success in job/finances. Not worry about college admissions. It is not an indication of your merit or your worth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are still not able to comprehend that with a mid-year GPA from TJ 4.4X, SAT close to 1600, very good ECs, my child got rejected from all Ivies applied, waitlisted in a few T20 schools mostly private and UVA. We are trying to understand what went wrong. Really bothering us for the last couple of months how this can happen with this profile. Was GPA too low?. Did rigor matter at all?. They take the hardest courses but kids from other schools get into T20 schools with less grade or rigor.

LOL. Demographics? Hook? Legacy?

Rigor matters a lot. Not only for getting into college and tough majors, but actually being able to handle it.

I stopped worrying about it because my kid was from MCPS STEM magnet program. Developed apps, was co-author in a research paper, 4.8 wGPA, 4.0 unweighted GPA, really rigorous courses, perfect SAT, 12 APs with 5's, Aced PSAT - NMS scholar, impressive volunteering, impressive ECs. Wanted to do CS. He applied to 5 colleges. And got rejected from MIT his first choice (as he had also expected), because he refused to apply to Applied Mathematics etc at MIT instead of CS. No problem, went to UMD. Chose it over U.Mich (too cold) and G.Tech (not gender balanced ha ha). Has done extremely well in college, amazing internships and a plum job offer in hand.

You are going to make yourself and your kid crazy if you start comparing why someone got into college. Totally worthless exercise. Thankfully, my DC's stats were so amazing and ECs so impressive that I never had a moment's doubt that there was any weakness in his application from his side.

MIT chose whoever they wanted to choose and I am 100% sure that there were many applicants who got an offer who did not have his academic or EC record. But, so what? I see more and more students from his HS magnet cohort not caring where they get in because they end up doing very well wherever they go, get really great internships and they all are landing in prestigious and well-paying jobs. And all of them are from donut hole families and so their college is costing them peanuts - and they are using that money to travel internationally with their friends.

The aim is to overall win at life - Health, happiness, family, friends, passion, being a good and giving person and finally success in job/finances. Not worry about college admissions. It is not an indication of your merit or your worth.

Just curious…what was the 5th college that he applied to?