For top schools, yes one B will hurt your chances

[Anonymous]

After a FCPS 4.0 and 4.0 through 2.5 semesters of college, I'm not worried about the legitimacy.

[Anonymous]

It feels like the public school bashing has extended beyond the school forums into the college forum. It’s now coming up on so many different threads that it feels intentional.

[Anonymous]

My DS had multiple Bs and accepted to Ivy. The thought that they have to have all As is wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
IT DEPENDS ON THE SCHOOL'S RIGOR AND THE GRADES OF YOUR CLASSMATES.

If you're in public, where a fifth of the school gets straight As, yes, a B will penalize you, unless it's in AP Physics C, or multivariable calc (and you're not trying to get into MIT).

If you're in a rigorous private, where only top students get straight A, a couple of Bs might still be fine, especially if they're in advanced courses.

Know your school.

This is the only answer that matters! It is Rigor, then grades, in that order of importance (ie slightly lower grades but TOP/max rigor is always better than slightly higher grades and less rigor), and both of these only matter in the context of the high school!

+1. Class rank is paramount, and, yes the college AO readers can determine your kids' rank using your kid's transcript and the high school profile the HS sends - even umif you high. school claims not to rank

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unhooked DD got into multiple Ivies, Ivy+'s, and WASP schools with a couple B's in Spanish over the years. She was still top 5% and also had strong rigor, test scores, ECs, and, LORs. YMMV.

She’s probably full pay, and that’s a hook.

Afraid not. Substantial financial aid (but not FGLI) and most of the schools were need blind.

Another unhooked admit to multiple Ivies/T10. MCPS. Middle class with good financial aid.

What is middle class? My kid unhooked admit to two Ivies/2 T10s--no financial aid.

140k HHI

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It feels like the public school bashing has extended beyond the school forums into the college forum. It’s now coming up on so many different threads that it feels intentional.

Just pointing out that if an entity had the goal of exploiting existing divisions in American society across a broad spectrum of issues, this might be a pretty good place to start.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
IT DEPENDS ON THE SCHOOL'S RIGOR AND THE GRADES OF YOUR CLASSMATES.

If you're in public, where a fifth of the school gets straight As, yes, a B will penalize you, unless it's in AP Physics C, or multivariable calc (and you're not trying to get into MIT).

If you're in a rigorous private, where only top students get straight A, a couple of Bs might still be fine, especially if they're in advanced courses.

Know your school.

This is the only answer that matters! It is Rigor, then grades, in that order of importance (ie slightly lower grades but TOP/max rigor is always better than slightly higher grades and less rigor), and both of these only matter in the context of the high school!

+1. Class rank is paramount, and, yes the college AO readers can determine your kids' rank using your kid's transcript and the high school profile the HS sends - even umif you high. school claims not to rank

The HS profile gives the percentages of kids above certain GPAs; it’s a simple curve fit to get an accurate estimate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For top schools like the Ivy Leagues, MIT, or Stanford, they do expect straight As in a demanding course load. In committee when admissions officers are discussing candidates, Bs will be used as an argument to not admit a student. People have gotten in with some Bs, but the rest of your application has to be even stronger to compensate for it.

First of all, in college admissions, no one cares about your weighted GPA. Weighted GPA just exists to make students feel better, but it isn't helpful for properly evaluation academic performance in admissions. To know your GPA, you need to look at the unweighted GPA for core classes only (i.e. PE does not count).

For many competitive high schools here, a single B can place you outside of the top 10% of your class, which will kill your chances for admissions.

Even for slightly lower ranked top schools like UCLA, a single B will place you below the 25% percentile of admitted students.

A ton of applicants to top schools are going to have straight As. Grades matter a lot, and you want to avoid anything except for As if you want to have a shot at top schools. Even then, many students with straight As will get denied.

This is not true. Please do not stress over stressed parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
IT DEPENDS ON THE SCHOOL'S RIGOR AND THE GRADES OF YOUR CLASSMATES.

If you're in public, where a fifth of the school gets straight As, yes, a B will penalize you, unless it's in AP Physics C, or multivariable calc (and you're not trying to get into MIT).

If you're in a rigorous private, where only top students get straight A, a couple of Bs might still be fine, especially if they're in advanced courses.

Know your school.

This is the only answer that matters! It is Rigor, then grades, in that order of importance (ie slightly lower grades but TOP/max rigor is always better than slightly higher grades and less rigor), and both of these only matter in the context of the high school!

+1. Class rank is paramount, and, yes the college AO readers can determine your kids' rank using your kid's transcript and the high school profile the HS sends - even umif you high. school claims not to rank

Thus the claims by high schools that they don't rank are a joke. Of course they rank and most kids figure it out, often too late, when they are filling out their apps and looking at the School Profile.

What is irksome is that colleges pretend rank is some sort of standardized metric. It can never be that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
IT DEPENDS ON THE SCHOOL'S RIGOR AND THE GRADES OF YOUR CLASSMATES.

If you're in public, where a fifth of the school gets straight As, yes, a B will penalize you, unless it's in AP Physics C, or multivariable calc (and you're not trying to get into MIT).

If you're in a rigorous private, where only top students get straight A, a couple of Bs might still be fine, especially if they're in advanced courses.

Know your school.

This is the only answer that matters! It is Rigor, then grades, in that order of importance (ie slightly lower grades but TOP/max rigor is always better than slightly higher grades and less rigor), and both of these only matter in the context of the high school!

+1. Class rank is paramount, and, yes the college AO readers can determine your kids' rank using your kid's transcript and the high school profile the HS sends - even umif you high. school claims not to rank

I don’t see how they can determine numerical rank. But I’m curious to hear your explanation. At our school, AO can only guesstimate which quartile the applicant is in based on the prior year’s school profile. But maybe I’m not privy to everything. Most schools don’t rank anymore and I cannot imagine readers spending their time trying to determine this.

[Anonymous]

I call BS on this. OP is a disgruntled parent of a snowflake.

My kid had 2 B's, in not a legacy or athlete and is at Princeton. Was accepted at Wake, MIT, Brown. Schools take a holistic view of the students these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
IT DEPENDS ON THE SCHOOL'S RIGOR AND THE GRADES OF YOUR CLASSMATES.

If you're in public, where a fifth of the school gets straight As, yes, a B will penalize you, unless it's in AP Physics C, or multivariable calc (and you're not trying to get into MIT).

If you're in a rigorous private, where only top students get straight A, a couple of Bs might still be fine, especially if they're in advanced courses.

Know your school.

This is the only answer that matters! It is Rigor, then grades, in that order of importance (ie slightly lower grades but TOP/max rigor is always better than slightly higher grades and less rigor), and both of these only matter in the context of the high school!

+1. Class rank is paramount, and, yes the college AO readers can determine your kids' rank using your kid's transcript and the high school profile the HS sends - even umif you high. school claims not to rank

I don’t see how they can determine numerical rank. But I’m curious to hear your explanation. At our school, AO can only guesstimate which quartile the applicant is in based on the prior year’s school profile. But maybe I’m not privy to everything. Most schools don’t rank anymore and I cannot imagine readers spending their time trying to determine this.

+1

Quartile, ok. Absolute rank, I don’t think so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
IT DEPENDS ON THE SCHOOL'S RIGOR AND THE GRADES OF YOUR CLASSMATES.

If you're in public, where a fifth of the school gets straight As, yes, a B will penalize you, unless it's in AP Physics C, or multivariable calc (and you're not trying to get into MIT).

If you're in a rigorous private, where only top students get straight A, a couple of Bs might still be fine, especially if they're in advanced courses.

Know your school.

This is the only answer that matters! It is Rigor, then grades, in that order of importance (ie slightly lower grades but TOP/max rigor is always better than slightly higher grades and less rigor), and both of these only matter in the context of the high school!

+1. Class rank is paramount, and, yes the college AO readers can determine your kids' rank using your kid's transcript and the high school profile the HS sends - even umif you high. school claims not to rank

I don’t see how they can determine numerical rank. But I’m curious to hear your explanation. At our school, AO can only guesstimate which quartile the applicant is in based on the prior year’s school profile. But maybe I’m not privy to everything. Most schools don’t rank anymore and I cannot imagine readers spending their time trying to determine this.

+1

Quartile, ok. Absolute rank, I don’t think so.

NP: they can use historical data and the current pool of applicant from a high school (if enough applied from high school) to estimate rank).

[Anonymous]

Our high school provides the quartile rank directly. No need to guestimate. The high school also provides the 6-semester weighted GPA distribution for the current senior class. It is easy to see if a student is near the top of the top quartile, in the middle of the top quartile, or near the bottom of the top quartile. College AOs don't need an exact rank.

Where I differ with some AOs is what this information actually means - which in my opinion is very little.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It feels like the public school bashing has extended beyond the school forums into the college forum. It’s now coming up on so many different threads that it feels intentional.

How else would you describe the public school system in America? When it's far far far easier to count the good schools than it is the bad schools, how can it not be a negative assessment? You should care more about performance than perception, especially if those opinions are baed on fact. Schools are for learning to go to college and succeed in life, and should not be institutionalized thought control social experiments that highly encourage the opposite in order to be "inclusive."