Bs in all advanced classes, straight As in advanced CS, refuses regular for easy As — what’s the outlook here?

[Anonymous]

PP above. DS also got in at Penn State, Pitt, American, JMU. Deferred at NC State and GWU. Rejected at UMD.

[Anonymous]

The kids in my DD’s school who liked to challenge themselves but got B/B+’s like your son are all at UW Madison. Such a great school!

FWIW, I think your son is right to push himself but like many others have said, MIT probably won’t be realistic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like he likes challenging himself. What’s the problem?

I mean isn't better to get straight As in regular classes?

NO not for uva and VT, and certainly not for elite schools

[Anonymous]

Male students like yours at our private can get in to VT in-state but not UVA unless they really pull up to As. Out of state/private admissions for this type include RPI, WPI, Penn State, UCSB, UCIrvine, NCstate, and Purdue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Curious what others think. My kid refuses to take regular-level classes, even in subjects that are clearly not his strength. Every year, he loads up on AP and DE courses across the board. He usually starts with low grades like Cs or even a D early on, then slowly pulls up to a B or B+ by the end. That’s the pattern. There’s no collapse or dramatic recovery, just a grind to stay afloat and finish with a decent grade. He took a regular class once, got an easy A, and decided he’s never doing that again. He says regular classes are for “dumb kids” and will not budge.

The one area where he excels without any issue is computer science. He takes the most advanced CS classes offered at his school, including AP CS A and dual enrollment CS, and consistently earns straight As. It is clearly where he’s strongest.

He is a junior now with a 1450 SAT. We’ve enrolled him in an SAT prep course that he attends three times a week to try to push that score higher before senior year. His target schools are UVA and Virginia Tech, and MIT is the dream.

Outside of computer science, his transcript is mostly Bs in the hardest available classes. AP U.S. History, AP Macroeconomics, AP Lang, DE Gov, AP Calc AB — all of them land in the B range. Meanwhile, I see so many posts on this forum about students getting perfect As in everything and having near-perfect GPAs.

So what’s the actual outlook for a kid like this? Does strong performance in advanced CS and solid but not stellar grades elsewhere hold up at schools like UVA or Virginia Tech? Or does it just look like overreaching without follow-through? I’m wondering if anyone has had a kid like this and knows how it played out.

Tell him to keep pushing and get as many A as possible this year. Boys especially get leeway for lower grades with high rigor and an upward trend. Selingo and others have talked about it. Junior year grades are the most important.

[Anonymous]

This was me in college. I took all the hardest classes and had a straight B average. The quality associated with this outcome is scrappiness. It needs to be nurtured and exercised properly - your DC needs appropriate challenge to work out their scrappiness continuously or they will be like a shark that stops moving. Look at the smaller tech schools like WPI or Rose Hulman or Colorado School of Mines. They would provide an appropriate level of challenge to your kid to keep scrapping at an admissions level that might be attainable. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a lot of those type of kids in my AP math classes. Hard working, good, B/B+ students. They typically end up at Mason or JMU. Sometimes an out of state flagship.

That sounds terrible, you can get into those schools without taking an AP classes, in fact mason accepts everyone. WOW so this is why we need to do something about admissions too many students for the spots

Why? If you're a mediocre student with mediocre grades, you go to a mediocre school. Not everyone should be going to Yale, just because they believe themselves to be smart.

DP. I wouldn't say either George Mason or JMU are mediocre schools. At all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The kids in my DD’s school who liked to challenge themselves but got B/B+’s like your son are all at UW Madison. Such a great school!

FWIW, I think your son is right to push himself but like many others have said, MIT probably won’t be realistic.

These kids no longer get into Wisconsin. It is much harder to get in now than 3-4 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids in my DD’s school who liked to challenge themselves but got B/B+’s like your son are all at UW Madison. Such a great school!

FWIW, I think your son is right to push himself but like many others have said, MIT probably won’t be realistic.

These kids no longer get into Wisconsin. It is much harder to get in now than 3-4 years ago.

Can someone generally explain to me why this is? Are there that many more kids or what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Male students like yours at our private can get in to VT in-state but not UVA unless they really pull up to As. Out of state/private admissions for this type include RPI, WPI, Penn State, UCSB, UCIrvine, NCstate, and Purdue.

No, Irvine and Santa Barbara have average GPA's for entering undergrads at over 4.3

[Anonymous]

This whole thing is sad can't believe this is where college entry has gone

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My similar kid got accepted at VT, business not computer science though, but business is pretty competitive there too. He had mainly B+'s in 11th grade but all A's in 10th.

Then your kid did not have this profile. Not even close.

[Anonymous]

The reality of college admissions is brutal. But recognizing that reality is a kindness. OP, it sounds like you’re just starting out researching options and I encourage you to use Naviance and CDS reports as your guide. If you have a good school counselor, use them. But if not, Naviance will be your best tool. Or SCOIR if that’s your school’s platform.

That said, my UMD alum husband couldn’t believe that his 4.7, 10 AP, 1450 SAT daughter might get rejected from his alma mater. Naviance showed that possibility and he refused to believe it. The numbers don’t lie. Rejected.

[Anonymous]

I actually think a smaller private school with holistic admissions would be better for him. Those schools tend to look at the rigor of the coursework more than big state schools, which necessarily have GPA cutoffs. They tend to want students that challenge themselves intellectually. But the CS is an issue with SLACs, but really with the upheavals with AI maybe that’s not what he should be majoring in anyway?

[Anonymous]

I'd love to read a college essay about his choices