Tell it to me straight ...GPA

[Anonymous]

I see so many posts saying that kids with high GPA can’t get into such and such a school....
I have a 9th grader in mcps. Last semester got all As except one B in a core (honors level) course. For spring semester, may end up with a C in that class, or may be able to pull out another B.
Am I right to figure that even one B takes Harvard, Yale off the table for a white kid from MoCo (no racial diversity, no geographic diversity)? And a C would take the next tier of schools off the table?
To be clear, I’m not pushing kid to go Ivy but kid got it in their head a few years ago and has been taking about it. I’m just wondering what’s realistic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I see so many posts saying that kids with high GPA can’t get into such and such a school....
I have a 9th grader in mcps. Last semester got all As except one B in a core (honors level) course. For spring semester, may end up with a C in that class, or may be able to pull out another B.
Am I right to figure that even one B takes Harvard, Yale off the table for a white kid from MoCo (no racial diversity, no geographic diversity)? And a C would take the next tier of schools off the table?
To be clear, I’m not pushing kid to go Ivy but kid got it in their head a few years ago and has been taking about it. I’m just wondering what’s realistic.

Not really. A C may be unless you're URM. Generally speaking, you need strong GPA to be in the contention, at which point GPA is no longer important.

[Anonymous]

No, it makes it harder, but it doesn’t make it impossible. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but Stanford did not count ninth grade grades in making admissions decisions. Neither did the University of Michigan. They just felt these were too far in the past to be relevant to how a student would do in college.So, it makes a difference that the C was freshman year.Colleges tend to be a bit more forgiving of lower grades in one subject if you are outstanding in another. For example I know a couple of math geniuses who really struggled with foreign language but still got into top schools.Again, I don’t know if it’s still the case but MIT used to require fewer foreign language credits in high school than most colleges do.

[Anonymous]

The GPAs are so distorted that you can’t get bogged down in them. Focus on supporting your kid in the curriculum that is challenging for them and then see what colleges are a match in a few years. You don’t even know what they will be like in 11th grade when they start really looking at colleges.

We have to stop trying to mold our kids to fit a predetermined list of schools. Mold the list to the kid they are when it’s time to look.

Even if they do everything right, they may not get into these schools with 5% admissions rates. Why fixate on them now?

[Anonymous]

A C will take any top school off the table. Not just Harvard. Also, UVA, W&M, UMD, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A C will take any top school off the table. Not just Harvard. Also, UVA, W&M, UMD, etc.

This is not true. Don’t listen to people who make blanket statements like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A C will take any top school off the table. Not just Harvard. Also, UVA, W&M, UMD, etc.

This is not true. Don’t listen to people who make blanket statements like this.

+1

One grade, or even a few bad grades, doesn't take a student out of contention. Yes, you want as high a GPA as possible, but GPA is only one of a number of factors.

[Anonymous]

Those schools were statistically pretty much off the table even if your child never got an A and Aldo got perfect SATs. If you mean competitive schools more broadly then a b in 9th grade is fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A C will take any top school off the table. Not just Harvard. Also, UVA, W&M, UMD, etc.

This is not true. Don’t listen to people who make blanket statements like this.

+1 Not true AT ALL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those schools were statistically pretty much off the table even if your child never got an A and Aldo got perfect SATs. If you mean competitive schools more broadly then a b in 9th grade is fine.

This. And, an upward trend can be looked upon favorably. It's great to have big ambitions but don't fixate on the tippy top schools.

I recommend reading "The Price of Admission" to understand exactly how close to impossible admission is to Ivy type schools for the unhooked. The acceptance rate you read is not the real rate. Big donors (almuni and non), athletes, legacies, and underrepresented groups (first-gen/Black/Latino/states that rarely send) are much more likely to get accepted. The underrepresented groups still need the perfect transcript and great ECs. For the rest, that doesn't matter so much. Your non-athlete, unhooked is so unlikely to get admitted that it makes zero sense to orient a student's high school plan around doing so. Sure, apply, you never know, there is a small set of students who ultimately win that lottery but it really says nothing about them being more special that the kids who were equally qualified but didn't get in. Make sure your kid understands the game.

[Anonymous]

If it's a weighted class, may not be that bad to have a B but a C is getting bad. Freshman year is tricky but you can certainly improve from there by taking APs and DE's with 1 pt bumps but you have to be getting As the rest of the career, to get a high GPA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see so many posts saying that kids with high GPA can’t get into such and such a school....
I have a 9th grader in mcps. Last semester got all As except one B in a core (honors level) course. For spring semester, may end up with a C in that class, or may be able to pull out another B.
Am I right to figure that even one B takes Harvard, Yale off the table for a white kid from MoCo (no racial diversity, no geographic diversity)? And a C would take the next tier of schools off the table?
To be clear, I’m not pushing kid to go Ivy but kid got it in their head a few years ago and has been taking about it. I’m just wondering what’s realistic.

Not really. A C may be unless you're URM. Generally speaking, you need strong GPA to be in the contention, at which point GPA is no longer important.

URMs with C's don't get an advantage, URM's with A's do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see so many posts saying that kids with high GPA can’t get into such and such a school....
I have a 9th grader in mcps. Last semester got all As except one B in a core (honors level) course. For spring semester, may end up with a C in that class, or may be able to pull out another B.
Am I right to figure that even one B takes Harvard, Yale off the table for a white kid from MoCo (no racial diversity, no geographic diversity)? And a C would take the next tier of schools off the table?
To be clear, I’m not pushing kid to go Ivy but kid got it in their head a few years ago and has been taking about it. I’m just wondering what’s realistic.

Not really. A C may be unless you're URM. Generally speaking, you need strong GPA to be in the contention, at which point GPA is no longer important.

URMs with C's don't get an advantage, URM's with A's do.

I think this is true at top-20 schools generally, not just Harvard and Yale. Although, beyond top 20s, into 20-50, I think it's possible - or maybe used to be possible pre-covid - that a URM with a few Cs could be admitted, if the rest is there - lots of rigor, good test scores, overall UW GPA >3.5 ish at a relatively rigorous private (another can of worms). Or maybe not; we'll find out next month, my kid has this situation and has some reaches on the list. I think there's a continuum.

It may be better to reframe the URM advantage in terms of supply and demand. URM are in demand everywhere, and desirable schools like Harvard will be able to attract the most. However, test optional adds a new wrinkle - perhaps the supply just increased quite a bit, which may decrease the individual advantage. With regard to grading issues, for those applying without scores, some Cs would likely be more detrimental vs those applying test optional with top grades - this just makes sense. What is less clear is how the URM with a few Cs but the rest of the package, including good test scores (which was a small pool), will fare in a new, larger pool of top-grade URMs without scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those schools were statistically pretty much off the table even if your child never got an A and Aldo got perfect SATs. If you mean competitive schools more broadly then a b in 9th grade is fine.

-10000
This is the most BS statement I've heard people talking these days.
Students' qualifications are wildly different even among those straight A students. An acceptance rate is just a concept of average but isn't the chance for everybody. An International Math Olympiad gold medalist would have much better chance for HYPSM than an otherwise average A person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see so many posts saying that kids with high GPA can’t get into such and such a school....
I have a 9th grader in mcps. Last semester got all As except one B in a core (honors level) course. For spring semester, may end up with a C in that class, or may be able to pull out another B.
Am I right to figure that even one B takes Harvard, Yale off the table for a white kid from MoCo (no racial diversity, no geographic diversity)? And a C would take the next tier of schools off the table?
To be clear, I’m not pushing kid to go Ivy but kid got it in their head a few years ago and has been taking about it. I’m just wondering what’s realistic.

Not really. A C may be unless you're URM. Generally speaking, you need strong GPA to be in the contention, at which point GPA is no longer important.

URMs with C's don't get an advantage, URM's with A's do.

I think this is true at top-20 schools generally, not just Harvard and Yale. Although, beyond top 20s, into 20-50, I think it's possible - or maybe used to be possible pre-covid - that a URM with a few Cs could be admitted, if the rest is there - lots of rigor, good test scores, overall UW GPA >3.5 ish at a relatively rigorous private (another can of worms). Or maybe not; we'll find out next month, my kid has this situation and has some reaches on the list. I think there's a continuum.

It may be better to reframe the URM advantage in terms of supply and demand. URM are in demand everywhere, and desirable schools like Harvard will be able to attract the most. However, test optional adds a new wrinkle - perhaps the supply just increased quite a bit, which may decrease the individual advantage. With regard to grading issues, for those applying without scores, some Cs would likely be more detrimental vs those applying test optional with top grades - this just makes sense. What is less clear is how the URM with a few Cs but the rest of the package, including good test scores (which was a small pool), will fare in a new, larger pool of top-grade URMs without scores.

Let’s talk about white athletes now shall we?