Reply to Big College Admissions Year at St. Albans

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It is a different world.  Far more difficult to get into college or university than it was in late 70s/early 80s.  Back then the highest you could go was a 4.0 and no AP classes and there was one valedictorian.  Now you can have a GPA up to 6.0; carry 15 AP classes and public high schools have 60 valedictorians (don't ask me why - I have no idea - I can only assume its everyone over a 4.0 GPA).  And your kids are competing against a huge international market wanting to send their kids to American schools and very happy to pay full freight.  And the colleges, in turn, want to boast diversity diversity!  It's a much different world.[/quote]

A few corrections. Colleges look at unweighted GPAs, not weighted GPAs, so the GPA number that matters still maxes out at 4:00. Colleges don't expect more than 8-9 AP classes from public school kids, and maybe 4-5 AP classes from private school kids. And what public school, where, has 60 valedectorians?

For the rest, though, it is indeed harder to get into any school than it was 20-30 years ago.[/quote]

Actually I know for a fact the weighting policies vary University to University. All the Ivies and most independent schools weight STA, NCS, Sidwells grades. Not always the case with huge State schools.[/quote]

That was my post. The Ivy my kid got into said it didn't weight grades, and the other Ivies said the same thing when DC was touring schools. The Common App asks for the  unweighted, not the weighted, GPA, I believe. It's true, however, that when the high school sends in the transcript, some colleges have their own weighting formulas that they apply to the kids' grades, but the colleges' own weighting formulas are proprietary so I don't think there's any bigger picture here other than "take the hardest classes you can." I'm not aware of any weighting system, AP included, that would give a score of 6. I'm also not aware of any school with 60 valedectorians, although you could prove me wrong here.

I think your general message is correct, though. There are lots more qualified kids applying for about the same number of slots. This has led to an arms race in terms of how you distinguish yourself and get in.[/quote]

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