Reply to Is it easier getting into top colleges from public vs. private schools?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Private school parent here who calls BS on whoever is telling you that your public school child has some unfair advantage. Every Ivy uses a regional admissions officer who knows all of the public and private schools in the area. So they know that a public school student with straight As who takes every AP offered may have a 4.8 GPA and that no local private school student does because privates don't weight for honors/AP classes. They will look closely at your child's course selection in the context of what's available at his/her school, not comparing them to the courses available at a magnet like TJHSST or a Big 3. And they'll know if the starting a club/EC is a big deal that requires lots of leadership and hoop-jumping or a whim.  As PP said, they are focusing on the individual and how they excelled in context.  [/quote]

This is so true!  Unfortunately, if your public school kid has a 4.5 GPA, it means very little in terms of admission to an Vvy because a high proportion of his classmates are doing the same thing.  A kid with a 4.5 GPA in my son's private, however, will most certainly have a VERY strong chance of admission to an Ivy because he took every possible opportunity for an AP course and excelled at them.  He is probably in the to 5% of the class.   And his A grade honors classes were not given the same weighting as the pubic school (4.5 vs. 5).  The regional admissions officer knows all of this.  I chuckle all the time when my public school friend brags about her kid with the 4.5 GPA (mine only has a 4.2, but he worked just as hard, if not harder than the public school kid).

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Private school parents seem obsessed by the weights for APs and magnet classes in public schools, but honestly, public school kids and parents don’t get your angst. We all understand very well that not only do colleges take unweighted GPAs, but most top colleges actually take the transcript apart and construct their own GPAs with their own, proprietary weights. The weighted grades in public schools are really no biggie.[/quote]

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