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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Colleges just look at GPA. There is no effort to "put that into context" like you have been lead to believe. Learned that the hard way when DD started applying and the person who informed us was the college counselor at her big three. There are too many applications now and grades are so inflated that it can really be a disadvantage of coming from a private school. Still wouldn't have deterred us, as my DD is forever grateful for that experience. You really need to focus on grades the most. Sports are pointless unless you are collegiate level. Scores are very important, but edged out by grades. [/quote].     This is
Not true. I served on the admissions committee for a top 20 university and we knew exactly what each schools grade scale was. A kid with a 3.4 from a top private in NYC or Washington DC was viewed very differently from a kid with the same grade point from most publics.  Some larger schools have an algorithm for each known high school that automatically adjusts gpa. Grades are very important but relative. [/quote]

So how what do you do about kids who are not from a "known" high school. [/quote]

This is why board scores still matter -- with all their flaws, it's an effort to get an apples-to-apples comparisons, unlike GPAs (of course, arguably with test prep so prevalent among the more affluent applicants it's not apples to apples, but it's something).  It's also why applicant essays and teacher recommendations matter.  [/quote]

NP.  I recall reading some long piece about this sort of arms race between college admissions and high schools.  I think it might have been in Jaques Steinberg's (?) book or perhaps somewhere else. Colleges want a simple apples-to-apples metric to measure students, but each high school is different and wants to game the system.  Colleges liked looking at class rank, but many high school magnet programs and private high schools considered that unfair because of their advanced academic programs, so many of them eliminated class rank.  Colleges try to look at SATs, but don't like that students can game the SAT with prep classes, or that wealthy students do better.  Colleges try to look at GPA, but many schools inflate or deflate grades, so it makes comparison hard.  So the colleges have to compare lots of different factors and weight them all.  It means each college has a slightly different formula.[/quote]

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