Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Completely anecdotal from my DD's school over the past few years... assume $ isn't a factor because then it is a different game. This is reflective of a typical UMC unhooked student (did not include the student with Cs who is now at Stanford due to parental sway and boat loads of $$$$$ etc.

A student: Ivies, MIT, CalTech, Williams, Amherst etc.

A/B Student: Michigan, William & Mary, Pomona, Bowdoin, Ivy Specialty Schools(I.e. Cornell Human Ecology, Upenn Nursing etc.), Wellesley, Lehigh, UCLA etc.

B student: Bates, Colby, Hamilton, BC, BU, Oberlin, Mcallister, Carleton, Scripps, Pitzer, Spellman, GWU, Washington & Lee, UT Austin, Villanova, Wisconsin, USC etc.

B/C student: Pepperdine, SMU, College of Charleston, Elon, High Point, Clark, Conn College, Trinity, Dickinson, Denison Muhlenberg, Ithaca, Lewis and Clark, UDel, Drexel, American, Kenyon, Rollins, Random southern state schools (Ole Miss, University of South Carolina, UGA)

I would switch a lot of the B and B/C schools. I'd say that BU, GWU, Villanova, Wisconsin, and Tulane are where B/C kids from our private go, along with Rhodes and Sewanee. Kenyon and Trinity are more of B student schools. I'd reserve places like Pepperdine, SMU, College of Charleston, Elon, High Point, Clark, Conn College, Denison Muhlenberg, Ithaca, Lewis and Clark, UDel, Drexel, American, and Rollins for the kids who really got a lot of Cs. Our school rarely sends anyone to any of these schools and trust me, our school gives A LOT of Cs and Ds.

I also think A- students can be classified more like A students. STA does not even give minus grades!

People get confused by the St. Albans grading system, I think. It maybe would be an advantage if they only used letter grades with no minus grades. However, if a student is a B minus student the colleges will know it, because the Upper School Semester and final grades are in numerical form. Quarter grades are in letter form and they don't use minuses. But a student with quarter grades of A and a final year grade of 90 is (a) obviously an A minus student in the mind of the admissions officer reading the transcript (easily distinguishable from a classmate with a final year grade of 94 or 96 or 98); and (b) has a transcript that can easily be translated into a 4 point GPA scale by conversion of the numerical grade.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am the poster who made the list -- again, completely anecdotal based on what I have seen among my DD's friends at her school. Of course I don't know students actual grades or standardized scores or if their family needs aid or has some big hook I am unaware of... this is just observation and speculation on my part. Please don't take it as Bible! Also feel free to make your own lists based on your child's school.

You have a lot of it wrong I don't think you should be making up a list and trying to act like an expert

Make your own list instead of criticizing the other poster, who took her best shot based upon her own knowledge and made it was clear it was based upon anecdotal evidence/observation of a limited pool/some speculation -- clearly she was not "trying to act like an expert."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Completely anecdotal from my DD's school over the past few years... assume $ isn't a factor because then it is a different game. This is reflective of a typical UMC unhooked student (did not include the student with Cs who is now at Stanford due to parental sway and boat loads of $$$$$ etc.

A student: Ivies, MIT, CalTech, Williams, Amherst etc.

A/B Student: Michigan, William & Mary, Pomona, Bowdoin, Ivy Specialty Schools(I.e. Cornell Human Ecology, Upenn Nursing etc.), Wellesley, Lehigh, UCLA etc.

B student: Bates, Colby, Hamilton, BC, BU, Oberlin, Mcallister, Carleton, Scripps, Pitzer, Spellman, GWU, Washington & Lee, UT Austin, Villanova, Wisconsin, USC etc.

B/C student: Pepperdine, SMU, College of Charleston, Elon, High Point, Clark, Conn College, Trinity, Dickinson, Denison Muhlenberg, Ithaca, Lewis and Clark, UDel, Drexel, American, Kenyon, Rollins, Random southern state schools (Ole Miss, University of South Carolina, UGA)

I would switch a lot of the B and B/C schools. I'd say that BU, GWU, Villanova, Wisconsin, and Tulane are where B/C kids from our private go, along with Rhodes and Sewanee. Kenyon and Trinity are more of B student schools. I'd reserve places like Pepperdine, SMU, College of Charleston, Elon, High Point, Clark, Conn College, Denison Muhlenberg, Ithaca, Lewis and Clark, UDel, Drexel, American, and Rollins for the kids who really got a lot of Cs. Our school rarely sends anyone to any of these schools and trust me, our school gives A LOT of Cs and Ds.

I also think A- students can be classified more like A students. STA does not even give minus grades!

You are just way off on so many of these

Anonymous wrote:I am the poster who made the list -- again, completely anecdotal based on what I have seen among my DD's friends at her school. Of course I don't know students actual grades or standardized scores or if their family needs aid or has some big hook I am unaware of... this is just observation and speculation on my part. Please don't take it as Bible! Also feel free to make your own lists based on your child's school.

You have a lot of it wrong I don't think you should be making up a list and trying to act like an expert

Anonymous wrote:Completely anecdotal from my DD's school over the past few years... assume $ isn't a factor because then it is a different game. This is reflective of a typical UMC unhooked student (did not include the student with Cs who is now at Stanford due to parental sway and boat loads of $$$$$ etc.

A student: Ivies, MIT, CalTech, Williams, Amherst etc.

A/B Student: Michigan, William & Mary, Pomona, Bowdoin, Ivy Specialty Schools(I.e. Cornell Human Ecology, Upenn Nursing etc.), Wellesley, Lehigh, UCLA etc.

B student: Bates, Colby, Hamilton, BC, BU, Oberlin, Mcallister, Carleton, Scripps, Pitzer, Spellman, GWU, Washington & Lee, UT Austin, Villanova, Wisconsin, USC etc.

B/C student: Pepperdine, SMU, College of Charleston, Elon, High Point, Clark, Conn College, Trinity, Dickinson, Denison Muhlenberg, Ithaca, Lewis and Clark, UDel, Drexel, American, Kenyon, Rollins, Random southern state schools (Ole Miss, University of South Carolina, UGA)

Agree with most but I would definitely not be putting Lehigh in the the B student group And BC has gotten much harder to get into positively would be in the first group
My own daughter and nephew were there and both were solid B students- Trinity and Conn college are more selective than the B/Ccategory- my daughter who had A's and B's with the B+ average and a 2130 SAT was waitlisted at Conn. It was fine because she's been very happy at Lehigh.
As we all know this is a very subjective process and there will be many opinions on the subject

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Holton gives Cs.

big time - they don't sugar coat it at all. They make you work for your grades.

You people do realize the public schools routinely give C's, D's and F's? How can anyone assert that high grades are more difficult to earn from privates, when from reading this forum, it seems that many schools are reluctant to give out C's.

I had a kid in each. In public school a very smart kid would have to work for As, but could get a B without much effort. But the very smart kids really didn't get many Bs so they were working pretty hard. Cs were not unusual for less smart or less motivated kids who were maybe taking AP classes when they shouldn't be. In private school my DC had to work harder for Bs, but Cs were more unusual. The other big difference was that in public school, at least in MCPS, it was not unusual for kids to be taking 7 academic classes at a time, with 4-5 or more APs. In private school it was more like 5 academic classes and typically fewer APs.

On balance public school GPAs are probably higher for equivalent kids. But that's really irrelevant because college counselors are comparing apples to apples, not blindly comparing private school GPAs to public school GPAs. And in the competitive public schools the kids are working plenty hard.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Holton gives Cs.

big time - they don't sugar coat it at all. They make you work for your grades.

You people do realize the public schools routinely give C's, D's and F's? How can anyone assert that high grades are more difficult to earn from privates, when from reading this forum, it seems that many schools are reluctant to give out C's.

There are actually two separate questions here -- one is how stringently the A/B distinction is policed, with the claim/assumption being that Sidwell, GDS, NCS have higher standards for earning some form of A than (some) local publics do. That could be true while, at the same time, it's harder to get a C at such privates than it is at the same local publics.

Basically, schools with selective admissions (public and private, HS and universities) tend to use truncated grading scales and are more interested in differentiating among degrees of excellence than among degrees of mediocrity. Public schools with non-selective admissions, by contrast, serve students with a wider range of abilities and may see their job as making distinctions at both ends of the spectrum.

My guess is that there is a very wide range of Bs at elite private HSs. that was certainly true at the 3 elite private universities where I studied and/or taught. B+ work was very different from B work which, in turn, was quite different from B- work. Basically, almost all students were competent-- but some did work that was promising, others did work that was solid, and others produced work that was adequate. Maybe more of the kids doing adequate work "deserved" ZC's, but given both the challenging level of the work and that B-s already meant downward mobility wrt future admissions, it wasn't really clear whether harsher grading was legit or served any useful purpose.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reason kids from Sidwell ( and a few other schools in DC that grade stringently) get into very competitive schools with Bs is that the colleges know about grade deflation at Sidwell. Competitive colleges and universities have a formula that they use to adjust grade point averages up or down and these are marked on the admissions folder prior to it being read by the admissions officer. Also the admissions officers themselves know what grades mean from these schools. There is another thread in which this process is described in some detail.

Or perhaps it's because they're the children of alumni?

Not my kid -- A/B student, not a recruited athlete and not a legacy, currently attending a school ranked in top 5 by US News.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Holton gives Cs.

big time - they don't sugar coat it at all. They make you work for your grades.

You people do realize the public schools routinely give C's, D's and F's? How can anyone assert that high grades are more difficult to earn from privates, when from reading this forum, it seems that many schools are reluctant to give out C's.

Anonymous wrote:Also need to take into account how difficult the course load is for these kids: My DD got into Princeton, Harvard (double legacy there), several top SLACs, Wash U despite a number of Bs at a big 3 school without athletic recruiting or any "hooks", but was in the absolute most intensive track offered in terms of course selection (BC calc as junior, AP Physics as junior, etc). If the Bs had been in the less intensive math or science classes I doubt she would have gotten into those schools. And test scores/extracurriculars and essays/recs clearly also make a difference to differentiate between these kids.

What were her EC's?

Anonymous wrote:The reason kids from Sidwell ( and a few other schools in DC that grade stringently) get into very competitive schools with Bs is that the colleges know about grade deflation at Sidwell. Competitive colleges and universities have a formula that they use to adjust grade point averages up or down and these are marked on the admissions folder prior to it being read by the admissions officer. Also the admissions officers themselves know what grades mean from these schools. There is another thread in which this process is described in some detail.

Or perhaps it's because they're the children of alumni?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone knows GDS leads EVERY school in Ivy admissions --- please consider this matter settled

GDS is better off being a scrappy under dog than a bloviating wannabe. Time to figure out what the school is going to do about its empty car dealership and grocery store/cafetaria

The first quoted poster is pretty clearly the classic definition of a troll -- saying outrageous things to provoke controversy. Almost certainly not affiliated with GDS either, but enjoys making people mad at GDS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So now the only students in the Ivy League, etc., will be math/science kids? What about excellent English, language, history students? Not needed anymore, I guess.

I don't think that's what Pp meant. It's that the math/science classes tend to be more tracked than history classes so you need to be taking the most advanced ones.

Which btw I don't totally agree with. One of DCs friends is at Harvard and they were in AP AB calc together senior year so not on the high math track.

Yes, but this student might have had stronger grades overall. A student with a 3.5 and no hooks, needs to be in the most accelerated classes the school offers, and those are usually BC calc and advanced physics. As a former history major, I'm not endorsing this view, but our kids' college counselor (a former English major, BTW) told us this without equivocation.

Anonymous wrote:Everyone knows GDS leads EVERY school in Ivy admissions --- please consider this matter settled

GDS is better off being a scrappy under dog than a bloviating wannabe. Time to figure out what the school is going to do about its empty car dealership and grocery store/cafetaria

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IMO privates are more prone to grade deflation that public schools. My kids and their friends (all smart kids) have to work for their grades, and C's are def given out. The work load is heavy, and the schools expect kids to self-advocate and work with the teachers if grades are an issue. I have three kids at three different privates, and I see this across the board.

It really depends on which privates & which publics you're comparing.

MCPS vs DC/MD top privates.