Oakton student here, back again.

I'm not sure what the grading situation is like for other places (class rank is not public in FCPS), but out of a 2700 student body only ~150-200 made it onto the all-A honor roll, while the A/B average students number about four or five times that.

Keep in mind that these honor rolls do not reflect course difficulty.

Hope this gives you a better idea of the current grading situation down here

Anonymous wrote: NOVA grade inflation is not working anymore. It’s hurting applicants at UVA and VT. Those waitlisted are leaving the state for OOS Flagships costing family’s $$$. Time to get rid of the inflated GPA’s and participation trophies because they are getting called out.

Maybe NOVA has a higher percentage of bright students than other parts of the state.

NOVA grade inflation is not working anymore. It’s hurting applicants at UVA and VT. Those waitlisted are leaving the state for OOS Flagships costing family’s $$$. Time to get rid of the inflated GPA’s and participation trophies because they are getting called out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:4.1 top FCPS HS, multiple varsity sport athlete, female STEM…waitlisted

A year ago 4.10 was 50th percentile. What is going on?

Adding on to my previous post. Last year, all the senior classmates of mine at Oakton who ended up going to good schools (UVA, Washington in St. Louis, Brown) (T30) had a GPA >4.6

It's a crazy world out there.

Current Oakton student here (just popping in, don't mind me).

Around about half the applicants from here got waitlisted - admissions rates dropped almost 20% (?) down to around 13% or 7,000 accepted out of 52,000

If you're the parent of an FCPS student, your child's Naviance should reveal the exact admissions data of all applicants from your school in previous years (GPA and SAT) and whether or not they were accepted all in one huge graph - I expect new information about that to be coming out soon.

Anonymous wrote:4.1 top FCPS HS, multiple varsity sport athlete, female STEM…waitlisted

A year ago 4.10 was 50th percentile. What is going on?

Virginia Tech is an excellent, very competitive university. Parents in NOVA tend to view it as a safety, which it is most certainly not.

And here you are.

Anonymous wrote:Our unhooked, OOS son was accepted for the Fall. His grades were fine, several APs, TO but in terms of data points it sounds like he was "lower" than lots of waitlisted kids. I think the 4 short essays were important and his were good. We also spent a lot of time digesting the VT University DataCommons to gauge acceptance rates for the different schools/majors and felt like he picked the best major that he was genuinely interested in but had a decent shot at getting into.

Congrats!

4.1 top FCPS HS, multiple varsity sport athlete, female STEM…waitlisted

Our unhooked, OOS son was accepted for the Fall. His grades were fine, several APs, TO but in terms of data points it sounds like he was "lower" than lots of waitlisted kids. I think the 4 short essays were important and his were good. We also spent a lot of time digesting the VT University DataCommons to gauge acceptance rates for the different schools/majors and felt like he picked the best major that he was genuinely interested in but had a decent shot at getting into.

Graduating early probably hurt him. I believe UVA would have passed on this student scenario as well. If it was an effective strategy for top schools everyone would be trying it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My best friend’s son, who is an URM, graduated high school in 3 years bc he’s crazy smart and had a 4.3 weighted (don’t know SATs) was waitlisted after applying ED (or EA, whatever is first) and was waitlisted and never got off. It was his first choice by far. He wrote a letter of continued interest. Didn’t help.

We were stunned. It’s so hard.

I think the test optional hurts really smart minority kids the most.

He ended up at JMU with good merit aid and he seems happy there but we were so sad for him. He had worked so hard (so many of the kids out there do). No kid had ever graduated in 3 years from his school before. It’s a crazy world.

This is why I rarely push my kids. What’s the point?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My best friend’s son, who is an URM, graduated high school in 3 years bc he’s crazy smart and had a 4.3 weighted (don’t know SATs) was waitlisted after applying ED (or EA, whatever is first) and was waitlisted and never got off. It was his first choice by far. He wrote a letter of continued interest. Didn’t help.

We were stunned. It’s so hard.

I think the test optional hurts really smart minority kids the most.

He ended up at JMU with good merit aid and he seems happy there but we were so sad for him. He had worked so hard (so many of the kids out there do). No kid had ever graduated in 3 years from his school before. It’s a crazy world.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fcps 4.1 and 1380 sat here. Waitlisted for tech.

Things that didn’t help:

One of the top fcps schools
Not urm
Not first Gen
Male applying to business school

Otherwise everting else fit. Varsity sports captain, 8 APs and everything else honors.

These are not the reasons your kid didn't get in. Plenty of white, UMC students from top FCPS high schools are accepted to all majors, including business and engineering. Your kid was simply in competition with all of them.

I think the question is did kids with lower stats than this get in? When we did the VT tour, they told us that GPA and rigor were the two most important considerations.

We took the tour there too and while they, like almost every other school, say that grades and rigor are most important, they said their approach is holistic. They look at a lot of factors. They emphasized community service more than some schools. They never promise to admit kids based SOLELY on grades and rigor. None of them do.

This is not news. To anyone. You are assuming that the high stats kids someone didn't know about this and are now shocked that they were not admitted. Why would you assume that? Service hours are the easiest EC to get or make up.

If someone with lower stats than you got in (of similar schools,region, etc.) then they offered something in their application that you did not. Probably most of the time it comes down to the Ut Prosim questions. I recall when my DS applied a couple years ago people on here said there's no way VT actually reads all those. Well, yes, they say they do. And it's the ONLY thing that personalizes the student in the whole application since they don't take letters of recommendation or read the common app essay. Kids who blow off the essays because they are short and can't possibly matter have miscalculated.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fcps 4.1 and 1380 sat here. Waitlisted for tech.

Things that didn’t help:

One of the top fcps schools
Not urm
Not first Gen
Male applying to business school

Otherwise everting else fit. Varsity sports captain, 8 APs and everything else honors.

These are not the reasons your kid didn't get in. Plenty of white, UMC students from top FCPS high schools are accepted to all majors, including business and engineering. Your kid was simply in competition with all of them.

I think the question is did kids with lower stats than this get in? When we did the VT tour, they told us that GPA and rigor were the two most important considerations.

We took the tour there too and while they, like almost every other school, say that grades and rigor are most important, they said their approach is holistic. They look at a lot of factors. They emphasized community service more than some schools. They never promise to admit kids based SOLELY on grades and rigor. None of them do.

This is not news. To anyone. You are assuming that the high stats kids someone didn't know about this and are now shocked that they were not admitted. Why would you assume that? Service hours are the easiest EC to get or make up.