College App Question: SAT scores vs. GPA

[willw9]

1. Penn State Honors Program.
2. ???
3. Profit immensely..

[pokerchap]

being in the same situation as you and going through college crap for the last 2 years and knowing the difficulty of most schools today, you have a very slim chance at a lot of those schools especially stanford.

[furyshade]

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being in the same situation as you and going through college crap for the last 2 years and knowing the difficulty of most schools today, you have a very slim chance at a lot of those schools especially stanford.

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i know that about stanford, but i spent last summer living/taking classes there so i may as well apply on that <5% chance i get in for some reason. berkeley also a reach. the rest hopefully my out of class stuff/800 on math sat/rigor of curriculum will help me enough.

[Ganjasaurus Rex]

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being in the same situation as you and going through college crap for the last 2 years and knowing the difficulty of most schools today, you have a very slim chance at a lot of those schools especially stanford.

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i know that about stanford, but i spent last summer living/taking classes there so i may as well apply on that <5% chance i get in for some reason. berkeley also a reach. the rest hopefully my out of class stuff/800 on math sat/rigor of curriculum will help me enough.

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The 800 in the Quant section is not going to do as much for you as you might think. That section is so top heavy that a 800 doesn't really stand out like it would for the verbal section.

However, now that i've seen your course load as you've described above, i'd say that part will go in your favor. The GPA is still too low for most top schools, but you have a good shot at getting into a second-tier program. And you never know, a top-tier school might take you, so apply anyway.

To give you an idea of what the standards are... at UIUC, the average GPA is 3.8 and the average SAT is 2300.

[Ganjasaurus Rex]

Btw, is your GPA adjusted already for the AP classes you took?

[furyshade]

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Btw, is your GPA adjusted already for the AP classes you took?

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no, i didnt bother since my school offers so few AP courses. my school tends to try to offer harder courses that aren't APs for whatever their philisophical reason, but for example my math class is college level but there isnt an AP for it, same is true of modern physics, and it is in the course description that number theory is harder than any AP offered. the others i dont know how they stack up compared to other highschools/colleges but generally my schools classes are harder than other hs.

edit: my school offers i think a total of 16 APs, i'm taking two since i have no interest in biology/chemistry, wont do well in an AP english, and need to have taken calc BC to be allowed into physics C. my school doesn't let you just sign up for an AP course and get in, you need approval from the department head to get into AP courses

[Ganjasaurus Rex]

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Btw, is your GPA adjusted already for the AP classes you took?

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no, i didnt bother since my school offers so few AP courses. my school tends to try to offer harder courses that aren't APs for whatever their philisophical reason, but for example my math class is college level but there isnt an AP for it, same is true of modern physics, and it is in the course description that number theory is harder than any AP offered. the others i dont know how they stack up compared to other highschools/colleges but generally my schools classes are harder than other hs.

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You're going to want to take some time to convince your schools of this. If your high school is on some list of top-tier HS's in the nation, then by all means make sure you mention that. One thing you have to keep in mind is that these decisions are based on quantitative evidence (rankings, etc.) rather than qualitative evidence. So telling them that your school is hard isn't enough unless you have quantitative evidence to back that claim up.

[furyshade]

well my school absolutely refuses to do class rank, they wont give any mention of a rank. they also tell us specifically to write that the schools doesn't offer any sort of honors or awards to its students

[Ganjasaurus Rex]

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well my school absolutely refuses to do class rank, they wont give any mention of a rank. they also tell us specifically to write that the schools doesn't offer any sort of honors or awards to its students

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I don't mean class rank, although that would be nice to have (you can probably figure this out yourself by asking someone in the front office nicely). I meant national ranking. Is your school ranked nationally by some outside agency (e.g. Newsweek)? Is your school on this list?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/39380

Edit: that list is public schools, so it won't apply to you, but you can find a similar list for private schools.

[furyshade]

its a private highschool so it cant be ranked there