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What sort of GPA do students entering Ivy league usually have?
" " " " " " " private non-ivy league usually have?

What about the top ten in a high school class, what do they usually have?


I know this info is probally in undefinate ranges but if someone could give me an idea I can compare mine with this after I get mine.

Well, the very top is usually 4.0, but what's needed depends on future plans. Would you be going to a community college for a couple years, or are you working toward a PhD? You'd best be at the top for the latter, whereas it's pretty easy to get a small post-high school education.

Yeah, Top 10 is usually around, if not 4.0

3.0 is what you would probably want to shoot, for, however, anything above 3.0 is decent enough, I think.

I have a 3.3(unweighted) and 3.4(weighted) so I want't to shoot for atleast a 3.5 unweighted before I graduate.

Oh, Ivy League? No idea.

On a 4.0 scale, the average is somewhere in the 3.7 range for what are called first-tier schools (Ivy League plus Notre Dame, Washington University, CalTech, Berkeley, Duke, Northwestern, et cetera).

I went to Washington University in St. Louis (currently 12th in the nation, I think, so nothing to sneeze at), and when I graduated from high school I graduated 16th in my class, had a 3.6 GPA and an SAT score of 1360 (at the time there was no writing section, so max was 1600)- let me tell you, I thought I was all that and a bag of chips.

My freshman floor had 30 students, 20 of whom were valedictorians, and all of whom had a 1450 or above on the SATs.

It was very humbling, but I'll follow it up with this: GPA and admissions test scores are not the end-all be-all of college admissions. There is a lot more that goes into it. Yes, you have to meet some standards, but you also have to show that you are a different person, at least in one regard, from everyone else who's there. I had a pretty crappy resume when it comes down to it, but I had an interest in neurology and veterinary medicine and combining the two in my studies. My application essay reflected that. And I hadn't really played sports, either, but I had played in the band, so I'm sure that counted. And I'd done some theater, so that counted. And, at the end, there's also some luck involved (Harvard gets 25,000 applications for about 1200 spots, do you think they read through all of them? They don't).

Don't sweat your GPA, don't sweat your SATs, and don't sweat your activities. Be a complete, relaxed student, and you'll find the school that's right for you.

And, for what it's worth, I'm not a veterinarian or a neurologist today. So don't sweat your major too much, either.

On a mostly unrelated note, how is the point average worked out?
What I mean is, how do they get to 3.3 (Or what have you)

if your school has weighted GPAs (as in, As are worth 5 points, etc). you want that score to be ABOVE 4.0 for an ivy league school. Its annoyingly hard, not particualrly fair in many respects, but its true.

Why Should it be fair?
These are meant to be the best of the best, the kind of people that do quadratic equations for fun and could ell you William the Conquerers exact battle plan including the little dwarf he sent to assassinate an enemy general not knowing that Elves are far superior at it.

Historical innacuracies of that sentence aside, it's not meant to be fair.

GPA: Perfect 4.5
SAT: Haven't taken it in high school, but math + reading was 1370 when I did it in 7th grade.
PSAT: 231

As an alumnus of its law school, my dad does interviews with area students for admission to Harvard. He says they care a lot about grades and SATs (most students there are near the top of their classes and got a perfect score on at least one of the sections of the SAT), and that they also look for unique talent in the applicants. When they are trying to put together the class, if they only get a few students who can play the tuba (a necessary skill for any high school band), they'll have an advantage over people who were the lead actors in their school's drama club, which is like everybody there.

Other things that give advantages are volunteer hours, athletics, and not being a white or asian male.

As for my high school, everyone in the top 10% has a perfect 4.5 GPA. The top 25% cutoff is probably about 4.3, and the top 50% is probably like 3.5. In Texas, you get automatically accepted to any public school in the state if you are in the top 10% of your school.

Yeah, at my high school we had weighted GPA, because of AP tests, and the valedictorian of my class had something like a 5.7 GPA.

And of course it's not fair, it's supposed to be not fair. Of course, some states have taken measures to make it more fair, but I'm going to stop before I go into a full-blown rant.

On a related note, how do colleges take into account different high schools calculating gpa different ways? At my high school a 4.0 is perfect, but at others you can get higher. How do colleges adjust for that?

Some calculate it themselves, or they ask you for both weighted and nonweighted GPA.

That's why they ask for your transcripts, too. Or at least, that's part of the reason.

One of my friends, who has a 4.0GPA and got 1530/1600 on the SAT got deferred from The University of Pennsylvania for his early decision, but he still has a decent chance of getting in regular decision.

The Ivy League is TOO competitive, I was talking to some university profs that my mom randomly knows (one from Lehigh University, and another from University of Pennsylvania) and they both said that you don't need to go to the Ivy League. In fact, they said it is probably better NOT to. They both remarked that most of the profs do not care about their undergrads, the more famous the professor, the more likely that all they want to do is research. Both of them graduated from humble universities as undergraduates (One of them from The University of Western Ontario and the other from The University of Maryland) and they went to Princeton and Harvard for their Ph.D's respectively.

This reassured me a whole lot (In fact, I've even decided that I want to go to school in Canada, as opposed to one of the 45,000 a year schools I've applied to in the US.) and just from other things I've heard about American vs. Canadian schools from random people.

My position is annoying, I have extremely high test scores, but I didn't really care about school from 9th to 11th grade. So I have the test scores to get into Harvard (I didn't apply there), but they don't like the fact that I have an 85 average and I'm not top ten in my class. Whatever.

I don't want to sound showoff-ish, but I have a 5.2, I have no idea what the weighted on is though, I have to check, I'm like number 20 in my class though, I might've gone up since then. I would love to attend an Ivy League College, but I'm not too keen on the idea of having to practically kill myself to be ahead of everyone else, I suck at school work, but I friggin rock those tests yo, fo' sho.