(05-11-2017 02:31 PM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  

(05-11-2017 02:18 PM)Bearcat1010 Wrote:  How is HS GPA viewed in college admissions now? Does it matter or is it just a tiny part of the "holistic" approach? Holistic seems to be code for BS.

From what I hear in meetings if you want main campus CoE scores start in the 31-32 range. The drive is to increase CoE enrolment by 50% in 5 years. The solution is to send in-state kids in the 28-30 ACT range to Newark. They are alienating a large number of students in the drive to raise their profile. As a result there were not many from our massive suburban HS headed to OSU. Probably <10 main campus while they could have used a bus to get kids to UC (~50 to UC).

My 2 cents is that "holisticallly" means that GPA isn't heavily weighted by itself and is viewed strongly through the context of test scores and class rank. A pretty good idea in this age of grade inflation and parents in affluent districts who threaten lawyer up if precious gets a b-

GPA is still a cross-category standard in admissions for the low and mid-tier institutions since it does a fairly good job of separating good students from average and below average counterparts, but only when comparing with ACT/SAT data.

To put things in perspective, there is a school district in NW Ohio with 340 graduating seniors, 113 of whom have above a 4.0 due in no small part to parental interference and students masterfully playing the grade game, so in situations like that we all tend to put more emphasis on test scores and additional information/recommendations/involvement of the specific student. Conversely, the same is done with students from lower performing public schools as charter schools, as the GPAs there (3.5-4.0) tend to not correlate with avg test scores (16.1 for TPS students this past year), so we have to dig deeper. The truth of the matter is that schools have become so efficient at preparing students for a single test rather than for college, we have to start digging deeper to see if they are truly ready for the next step. The sad thing is, there are schools who do the right thing, who challenge their students with next level standards of quality, and end up penalizing them because they don't get GPAs that compare to other schools who just throw 5.0's at half their course catalog. Ottawa Hills in Toledo, Walnut Hills and Indian Hill in Cincinnati, CVCA and U School in Cleveland, Harvest and Upper Arlington in Columbus, etc. who have avg ACT's in the stratosphere but avg. GPA is down around 3.0 where it really should be in every suburban school districts.

The other issue is the percentage grading that many private schools get into using. St. X for instance has an aggregated average of all grades accumulated over 4 years for their students, so you'll typically see students with a 90%, 94%, etc. Now those students are getting all A's by other schools' standards (so a 4.0), but colleges are required to convert their GPA to the 4.0 scale based on that percentage (90% of 4.0 is 3.6 for example), which penalizes every student unnecessarily. The fact that we don't at least have a common grade scale in the state penalizes students in many cases when scholarships come down. There are some schools in OH where below a 94 is a B, below an 85 is a C, below a 76 is a D and below a 68 is an F...think about that for a second.

Now you see why more schools are looking at things outside of the GPA/ACT score.
Holistic admissions is not as much of a BS policy as is currently thought specifically because it is used by the schools who actually NEED another way of determining candidate quality across varying lines. You tend to only see that in higher level institutions (Ivy's, Michigan, Northwestern, etc.) for admission because the average candidate profile is so high to begin with, however, scholarships pretty much on the whole have moved to Holistic evaluation practices everywhere since you tend to have to find more information to make an informed decision. I always tell students looking at the high-level institutions who I speak with early in the process that it isn't just about being a good student anymore, it's about being a well-rounded student who has shown they can and will make a difference in their world. I had a student just this year who was denied by UM with a 4.3 GPA and a 35 (!) on the ACT this year because that was ALL he did, no club or sport involvement, no community involvement, no leadership experience, nothing...that was the kind of kid Michigan dreamed of getting a decade and a half ago, and now they're showing him the door.

Can we get a split, I've always seen a lot of interest in discussions about these topics, but it ends up getting hidden in other threads and derailing the point of the initial post (as in this case lol)