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I'm not gonna bother to figure out my GPA, since my school uses a wacky 4.3 scale.

Anyhow, I've started to apply to colleges at this point. I've done 3, and still have two more that I want to apply to. Should be a fun process, considering I haven't done much for signing up for scholarships yet either.
I prefer smaller, more local colleges, just since I hate crowds. So far, I've applied to Elizabethtown College, Lynchburg College, and Juniata College, and plan on adding Mt. St. Mary's and Loyola University Maryland to that list.

2200+ for SATs. Not enough to apply to the US.

How? That's pretty **** good, considering the best at my school are getting 2100+. There's no way they can expect you to be that perfect on a standardized test.

That's pretty **** good, considering the best at my school are getting 2100+.

YA! Useless Stats! My school's best scores are also 2100+. But for us that is 2400. And we always have a few of those, darn Asians!

I prefer smaller, more local colleges, just since I hate crowds.

My rule is not to go to a college smaller then my high school. My high school is about 4,700 so all small colleges are out.

There's no way they can expect you to be that perfect on a standardized test.

Asian. Not saying that racistly, it is just true. They want to be perfect.

B+ is 3.3 I believe.

Wait a minute. I know this is true for college, but I thought pluses and minuses had no effect on GPA in high school. Unless your school does it differently...

My rule is not to go to a college smaller then my high school. My high school is about 4,700 so all small colleges are out.

See, my high school has somewhere in the 1000+ range of students, so its hard to find a college with less people students than that.

Asian. Not saying that racistly, it is just true. They want to be perfect.

Touché.

Wait a minute. I know this is true for college, but I thought pluses and minuses had no effect on GPA in high school. Unless your school does it differently...

It's probably just variation in school. My school does it with pluses and minuses as well, so I'd say its probably just school to school.

No. I don't know where you came up with this, but both GPA and standardized scores are important for any decently competitive college. However, public institutions do tend to place a greater emphasis on objective scores than extracurriculars.

There are certain things that are implied. I apologize for assuming people would pick up on what I was too lazy to flesh out. I'm assuming the person applying didn't fail out of high school and did a little more than just pass. Exceptions are made to the rules all of the time. Having absolutely stellar grades and a low standardized test score is a lot worse than having low grades and a stellar standardized test score. I've heard stories of people and had friends that have gotten acceptance letters that fall under both categories, but the handful of the former is overshadowed by the mountain of the latter. I'm also assuming that the vast majority of people aren't the geniuses you find going to Harvard and winning Nobel prizes. My post was catering to the normal/average person, and I did acknowledge exceptions regarding knowing when different programs were exceptional in the possible advantages for the students that chose to undergo them. Individual majors are also very different from each other even within the same institution. Some of them are much better than others (better funding and/or teachers) or they just have a good track record of getting people into places.

Private institutions tend to be a lot more expensive... UNLESS you get enough scholarships to help you out. Obviously, it will ultimately depend on the individual professor and their personalities, but I've been told by my friends that went to the larger schools as undergrads that some of their professors just didn't care about anyone other than themselves or their research. Some of my friends were supposed to do research with their professors as undergrads and would end up doing nothing but cleaning glassware as the graduate/doctorate students got to do everything... or the little work they did do wasn't anything worth doing. They've also had the experience of going to get advised and being told "My time is too important for undergraduates (and masters students!!!)... get out of my office and go somewhere else"

The smaller'ish private institutions tend to provide more opportunities to get to know your professors, and you get more time to spend more time actually using their resources as opposed to being on the bottom of the list. Being able to get close to your professors in undergrad can be almost as important as doing well on the respective standardized exams. If they don't know you very well it becomes difficult to write a rec letter that's actually worth reading.... and those are really important (especially if those teachers personally know the people you'll be applying to).

I'm not saying that gpa and where you go aren't important. I'm saying that the first thing and the most important thing that most places will look at are your standardized test scores and possibly rec letters. Admissions committees for graduate level education do rank the undergraduate schools that the applicants went to, and they do look at gpa, but those two things only usually hurt you. The admissions committees aren't always intimately familiar with every single class in every single program. They just see trends in which graduates from different schools tend to do better than graduates from others. That being said the things would be tiered (maybe switching one or more)

Standardized Test scores (if you have a 4.0 from Harvard, but have an average test score while someone has a 3.5 but rocked the exam and they're from a no named school.... they really do have a better chance of getting it than you do (often times...unless the people doing the accepting are biased towards Harvard) > interview (you have to have a good test score to get an interview, but the interview may be what wins the fight for you) > rec letters (getting bad letters can and most likely will ruin your chances, but unless they're familiar with letters from that writer they may not win it for you) > GPA > School you got your degree from

I can tell one or more people may disagree with my opinion, but that has been my personal experience and the experience of people I know. My med school teachers now (one went to Harvard! (he was in the next room over when they developed the fluid mosaic model of the cell!!!)) who have been interviewers at multiple schools have also said that's how they went about it at most of the different places. They've also told me that's how residency directors for the majority of specialties here in the US go about filling their slots. There's a reason you'll find a lot of "Just pass" parody songs joking about medical school performance on youtube. Here's where something is supposed to be understood. I'm just assuming you know the hyper competitive specialties like ortho and derm are more competitive and GPA can play a big role in choosing between applicants. I know you probably didn't understand it was supposed to be understood, but hopefully now you understand.

bottom line... Awesome test scores + crappy everything else will, much more often than not, get you what you want than average test score + Awesome everything. (especially when it comes to medical school... it's mostly mcat. I've had friends with 5 years nursing experience, perfect 4.0 after coming back and taking upper level biology courses (3 years worth(a whole BS worth)), making 85th percentile(out of all of the M 1's that took it that year(my undergrad has the ability to give the test to whoever took the class)) on the gross anatomy shelf exam (just isn't the standardized exam they want to see), a crap ton of volunteer work, and they still were told that they couldn't get in b/c their MCAT was too low. (he then made a few points higher and they accepted him)... I've known several people that have made C's and even failed classes that made high on the MCAT that would get in without those grades even being mentioned to them in the interviews or subsequent conversations.

I admit most of what I've said is an over simplification and that not every admissions person/group/committee functions the way I've discussed... but what I have expressed is the general trend. They acknowledge that the same class taught different places or even at the same place by different teachers aren't equivalent. GPA is seen as less reliable, and therefore there can be and often are exceptions made for some people who have relatively low gpa's (as far as general admissions is concerned)...

also, it doesn't have to be popular or prestigious to be a good college. You will often times get just as good or nearly as good an education from professors at junior colleges that are teaching some of the same first and second year classes (not forgetting the lesser known 4 year colleges)

Depends on what you want to do. If you want to go into finance, for example, it certainly helps if your school is a top-ranked feeder to Wall Street.

too lazy to go back and re read everything I've said... but I think I made an exception somewhere for those that just have great success feeding into certain areas... plus, it was another one of those things that was supposed to just be understood. I don't like using absolutes. There are almost always exceptions to almost everything, and I assume people know that. Maybe I'll just stop assuming. I'm just saying that the extent of a lot of people's research into a school doesn't go passed knowing it is difficult to get into. Difficult to get into doesn't always mean it'll help you after you graduate. There are lots of videos on youtube of people supposedly burning their Harvard law degrees... which could be a hoax, but according to the saturation of the law market nowadays it might just not be.

...I apologize... I ramble when I procrastinate histology. IT'S SO BORING!!!!!

Who's applying to colleges this year?

Not applying until a few years from now, but still speculating about it :P

Wait a minute. I know this is true for college, but I thought pluses and minuses had no effect on GPA in high school. Unless your school does it differently...

Our GPA scale:

(AP/IB)
A= 93-100= 5.00
A-= 90-92= 4.67
B+= 87-89= 4.33
B= 83-86= 4.00
B-= 80-82= 3.67
C+= 77-79= 3.33
C= 73-76= 3.00
C-= 70-72= 2.67

(^^ D+ and below goes back to normal GPA scale)

(Honors)
A= 93-100= 4.50
A-= 90-92= 4.17
B+= 87-89= 3.83
B= 83-86= 3.50
B-= 80-82= 3.17
C+= 77-79= 2.83
C= 73-76= 2.50
C-= 70-72= 2.17

(Regular)
A= 93-100= 4.00
A-= 90-92= 3.67
B+= 87-89= 3.33
B= 83-86= 3.00
B-= 80-82= 2.67
C+= 77-79= 2.33
C= 73-76= 2.00
C-= 70-72= 1.67
D+= 67-69= 1.33
D= 63-66= 1.00
D-= 60-62= 0.67
F= 59-Below= 0.00

I would probably say SAT/ACT matter more than GPA, because the SAT and ACT are the same for all students throughout the country, whereas GPA could vary a lot depending on your high school/teachers.

I'll probably end up applying to OSU as it's in-state and I live about 20 minutes away from campus, as well as it being a decent school. Maybe Harvard, MIT, or another Ivy League school if I'm up to writing enough essays, but not much is clear yet, I'm only a freshmen :P

How? That's pretty **** good, considering the best at my school are getting 2100+. There's no way they can expect you to be that perfect on a standardized test.

Asian. Not saying that racistly, it is just true. They want to be perfect.

More of because I'm not American, so my scores need to be higher.

More of because I'm not American, so my scores need to be higher.

What's wrong with Singaporean colleges? I hardly know anything about the country, so forgive my ignorance Nicho. :P

Having absolutely stellar grades and a low standardized test score is a lot worse than having low grades and a stellar standardized test score. I've heard stories of people and had friends that have gotten acceptance letters that fall under both categories, but the handful of the former is overshadowed by the mountain of the latter.

I've actually seen more of the former than the latter.

I'm also assuming that the vast majority of people aren't the geniuses you find going to Harvard and winning Nobel prizes.

Most of the people going to Harvard aren't geniuses anyway. They just happen to be smart and motivated, but they're still "normal" people who, more often than not, need advice on how to proceed with their lives.

My post was catering to the normal/average person, and I did acknowledge exceptions regarding knowing when different programs were exceptional in the possible advantages for the students that chose to undergo them. Individual majors are also very different from each other even within the same institution. Some of them are much better than others (better funding and/or teachers) or they just have a good track record of getting people into places.

This seems a bit contradictory. If the premise that certain majors are much better in some institutions than other majors is true, then school choice would play an important role in what you want to do. And this wouldn't be an exception; this is the rule. That being said, I do believe there are minute differences between schools of the same "tier" (unless a school is specifically specialized or especially strong in a certain area). However, between tiers, it's much different. But that's not saying that a pre-medical student from an unknown state school can't get into Harvard Medical School. Prestige of your undergraduate education alone gives you a slight advantage, and of course, prestige is typically correlated with quality.

Standardized Test scores (if you have a 4.0 from Harvard, but have an average test score while someone has a 3.5 but rocked the exam and they're from a no named school.... they really do have a better chance of getting it than you do (often times...unless the people doing the accepting are biased towards Harvard) > interview (you have to have a good test score to get an interview, but the interview may be what wins the fight for you) > rec letters (getting bad letters can and most likely will ruin your chances, but unless they're familiar with letters from that writer they may not win it for you) > GPA > School you got your degree from

Granted, my knowledge in graduate admissions and job placement is limited, but I would assume that extracurriculars and experience play a heavy role somewhere. In fact, I'd say that a rank of the importance of each factor is inaccurate because objective stats are typically what get you through that first cut. Afterwards, subjective factors are huge. Now I know you're not talking about Harvard or similar schools, but it's evident that for undergraduate admissions, being a valedictorian, scoring a 2400, and earning five 800's on your SAT II's is worthless compared to extensive charity work.

I would probably say SAT/ACT matter more than GPA, because the SAT and ACT are the same for all students throughout the country, whereas GPA could vary a lot depending on your high school/teachers.

You make a good point, but keep in mind admissions officers tend to evaluate applications holistically (some schools more than others though). That means they take into account the nature of your school, your ranking within your class, the competition in the area, the median and means of certain courses, etc. This allows them to get a better idea of what it took to get the GPA you got.

I actually don't want to study in the US because I'm aiming to take law. Since we have different legal systems, it would not be the best of moves. Yes Singapore universities, one of them is on my radar. Applying to UK too.

One of my friends is an international from Singapore. She graduated from a fairly prominent junior college (which apparently serve as alternatives to high school...?) and went straight to law school. Something about perfect scores on A-levels. Came here cuz she didn't like it though. But anyway, have you ever considered this route, or was it even something you were aware of?