Tag: GPA

In the last few weeks, I attended and presented at both the NJ and NY Association of College Admission Counseling conferences where I spoke to lots of colleagues and friends about the admissions process. One consistent theme that emerged is that while the inputs from students are similar (classes, grades, sometimes APs and scores, sometimes essays and recommendations), the way colleges consider them is vastly different. Understanding this might be one of the biggest misunderstandings in the national conversation about admissions. We’ve all seen the stories of the student with the seemingly high GPA getting rejected from multiple schools. We’ve probably even clicked the clickbait and empathized with that student. The problem is that this narrative is just wrong.

There is no such thing as “a GPA.”