By Jonathan Schramm
Assistant Director
Undergraduate Admissions
In my last post, Application Review Process: We Care About Curriculum, I discussed how an applicant's strength of curriculum is viewed in the application review process, and also left you with a bit of a teaser regarding the next most important factor ~ Grades, not to be confused with GPA.
Now, what I mean by that is, we're not so much looking at the overall grade point average, as we are the course-by-course performance (just so you know, to be a competitive applicant at Virginia Tech, we like to see a strong A/B average).
When we're perusing your transcript, we're mentally (and sometimes physically) marking out:
- AP Weightlifting,
- Advanced Show Choir, and
- Honors Underwater Basket Weaving.
- Math,
- Science,
- English,
- Social Sciences, etc.
When it comes to your GPA, we all but discount the grades you received in your electives, and instead look at how well you did in your tougher, more academically focused courses.
Now, we do take some other factors into consideration when determining your in-class performance, not just the letter grade. Grading scales are one. We know at some schools a 90 to 100 is an A, when at others it's 94 to 100. That's where our policy of reviewing applicants within the context of their schools comes in. When we do this, it doesn't matter what your grading scale is, because you're not competing against applicants from other schools, but against your peers. Therefore, it's not about an average GPA, but more about how an applicant performed within their academic environment.
Trends in grades is another factor we consider. If an applicant started off a little slow in their freshman and sophomore years, then started improving their grades during their junior and senior years that can help. Likewise, if a student did well throughout their academic career, but then their first marking period grades during their senior year drop dramatically, that may raise a few eyebrows.
Again, your school profile tells us a lot about grade distribution, and the rigor of the course work, etc., so be sure to check that out if you haven't already.
Hopefully you're beginning to see that there's a lot that goes into reviewing applications at Virginia Tech. Check back next time, when I discuss the role SATs and ACTs have to play in the process.
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