I want to buy a 4.0 Options

[innovation]

Ladies and gentlemen, I have decided.

I want to buy a 4.0 GPA off of EBay. Any suggestions on how I can succeed in doing so?

[innovation]

^ Your course schedule and your GPA. Prestigious colleges look mainly at your GPA and your grade trends; almost all applicants already have a tough course schedule. What's more important than GPA is your RANK. Unfortunately, my school doesn't rank, so colleges will only see my GPA.

And wrong, Nicki. From the College Board:

Very important admission factors:

* Application Essay
* Extracurricular Activities
* Recommendations
* Rigor of secondary school record
* Standardized Test Scores
* Academic GPA

All of those are "very important factors"; the college does not rank them within the category of "very important".

[*mipadi*]

^ Your course schedule and your GPA. Prestigious colleges look mainly at your GPA and your grade trends; almost all applicants already have a tough course schedule. What's more important than GPA is your RANK. Unfortunately, my school doesn't rank, so colleges will only see my GPA.

I think you're taking that whole list a little too seriously. I mean, look--there's a lot more than "GPA", even on that list. And yes, GPA is important; if a school is given two relatively identical students, but one has a 3.33 whereas the other has a 4.0, they're probably going to take the 4.0. But there's a lot of factors that contribute to picking and getting into college.

First, no college wants a stressed-out student who does nothing but study, and a student isn't going to do well if she's always stressed-out about grades. At any rate, that doesn't help long-term health. So a student shouldn't get hung up about not quite having a 4.0.

Secondly, you're going to get in somewhere, and a "prestigious" college isn't everything, except when it comes to gloating rights. Some employers might be impressed if an applicant is an Ivy League graduate, but most aren't going to deny a student simply because they didn't go to an Ivy unless they are crazy. Basically, as long as you went to a nice school and did well, you're going to get a job. Employers are much more interested in the transcript as a whole. They focus on courses taken, accolades received, organizations the student belonged to, and, yes, grades--but if you got a 3.66 or a 3.33 in a few classes, rather than a 4.0, they're not going to hold it against you. I can assure you that my experience with colleges have shown them to behave similarly.

Colleges want a student who is well-rounded, a student who was active in a few organizations (mind you, that doesn't mean belonged to a lot of organizations but never did anything; it means helped out in important ways to a few organizations), and did relatively well in high school (relatively well means that it's okay to get less than a 4.0), and took challenging courses--meaning the student wants a challenge.

Additionally, undergraduate programs aren't key. Going to some place good is good enough; graduate programs are where things really start to matter. Having a BA or BS from Harvard or a school like mine isn't a big difference; having a Ph.D. from Harvard or a school like mine is.

And finally, as we all know, getting into big-name universities is often times as much about who you know as what you know. Colleges don't officially say that, but just like anyone else, nepotism and favoritism plays a big role in college admissions.



I'm going to take a moment to take a personal assessment here. I know you're not a huge fan of me and you're probably going to think I am being unfair or just plain mean, but I do have a few words of wisdom: I think you're getting a bit too hung up on the "prestigious schools" thing. Even schools that don't regularly make the front page of The New York Times have good programs and good research programs. I, for example, go to a small school that gets little recognition (aside from our basketball program), but we have some great professors who have graduated from Ivies and other prestigious universities, and we have a lot of alumni who are very successful and maintain strong contacts with the school for things like jobs and internships. Sure, I did well on my SAT's, but I assure you I was a pretty lazy and unchallenged high school student.

I wouldn't spend all your time stressing out about grades. I'm sure your grades are very competitive, even if they aren't 4.0's, and I'm sure you have a strong shot at getting into a place like Harvard or UPenn, and I definitely think you should apply there if that's what you want to do. I'm just saying not to get discouraged by your grades, or hung up on raw performance figures. There are a lot of other things that matter. And even if you don't get into some place like Harvard, you still have a good shot at other strong, competitive, respected schools that will challenge you academically and intellectually, and will give you a good leg up on getting a job. Again, just because a school does not consistently make the papers, does not mean it is unknown and lacking of respect in the academic, government, and corporate sectors. College isn't something worth stressing about over that much.

Anyway, that's my $0.02. I apologize if I came off as harsh or cruel. I was just trying to be helpful.