Alabama Rush and First Cuts: Predetermined?

[arrowlady]

I don't understand why schools are no longer ranking. They are not really helping kids by keeping the information from them.

[28StGreek]

Originally Posted by DeltaBetaBaby

And why is that a meaningful statistic? Any attempt to claim that sororities make your GPA higher is clearly a joke; I'm pretty sure that's clear.

Well in my experience many sorority women at SC take their academics seriously. Many Greeks strive to join Gamma Sigma Alpha which is a Greek only Academic Honors Society.

"The Society strives to uphold the high ideals of scholastic achievement and therefore, only students with a cumulative grade point average of 3.5 or above (on a 4.0 scale) at the start of their junior year or a grade point average of 3.5 or higher in any semester during their junior or senior year are eligible"

Gamma Sigma Alpha was founded at USC in 1989 and there are now 218 chapters across the country.

[Diluxi]

My high school eliminated both class rank AND GPA. It's a magnet school, and there are all sorts of grading anomalies that compound to make college admissions a nightmare, but for the life of me I can't figure out why they don't just give us a number for our GPA. This is "special-snowflaking" to the max.

[ComradesTrue]

Well, since we are derailing, let me chime in. Nothing is as bad as this:

Florida school with 25 Valedictorians

I guess this whole "well they all tied with their 4.0" confuses me. My high school used a 4.0 scale, but when it came time to differentiate the 30 or so of us with 4.0s they used our numerical averages. Is that not commonplace? I can assure you that some of those kids earned their A's with high 90s while others slipped in with their 90-92s.

David Ellers, the district's executive director of secondary education, said the committee learned that the number of valedictorians is not a concern among principals. What is a problem is the perception that all of them deserve to speak at the graduation ceremony.

Yep. Everyone thinks they are special.

[aephi alum]

Originally Posted by irishpipes

Most of our high schools here have eliminated class rank. I guess it hurts too many students' feelings.

Originally Posted by sigmadiva

How does the school determine the valedictorian, or did they eliminate that too?

When I was a high school senior *ahem* years ago, students were given decile rankings, so you were told if you were in the top 10%, second 10%, etc. The exceptions were the valedictorian and salutatorian, who were told they were #1 and #2 respectively. These rankings were set at the end of junior year, so you could theoretically blow off your entire senior year (or ace your classes during your senior year, for that matter) without your decile ranking changing.

That said, I believe the high school sent each student's final GPA to the college s/he would be attending, so the GLOs would be looking at the student's entire high school performance and would know if the PNM had blown off his/her senior year.

I don't understand the idea of getting rid of high school class rankings altogether. On the one hand, I can see where it would hurt to be told, "There are 250 people in your graduating class, and, well, you're #250." On the other hand, I'd want some idea of where I stood within that pool of 250 - particularly if I were at or near the top of the class, so that I could report that information on my college applications and improve my chances of admission. Decile rankings are IMO a decent compromise.

</threadjack>

[MaryPoppins]

My magnate high school not only honor ranked us, but calculated our GPA's to four decimal points. Of course they then decided to apply a bell curve to our grades, which meant that B's began at a 2.6!

[tpiazza]

Originally Posted by Blondie93

Well, since we are derailing, let me chime in. Nothing is as bad as this:

Florida school with 25 Valedictorians

I guess this whole "well they all tied with their 4.0" confuses me. My high school used a 4.0 scale, but when it came time to differentiate the 30 or so of us with 4.0s they used our numerical averages. Is that not commonplace? I can assure you that some of those kids earned their A's with high 90s while others slipped in with their 90-92s.

Yep. Everyone thinks they are special.

This is exactly why my high school did away with valedictorian stuff. We all got class rankings on our transcripts, but the senior class president always does the speech at graduation. To be honest, our senior class president was probably in the top 10 of our class anyway.

[DGTess]

Originally Posted by aephi alum

When I was a high school senior *ahem* years ago, students were given decile rankings, so you were told if you were in the top 10%, second 10%, etc. The exceptions were the valedictorian and salutatorian, who were told they were #1 and #2 respectively. These rankings were set at the end of junior year, so you could theoretically blow off your entire senior year (or ace your classes during your senior year, for that matter) without your decile ranking changing.

That said, I believe the high school sent each student's final GPA to the college s/he would be attending, so the GLOs would be looking at the student's entire high school performance and would know if the PNM had blown off his/her senior year.

I don't understand the idea of getting rid of high school class rankings altogether. On the one hand, I can see where it would hurt to be told, "There are 250 people in your graduating class, and, well, you're #250." On the other hand, I'd want some idea of where I stood within that pool of 250 - particularly if I were at or near the top of the class, so that I could report that information on my college applications and improve my chances of admission. Decile rankings are IMO a decent compromise.

</threadjack>

I'm pretty sure if you're #250, you pretty much know where you stand in class.

That said, the guy who graduates last in his class from medical school still is called "Doctor".

[FuturePNMMom]

I was helping a Sophomore girl at UA find some recs for recruitment this year and am curious to get your opinion on her situation.

She is a beautiful girl with a stellar high school resume (4.0 unweighted GPA, first in her class, very involved in all kinds of leadership, athletic, good ACT score), but did not get involved her Freshman year at UA and has below a 3.0 college GPA. He resume is basically what you would expect from an incoming student except she added the one line about her college GPA but put it in between her high school information.

My daughter went through recruitment last year as a Freshman at another competitive SEC school very successfully and has loved every second of her sorority life, but since it wasn't at Bama, I didn't know what advice to give her this girl except enjoy the experience, visit each house with an open mind, be yourself, and know that there will be cuts, but it only takes one bid. I was honest that I felt that she could have a tough time because it is harder as a Sophomore, but anything is possible.

I do know that we don't talk about specific recruitment practices, but in general when you are already a college student going through recruitment, do they really care about what you did in high school or are they more concerned about what you have done since you became a UA student?

[irishpipes]

In that situation, I personally would assume her high school wasn't challenging. Maybe that isn't the case, but without an explanation, that is what I would assume with the significant drop in grades.

[Greek_or_Geek?]

Originally Posted by irishpipes

In that situation, I personally would assume her high school wasn't challenging. Maybe that isn't the case, but without an explanation, that is what I would assume with the significant drop in grades.

This. Or that the PNM got to college and concentrated on things other than studying. Since her college involvement was zero as well, it will be obvious that spreading herself too thin with extracurriculars wasn't the reason. Her high school resume means nothing at this point. It almost makes things look worse for her. You see all the things she achieved during high school then once she got to college she didn't do anything.

With UGA being one of those schools where essentially all the freshman PNMs have stellar grades and the system is weighted against sophomores in the first place, she's going to have a very rough time of it. To say someone in this position will need to have an open mind is an understatement.

[AXOrushadvisor]

That is exactly what happened to my niece. Beautiful, 4.0, accomplished, leadership activities and tons of community service. She gets to school and carries below a 3.0. She did join a sorority where she held one office. I think for her she was burned out and I think Mom was making her do all this stuff for a good college resume. I also think that 4.0 came from a lot of extra credit and a lot of help from Mom.

I have found that a lot of times these very accomplished women on paper do not translate all the time over to college life. I also remember a friend from HS who was a good girl but got to college with all the freedom and went absolutely stark raving wild. The stories I heard about her were legendary stuff. I was shocked to say the least.

Somewhere on here someone also mentioned that a lot of times these accomplished HS woman don't pan out to be super involved but I don't remember which thread it was on.

[justgo_withit]

Even if her high school academics were challenging, that drop off still happens when you get overwhelmed by college academics. I know many IB diploma recipients/people who took a hard AP load and still had beautiful high school GPAs (unweighted), but their college grades have been Bs and Cs. It's not for one particular reason; some picked majors they hate because they're lucrative, some partied too much, some got mono around a major exam time, some just hated their school, some didn't realize that their #1 ranked program would be ranked as such because it's incredibly difficult, some are just lazy, some are living the Cs Get Degrees mindset.

Either way, I'd hope that the sororites on campus would treat it sort of like transfer admissions- if you have a semester under your belt, nobody cares what you did in high school except to explain unusual circumstances. Because clearly high school performance does not reflect college performance at all, and college performance is what they care about. Unless this girl has an acceptable explanation for why her grades were low? Then it would be more like "please take me, I'm not really a grades risk, see, look at my beautiful grades and my 2400 SATs, it's just that this year my whole family died/I got the plague/I was training for the Olympics and here is my gold medal (*hat tip to...28StGreek, I think?*)". Then I could see a group not cutting her immediately. Unless she brought it up in a super awkward way, like "Hi I'm Kelly Questionable Grades, nice to meet you! Ohbytheway my grades suck because, reasons!"

[carnation]

To everything that you said, AXORushAdvisor: YES!!!

Especially about the help from mom on the grades. Many teachers have given up on assigning projects or out-of-class work because so often we can tell that the parents have done it. I've never suspected it in grading college work but we know a woman who told us that her sons used to email her their college papers and she edited them.

I would say that life will bite them in the butt someday except that there are several coaches out there with master's degrees only because they paid off other teachers to write their papers for them.

[KyKKGviaFlorida]

Has anyone heard what quota will be? Also, does anyone know how many invitations a PNM may accept each round? For example, a PNM will visit 16 houses during the two days of open house. Assuming no house cut her (!), how many houses will she attend during Phil, skit, and pref?