Early Action Statistics

Objee

Former USCGA Admissions Staff
15-Year Member
Joined
Dec 2, 2008
Messages
763
Early Action statistics have been approved for release...we're looking forward to bringing in another another great class!

944 Applicants
162 Appointments (37 Conditional; 125 Full; as of 2/4/12)
24 CGAS Appointments (11 Conditional; 13 Full; as of 2/4/12)

Of the 162 appointees to the Class of 2017...

43% AIM Graduates

Average SAT Scores: 696 CR 680 M 618 W (includes converted ACT scores)
Average HS Rank: 13% (includes reported and calculated HSR's)
Average GPA: 4.04 (all reported GPA's are converted to a 4.00 scale)
Average PFE Score: 225

41 U.S. states are represented plus three U.S. citizens living in Italy, Kazakhstan and Kenya
 
Very impressive!

Can you explain how you can get a 4.04 average on a 4.0 scale?
 
"Can you explain how you can get a 4.04 average on a 4.0 scale?"

-This is grade inflation. Some high schools give extra points for honors classes or other reasons so that it is possible to receive a 5.0 or a 6.0 on a 4.0 scale. This makes no sense to most people and I would hope that the academies would question anyone that submits GPAs that exceeds 4.0. In most high schools a 4.0 means a perfect score, the best anyone could get but that is not the case for all schools. I can't help but think this puts students at more traditional, academically rigorous schools, at a disadavantage. The DOD Academies recaluculate GPAs, put them all on a regular 4.0 scale and then weights them based upon the individual high school. (percent of graduates attending 4 year colleges, etc) I asked the CGA representative about this process at a service academy event in my state and she had no idea what I was talking about.

The fact that the average GPA was 4.04 along with my conversation with the admissions rep. indicates to me that CGA just takes the raw numbers provided by the high schools and does not do any corrections. This puts students at more challenging high schools that use the traditional, time honored real 4.0 scale at a tremendous disadvantage.
 
We request an applicant's high school guidance counselor, or whichever school official is providing us the high school transcript, also report the applicant's official cumulative grade point average (GPA) and the scale for that cumulative GPA. You're correct that we do not adjust this cumulative GPA for the purpose of reporting statistics and I bet if you ask the other service academies (or any college) they don't either...you can do whatever you want to applicant data as part of your internal review/selection process, but you can't change it when reporting external statistics. Just like the other service academies, we are very aware of what type of high school (or college) an applicant is attending and what type of curriculum they are enrolled in. Both factors are taken into consideration during our review process and your assumption could not be more incorrect that applicants from "more traditional, academically rigorous schools" are at a disadvantage.

The reason why the other service academies recalculate an applicant's GPA for their review process is because they're assigning it a numeric score, so it's important to attempt to level the playing field and view all those GPAs as if all applicants were attending the same high school and taking the same curriculum. We stopped doing this when we transitioned to a holistic review process in 2008 and discontinued the practice of scoring individual academic items (e.g. GPA, ACT/SAT scores, number of AP/IB courses taken) instead of just evaluating the totality of an applicant's academic record. I'm sorry that the Admissions Officer or Academy Admissions Partner that you spoke with could not better explain this aspect of our review process to you, but I'm happy to answer any additional questions you may have.

"Can you explain how you can get a 4.04 average on a 4.0 scale?"

-This is grade inflation. Some high schools give extra points for honors classes or other reasons so that it is possible to receive a 5.0 or a 6.0 on a 4.0 scale. This makes no sense to most people and I would hope that the academies would question anyone that submits GPAs that exceeds 4.0. In most high schools a 4.0 means a perfect score, the best anyone could get but that is not the case for all schools. I can't help but think this puts students at more traditional, academically rigorous schools, at a disadavantage. The DOD Academies recaluculate GPAs, put them all on a regular 4.0 scale and then weights them based upon the individual high school. (percent of graduates attending 4 year colleges, etc) I asked the CGA representative about this process at a service academy event in my state and she had no idea what I was talking about.

The fact that the average GPA was 4.04 along with my conversation with the admissions rep. indicates to me that CGA just takes the raw numbers provided by the high schools and does not do any corrections. This puts students at more challenging high schools that use the traditional, time honored real 4.0 scale at a tremendous disadvantage.
 
If we took two kids with 4.0 GPA. One just taking regular classes and the other, AP/IB or honors it would appear that they're both "A" students but in reality, an easy ""A on Algebra vs a difficult ""C on Calculus II would put the kid taking the more difficult math at a disadvantage because it would weight down the GPA. That is why there's weighted and unweighted GPA scores on transcripts. In our experience with DS and DD College applications, some Colleges aren't even paying that much attention to the GPA or SAT scores. It seems that the holistic approach where they look at how well rounded a student is including sports, community service, extra curricular and leadership roles adds to the bigger picture. Also, that an applicant is truly who they say they are not just on paper but how they present themselves on interviews. There are complex formulas that different schools formulate ranking to choose who get to be summa cum laude, magna cum laude or who gets a golden ticket or not?
What I take away from the original post is that the majority of the appointments are given early so there is a definite advantage of applying and completing the admission requirements sooner than waiting at the last minute.
 
Last edited:
This question seems to come up every year...this discussion/thread from two years ago may help: http://www.serviceacademyforums.com/showthread.php?t=16148

Ok, I see what is going on but it seems that some grading scales are set up to inflate or game the system. They call a grading scale a 4.0 scale when in fact it is a 4.3 or some other number greater than 4.0. I am confident that admissions sees through this but it makes the value of the released statistic somewhat nebulous.

Thanks.
 
Can you give any information on how the candidates on the CGA waiting list are chosen when additional appointments become available? Are they seeded based on a ranking system? Also, are their applications compared to those being reviewed currently for RA?
Thanks for your help.
 
Back
Top