School Weight

tommyboy44

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Apr 12, 2016
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171
Hey, I have a quick question about the admissions proccess. I wanted to know if the Admissions board takes your school into account for when they are viewing your profile. I go to a very strenuous college prep school where our regular classes are the equivalent of honors classes at public schools. My school has a graduating class of about 55ish each year and everyone goes to college. I was just wondering if the admissions board will factor this into my application because this makes my gpa a little lower than public school kids as I am getting essentially an ACE level education with my advanced classes, but I also have on average about 4-5 hours of homework each night on top of a 3 and a half hour crew practice each day. If they do factor this in, how would I or my school go about informing them?

Sorry if this sounds like a "my life is so hard... I should get in" post, I am writing this in a rush after a Psych Test and not taking much time for wording.
 
Yes they do. When your transcript is sent they will send along a school profile so you don't need to do anything.
 
Yes they do. When your transcript is sent they will send along a school profile so you don't need to do anything.
Thanks, I was scared that that would not factor and I wasted all this time doing extra work and missing sleep for nothing.
 
Yes they do. When your transcript is sent they will send along a school profile so you don't need to do anything.

@NavyHoops In the history of my DS's school, no one has been admitted to the USNA. Do they factor that in? Three got rejected this year. (USMA has accepted several in past years though.)
 
tommyboy44- As is stated above, I'm pretty sure that they do take school profile into account. I understand where you are coming from(albeit my graduating class is 300, not 55). I go to one of the New England boarding schools where 35% of each class is going to an Ivy, and I am certainly not like many others who are getting into USNA with a top 25% or even top 10% ranking. I was admitted to USNA being somewhere around the middle of my class(but with 2190 SAT). I don't know if USNA knew of my high school(it is one of the more well known ones), however my college counselor was very explicit in her report, stating the difficulty of the school. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
 
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Hi @MABlue. Nice to see you here from CC. Our son also attended one of those NE boarding schools. All of the academies definitely know these preps and how to evaluate their students. Remember @tommyboy44, you have to get a nomination first; for our son (also a rower), he was told outright that the well-known rigor of his HS set him apart from our local pack. Like @MABlue, he was not in the top % of his non-grade-inflated prep class, but his stellar test scores corroborated his academic readiness, and he ended up with six noms.

You can be sure that the admissions panel at USNA will know how to evaluate you within the context of your school -- and Navy, especially, will know how to evaluate the agony and time commitment that is crew:

Rowers have no trouble with Plebe Summer/Beast. ;)
 
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I second the comment on nominations. I was surprised during the interview, when one of the first things I was told was "We love to see applicants from your school, we know they will be able to handle the academic rigors of an SA." All you can do is prepare as best as you can, and then leave it up to the admissions board
 
School profile can certainly help someone who goes to a very competitive school. I had many friends at USNA who attended elite NE prep schools. If no one has gone to a SA from your school, it shouldn't hurt you directly. A solid candidate and application will speak for itself. Many candidates are appointed annually from small schools or schools that haven't had someone appointed in decades. I say directly, because some schools who don't deal with candidates annually might be unfamiliar with the unique deadlines and requirements for applicantions and noms. It's important to start early and be clear what it is for and when it's due. Give plenty of time. If there are questions or issues use your school leadership to work those out and then escalate to your BGO if it can't be resolved.
 
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