[mikeryan]

No. They’re no longer allowed to use race but can, and still consider a wide range of factors.

They have to - it’s likely they have far more applicants with near perfect GPA/Test score combos then they have spots. (Noting that your GPA gets fuzzy once it’s over a 4.0 since that “extra” is going to be somewhat school and school system dependent)

Since each kid likely applies to multiple schools the process would also be extremely broken if it worked the way you suggest since the same cohort of kids would all be accepted to multiple schools and the schools would then have to backfill from a alternate list - which would also be the same cohort of kids…

[just-ok]

> that “extra” is going to be somewhat school and school system dependent

Is it? That’s news to me. I grew up thinking it was standard to just have 5 grade points for honors and AP classes. I guess the nuance comes into the bar for a class being “honors,” vs. AP which has a more consistent definition given the standardized exam?

[mikeryan]

A significant, and growing, number of schools (many of them independent and high end) are no longer offering AP/Honors classes. Which means that you now don’t have a level measure for comparing GPA.

To the original point though it’s one of many reasons why GPA + Test scores isn’t really a standard metric to be used on their own for merit based admissions. It’s really just a bar after which you have to take additional factors into account.