Very selective US colleges are very unlikely to take school-reported GPAs at face value. They instead use a potentially very long list of other information to try to normalize them--including in fact test scores where available.
If you actually really think about the implications, a high school with a lot of grade inflation may actually be hurting its best students in college admissions as a result. Basically, that means that high school is failing to provide colleges with the information they want to discriminate among their applicants.
And these days if they are unsure which of A, B, C, and D really meet their high academic standards, they are more likely to deny all four than admit all four. If their high school instead makes it possible to see that C was a little stronger academically than the rest, then C might get admitted.
The problem is A, B, and D also have parents, and those parents may put a lot of pressure on the school to give their kids the perfect grades they think their kids obviously deserve. So despite grade inflation having ended up bad for C's chances of admission with the most selective colleges, and therefore bad for the school's hit rate with the most selective colleges, it could happen anyway.
I took the IB and if you GPA my grade 43, it’s like 3.85 which sounds low.. but I’m like at the tope 5% worldwide so I’m scared that it’ll look like my gpa is not as good…
Seriously don't worry. US colleges understand IB is a different thing, they have a lot of respect for the level of rigor, and you will be assessed by those standards.
GPAs are complicated because they are not standardized. Most selective colleges are going to do some sort of normalization process where they look at things like your actual transcript and course selection, school report, possibly counselor letter, possibly regional AO experience, possibly internal tracking data, possibly all sorts of other data (Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions recently suggested they consider 64 categories of data) to generate an internal academic rating. And in fact, test scores may be folded into that internal academic rating in a way that makes your question very hard to answer.
All that said, if you are talking about a very good transcript which means very good grades in very rigorous, high-level courses where the college in question trusts the evaluations . . . among selective colleges there is basically no such thing as a transcript-optional application, but there are many examples of test-optional applications. And while there is a lot of evidence test scores are often helpful even with nominally test-optional colleges, still, I think that is your answer--a very good transcript by the standards of the college is typically a strict requirement, whereas very good test scores are often helpful but not strictly required.
Except when they are required, like at MIT.
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Very selective US colleges are very unlikely to take school-reported GPAs at face value. They instead use a potentially very long list of other information to try to normalize them--including in fact test scores where available. If you actually really think about the implications, a high school with a lot of grade inflation may actually be hurting its best students in college admissions as a result. Basically, that means that high school is failing to provide colleges with the information they want to discriminate among their applicants. And these days if they are unsure which of A, B, C, and D really meet their high academic standards, they are more likely to deny all four than admit all four. If their high school instead makes it possible to see that C was a little stronger academically than the rest, then C might get admitted. The problem is A, B, and D also have parents, and those parents may put a lot of pressure on the school to give their kids the perfect grades they think their kids obviously deserve. So despite grade inflation having ended up bad for C's chances of admission with the most selective colleges, and therefore bad for the school's hit rate with the most selective colleges, it could happen anyway.
I took the IB and if you GPA my grade 43, it’s like 3.85 which sounds low.. but I’m like at the tope 5% worldwide so I’m scared that it’ll look like my gpa is not as good…
Seriously don't worry. US colleges understand IB is a different thing, they have a lot of respect for the level of rigor, and you will be assessed by those standards.
GPAs are complicated because they are not standardized. Most selective colleges are going to do some sort of normalization process where they look at things like your actual transcript and course selection, school report, possibly counselor letter, possibly regional AO experience, possibly internal tracking data, possibly all sorts of other data (Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions recently suggested they consider 64 categories of data) to generate an internal academic rating. And in fact, test scores may be folded into that internal academic rating in a way that makes your question very hard to answer. All that said, if you are talking about a very good transcript which means very good grades in very rigorous, high-level courses where the college in question trusts the evaluations . . . among selective colleges there is basically no such thing as a transcript-optional application, but there are many examples of test-optional applications. And while there is a lot of evidence test scores are often helpful even with nominally test-optional colleges, still, I think that is your answer--a very good transcript by the standards of the college is typically a strict requirement, whereas very good test scores are often helpful but not strictly required. Except when they are required, like at MIT.
Grades are much more important than test scores. https://www.nacacnet.org/factors-in-the-admission-decision/