[CTcard]

There has been some speculation that Montag favors certain high schools over others.  One could interpret that as certain high schools tend to have the students that Stanford wants. 

I am actually a little confused as to just what your point was, but I think it was basically this second sentence.

I would rephrase it a little. It seems likely that some high schools stress things that Stanford admissions cares about more than others. My impression is that Stanford wants to see students that excel in academics (grades) and something else - i.e. they care less amount the number of extra-curriculars than that you have done something at an extremely high level with notable dedication. Once your grades/scores are above 96-97th percentile or so, the "second-excellence" matters more than another few points on tests. Some schools, families, communities push this sort of thing more than others.

On the detailed number-to-letter-grade issue, that will generally vary all over the place. I had always heard (but don't really know) that for just this reason Stanford was far more interested in class rank over absolute GPA number. [For that matter, since for most courses percentages are just as fungible as letters, I expect that at most schools if a new number to letter algorithm is announced, most teachers would tend to subtly adjust their tests/grading to end up with near the same results. At least I have seen just that result happen in related cases.]

At any rate, Rastaman ought to know of what he speaks on this topic.

[CTcard]

There has been some speculation that Montag favors certain high schools over others.  One could interpret that as certain high schools tend to have the students that Stanford wants. 

I am actually a little confused as to just what your point was, but I think it was basically this second sentence.

I would rephrase it a little. It seems likely that some high schools stress things that Stanford admissions cares about more than others. My impression is that Stanford wants to see students that excel in academics (grades) and something else - i.e. they care less amount the number of extra-curriculars than that you have done something at an extremely high level with notable dedication. Once your grades/scores are above 96-97th percentile or so, the "second-excellence" matters more than another few points on tests. Some schools, families, communities push this sort of thing more than others.

On the detailed number-to-letter-grade issue, that will generally vary all over the place. I had always heard (but don't really know) that for just this reason Stanford was far more interested in class rank over absolute GPA number. [For that matter, since for most courses percentages are just as fungible as letters, I expect that at most schools if a new number to letter algorithm is announced, most teachers would tend to subtly adjust their tests/grading to end up with near the same results. At least I have seen just that result happen in related cases.]

At any rate, Rastaman ought to know of what he speaks on this topic.