gpowsang

What exactly is "Rigor of secondary school record" mean?

Does it just mean how much did you challenge yourself (regardless of GPA, cuz i think thats seperate)?

jliu

difficulty of classes.
difficulty of school.

aabbcc1789

it refers to the difficulty of courses you have taken relative to the difficulty of courses offered at your school.

worried_mom

It is a measure of how challenging the student's classes are with respect to what the high school actually offers. It is intended to give the admissions officer some context for the student's course list and to provide some general information about the competitiveness of the high school. Did the student take mostly honors and AP/IB classes, or did they take the easy way out with classes along the lines of Elementary Basketweaving and Health?

"Most rigorous" means the student took the maximum number of AP classes that can be scheduled at that school. It could be two AP classes if that is all that is offered at that particular high school, or it could be a dozen or more at some high schools.

gpowsang

Thanks to all for the replies.

In ters of your answers, I have not taken the most challenging courses in my school for 2 main reasons.

1.I did not have the academic potential (not the main/most important reason by far)

and 2. I took up a lot of extracurriculars, so i did not have the time to take all those challenging courses.

To be honest, I am student that took classes mainly in between college prep and honors/AP (in terms of difficulty). If I had done no ECs at all i probably would have had all honors/AP.

My question is, will college admissions officer's NOTICE AND TAKE INTO ACCOUNT that i did not take more honors/AP courses because i was taking a lot of extracurriculars?

Every year I have added more ECs to my list, and now, ther is not a SINGLE DAY that I leave when the bell rings, I always have some club or activity I have to do.

My main EC's have been.

-Morning news EVERY MORNING for 1.5 hours a day for the past 3 years (i am now pretty much in charge of running the daily news broadcast)

-Debate for the past 3 years, competing in local and national tournaments and have received "Distinction" recognition by the National Forensics League.

-I am a co-founder of the environmental club ("Green Team" as we call it) and am in charge of administering the daily recycling collection as well as helping out in recycling when ther is an afternoon when i dont have other club meetings.

-I am a member of the DSA, in which we meet once a week to discuss current political issues.

I think thers something else, but these pretty much fill all my mornings and afternoons on school days and some weekends (debate).

So you thing that admissions officers will notice this?

thanks!

tokenadult

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hudsonvalley51

"So you thing that admissions officers will notice this?"

Probably not unless you or your guidance counselor, in his/her recommendation letter tells them. Someone needs to help fill in some of the blanks.

collegeprepare

The majority of schools will not take a second look as long as your GPA is decent. For the most competitive schools, it will matter more because of the higher overall quality of applicants. Make sure that you take 4 years of math (including Calculus), 3-4 years of a foreign language, 3 years of sciences (bio, chem, phy), 3 years of social sciences, etc. and that you didn't take pottery making and tennis for 6 semesters. If you have a few AP and/or honors classes in there, you should be fine.

Jennguyen93

hey guys,i'm an international student from Vietnam.
this is my 1st year in US. if in this year, i just take Honors Alg II, ELL ( an english class for ppl don't use english as their 1st language and not really good at English) , Newspaper production, Spanish, Accouting, Visual Arts,Advance chemistry.Is it okie for me??? Or it's too easy for an junior???
I'm studying hard and I'm studying AP Cal AB on my own.
Next year, I plan to take 2-3 AP class.
Do you think the Admission will consider about my situation???

Thanks guys

theRADtomato47

^isn't "most rigorous" when you took the hardest or one of the hardest schedules at your school compared to your classmates. I'm not sure about this, can someone clarify?

Pancaked

You are correct. It's totally upon your counselors discretion. It's more about efficiently taking APs. Certainly not about taking all of them, unless your school only offers like 4, in which case, you'd probably need to take all of them. If your school offers 20, and you took 10, you'd probably still get the most rigorous check mark. But, again, up to the counselor, and they are not given a definition.

DunninLA

OP --

Even in the US, sacrificing course rigor for lots of ECs is a bad idea. In order of importance, the top schools look at:

- performance in AP, IB, and other rigorous courses
- SAT/ACT and Subject Test results, and performance in Honors/college prep courses
- ECs demonstrating Academic Excellence, Leadership, or world class skill
- Regular school ECs including sport, club and governance; volunteering/community involvement; d work experience, which demonstrate time management capability

Never, ever sacrifice academic rigor for time consuming ECs.

IF you want to prioritize the weighting of the above four categories, it would be approx. 40%/30%/20%/10%

smwhtslghtlydzed

@Jennguyen93: it's your first year in the country, so i wouldn't worry about colleges thinking you're taking it easy. i think the main sign that your courseload isn't challenging enough for you is if it feels too easy; colleges will realize that since you're in ELL classes and haven't been in the US a long time, you're challenging yourself enough.