Some applications get two initial reading scores that are very different and need to get a third reading by a senior reader.
After all applications are read (including the third reading for those where it is needed), the admission cutoffs (by division or major if applicable) are determined.
Those applications that get scores which the admission cutoff goes through need to go through tie breaking procedures.
This is based on the procedures described in the Hout report.
As a former 11th grade IB English teacher, who had to write more recommendations during my career that I could possibly count, this is great to hear! Some were specifically required by their 11th grade English teacher. Maybe one or two colleges ever sent me an acknowledgment of thanks, although the students always did! 
I suspect that the schools with poor AP results are typically those that allow anyone to take an AP class. When I was in high school (public competitive STEM high school), you had to apply to take AP courses, including a recommendation for each one by a prior teacher, and some APs required a test (for example, to take either BC or AB calc, you had to take a math test and the top 100 scoring kids got into the class - the top 50 got BC and the next 50 got AB). As a result, the overwhelming majority of kids got 4s and 5s and 3 was considered a bad score. Only the best teachers taught AP courses and they did not teach to the test. These days at most schools anyone can take an AP course, which was not the original intention. And with grade inflation, everyone gets an A in those classes.
That was my understanding too, but will take the other poster above above at their word that they use summer downtime to do some research, update profiles and such, which makes sense for regions/places where this sort of thing is common. I could see if a big HS has a large percentage doing DE AOs doing that in the summer to supplement school profile, etc. It does not strike me as super feasible âon the flyâ during application season though, though in rare circumstances I am sure lots of things happen.
My kid was an outlier in that their public high school has a limited selection of classes. The year my kid needed to take AP Calc, it was replaced with a two-semester community college sequence of classes, Calc I & Calc II. My kid still had high school left, so continued to take cc courses as dual enrollment. Kid will be graduating with an Associateâs Degree from cc the month before high school graduation this year.
This schedule ended up allowing my kid to pursue a non-recruitable sport at a fairly high level.
So the community college courses (mostly in core classes like math, English, science, but also electives) allowed my kid to continue their particular main EC, instead of having it be a casualty of school course rigor.
Using Landscape, colleges can look both at your childâs school characteristics (poverty, etc) AND your own neighborhood characteristics. So they should catch both pictures.
Neighborhood stats arenât going to give any helpful information â thereâs way too much economic diversity where we live. Youâve got trailer homes and $2.5 mill homes on the same block.
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