Academic Index?

FCCDAD
Tue, 05 Aug 2014 19:52:30 +0000

^ @gibby what’s your basis for this assertion? “Admissions Officers often read all applications from one high school at the same time, so they can easily compare all students from one school.”

My understanding was the opposite - that they schools do not sort and group applications by the applicant’s HS. I know they ask for school information (class size, AP courses available, average grades awarded in each class, etc.) That is, that students from each high school are compared to their entire class, not to the other applications from that school to the same college that year. Schools that do not rank will still reveal, for example, how many AP courses were available, how many students took each AP course, what the average grade awarded in each AP course was, etc. This is a reasonable basis to determine how well someone did in HS.

Comparing an application to others from the same school, on the other hand, is far too variably dependent on whomever happens to send an application from that school that year. Several great applicants from the same school should not suffer from being compared to each other, and a mediocre applicant should not benefit when the only other applicants from the same school that year are worse.