If you are an unhooked applicant, and you didn’t get a “most rigorous” rating for your HS curriculum by your GC, is it almost impossible to get into a T10 school?
The reason why I’m asking this is because my HS is very limited in available courses so I ended taking many courses from community colleges, which unfortunately does not count as dual enrollment for my HS.
It would be great if anyone could help me with this. Thanks!
Does your guidance counselor know that you are taking classes at a community college?
Which top 10 schools do you want to apply to? Why?
Yes, but I do believe that it would not go into their rating because it is outside of the HS curriculum.
I want to go to HYP, Columbia, Swarthmore, UCB. I would be immersed in a highly intellectual and competitive community, which I thrive in, and develop lifelong connections.
Unless you have something that will get that overlooked, it’s an issue. Grades, difficulty of course load within context of your school, GC’ and teachers’ recs, ECs, test scores are what go into the assessment to of your app, with “hooks” thrown into the equation. That’s the way it works.
Did you take all of the hardest courses in the high school as well as additional courses at the college? If so, why wouldn’t the counselor mark that you took a “most demanding” schedule?
Note that UCs do not generally use counselor reports, and do not offer need-based aid to non-California residents except in a few cases with hard-to-get merit scholarships. They are also large, and the only type of traditional “hook” is recruited athlete, so that leaves much more of the space for those without the traditional “hooks”, unlike small private colleges that consume a greater percentage of space with recruited athletes and have additional traditional “hooks” consuming even more space.
I did not take the most rigorous courses in my HS, to concentrate much of my effort into the CC courses, though I have 4.0 UW in both the HS and CC.
I am 1-2 AP courses short of my top peers, so that is why I am concerned about the GC rigor rating. My school offers barely any humanities APs compared to STEM APs, and my interests lie in the former, hence the CC courses.
I took enough CC courses (6 quarter-long courses) to overcome the AP deficit, but that unfortunately won’t help my GC rating…
Highly selective Colleges prefer AP courses when offered to community colleges courses anyways. You did not take the most difficult courses offered by your school so it makes sense that you will not get that designation from your GC. You can emphasize on the “cheat sheet” that your counselor will request how you took off campus college level courses That way when writing your recommendations, your GC can emphasize this.
But, yes, this will likely disadvantage you over your classmates who did take the most difficult classes at your school It might even hurt further in regard to class rank.
Time for a meeting/phone call with the GC. State your case as succinctly as you can, give the GC as much material as you can (copies of the syllabus, papers you wrote, professors comments) and then see. Maybe yes, maybe no, but at least you can modify your application list knowing you gave it your best shot.
There are LOTS of Highly intellectual environments which are not quite as hard to get admitted to as the schools you’ve listed, and you’ve got time now to explore them. If you are interested in Classics, History, etc look at the Catholic schools- Holy Cross, Fordham. If you are interested in literature/writing look at Bard, Rhodes, Earlham, Kenyon. Some of the state flagships get a “party reputation” despite the fact that certain departments are going to be highly intellectual and you’ll be surrounded by the kind of peers you are looking for.
Your life isn’t going to end if you don’t get into Princeton, I promise you. Let us know your stats and your interests and I bet we can help you with a Plan B list. Sure- apply to one or two reaches (like every other senior) and then figure out which schools are going to love that you challenged yourself outside of your HS curriculum. Vanderbilt loves high scores and often can overlook other things. Brandeis has some pretty serious intellectual students. Take a look at Reed- often willing to take a bet on strong students who didn’t play the “college admissions game” in HS, and a very “learning for learning’s sake” environment. Ditto Macalester, Carleton, St. Olaf.
^ Reed is a good suggestion. Also NCF.
I feel that students often get blinded by rankings, so overlook schools that are essentially little U of C’s/Swarthmores (except much easier to get in to) and send a ton of alums to PhD/grad programs.
At my DS’s HS, you have to be at the top level in almost all of the standard HS academic subjects (English, Math, Social Science, Science and Foreign Language). Did you sacrifice some subject areas? It isn’t always just a sum of AP’s.
^ Nothing wrong with that, BTW, IMO.
When it comes to success in life (as opposed to games like college admissions), excelling in a few areas is generally more rewarding.
BTW, the UK unis are grad-school-like in generally only caring about the subject(s) you plan to read (study).
Thank you everyone for the comments. I really appreciate them and I agree with all of them…
As for what classes I sacrificed, I had to sacrifice two science AP courses (downgraded to honors) and a foreign language. I went to an after-school for 10 years to earn a 10th grade diploma from the Korean ministry of education, so I didn’t even take a foreign language at my high school. I have a very outside-HS student profile.
My HS is a national top 50 public, and courses are significantly harder than one would imagine. The school doesn’t do class ranks at all, and very few people take the “most rigorous” course schedule, but only about 2% of the class make it through while maintaining a 3.95+ UW GPA.
Thank you for the school suggestions- Holy Cross, Fordham, Bard, Kenyon, Vanderbilt, Reed, Brandeis, NCF- these are all great schools that would put me in an intellectual environment. The UK might be a good option since they won’t care that I didn’t have the “most rigorous” rating from the GC.
But I still want to give my best shot for schools that I really want to go to.
Going back to my original question, am I basically thrown into the trash can at T10 schools if I don’t have the “most rigorous” rating by my GC, despite having a CC transcript and an official foreign language diploma? Would no amounts of ECs or test scores overcome such a thing as an automatic rejection due to this rating?
@yammie8335. Do you know that you aren’t getting “most rigorous”? Or do you merely fear that? If you don’t know, can you or your parents ask and perhaps appeal? Many schools will count CC classes as rigorous, even if they’re not through the school as DE.
Hi @mamaedefamilia !
If “most rigorous” means that you took every single available AP class in the HS, then I believe it would be a no.
What I am fearing the most is ad coms just not seeing the “most rigorous” checkbox on my application and throwing me into the trash can (as I am an asian, upper-middle, unhooked applicant).
However, the diploma and CC transcript along with my quite rigorous (but not “most”) HS courses in totality, is much more rigorous than what my peers have went through. The fear comes from the possibility of ad coms not realizing this due to that one checkbox.
It sounds like you are speculating about your schedule classification.
What type of class did you take at the CC? If you go to to a rigorous HS, classes at a CC could be significantly less rigorous than your HS classes. It would be at my son’s HS.
I have no choice but to speculate, as my school’s GCs refuse to disclose any information about this, probably to prevent student stress.
I took advanced psychology courses (abnormal psychology and clinical psychology), math (differential equations), cultural anthropology, and some philosophy courses.
Anthro and psychology was on par with my school’s AP course level, differential equations and philosophy was much more challenging. The CC I go to is one of the best in the nation.
Why do you say “I fear”?
To fear something, there would first have to be a difference in outcomes, right?
Yes @PurpleTitan my fear is that not having the “most rigorous” checkbox would automatically disqualify me from one of those T10 schools, even if I had other qualifications (such as the diploma and the CC transcript). That is a different outcome from ad coms acknowledging these other qualifications and not taking the “most rigorous” as something that would define my academic workload.
I don’t think that check box will automatically mean a rejection, especially if the courses you took align with your intended major and weren’t offered at your school.
That said, a reach is a reach, no matter how strong the applicant so be sure you have a balanced college list.