Help needed: Common App Courses and Grades Section - Stanford

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
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Good morning! I’m not sure whether someone can answer this, but my son has a few questions about properly entering his courses and grades into his Stanford application:

  1. Does anyone know if Stanford only wants to see A-G classes, or should he include things like PE?

  2. He has the equivalent of 3 years of Spanish because he tested directly into Spanish 2 after taking Spanish in middle school, but his HS transcript just shows Spanish 2 and Spanish 3. Is this okay, or does he need to indicate somewhere that he covered Spanish 1 material prior to HS?

  3. His school is on a 4x4 schedule, so he already has official semester 1 grades for some of his Grade 12 classes but won’t have those final grades until January. Should he list those grades somewhere or not? Common App states: If your 12th grade courses are still in progress, report them in the “Current or Most Recent Year Courses” section of your Common App. That section doesn’t have fields for entering grades.

  4. Do you know if there is a particular way to enter an arts class that was taken multiple times? He took band all 4 years, and it is listed as the same class. Do the repeats need to be differentiated somehow, so as not to cancel each other out?

Thanks so much–I really appreciate it!

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  1. Enter all courses and grades, the idea is to match the transcript exactly…so all courses should be on it, including electives like PE and health. A-G courses is only a thing for California public schools.

  2. No need to mention Span 1 since it’s not on the transcript

  3. I would list senior courses as courses in progress. Then send semster 1 courses if and when requested.

  4. Not sure I understand the question. If he is matching the transcript year by year (which he should do in the common app courses and grades section), each band course will be listed each year, even though it has the same course number.

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This is all very helpful. Thank you!!

Re: question 4, CSU wanted him to add a 1, 2, 3 and 4 after each iteration of the band class, otherwise the system would only count it once. I’m assuming it’s just a quirk of CSU’s platform.

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I had the same question about common app grade section. It’s such as bad system. Even UC and CSU app does this better. When my S24 did this, it always feels like he missed something.

Luckily the common app schools will review the school reports and college transcripts that get submitted and I don’t the info you list matters that much. I could be wrong and would love to hear from people who have gone thru this.

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Although the courses and grades section takes time and can be a pain, it’s not that hard. Tick and tie every course and grade on one’s transcript and make sure everything is entered in Courses and Grades. For the relatively few schools that use Courses and Grades, here, I promise you they do so for a reason.

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