How do college AOs assess relative high school rigor?

[skieurope]

Hence the reason for my using a qualifier

[NiceUnparticularMan]

Even then, they didn’t average the ratings to get the overall rating, and you could get an arbitrarily high overall rating with a low Athletic rating.

[tamagotchi]

@goldenstallion

DS is in a private day school - so, take as many APs as he can and get as high as score as is possible?

In a private day school, I would think that your S would be able to talk to his counselor(s) about the typical schedule taken by students targeting schools he’s interested in? These things can vary by school so they probably have a better idea than we have.

@skieurope

There’s no “super duper demanding” rating.

Are you sure?

[lilyesh]

I’d put myself in that category

[goldenstallion]

Thanks! Yeah, DS has already mentioned the amount of AP’s that the Guidance Counsellor suggested… he’s not allowed to take them yet (I think), but I presume he’ll be given guidance as to what to take (I hope he’s given such guidance). I think he did mention that no less than 10 AP’s (but again, I never took AP, IB or whatever during my own time as a university applicant. how times have changed!)

[Sammacd]

I’m curious how long it’ll be until people start transferring their kids out of elite high schools and plopping them into underperforming schools somewhere else in 11th grade. Pick one that doesn’t offer any AP classes at all, where the average SAT score is 1030.

A 1400 SAT score from a school like that is different than one from Andover or Exeter.

Not saying that’s right. But people do weird things. And if Harvard signals that they measure your scores against other people from the school… people will totally try to game the system.

[ucbalumnus]

@Sammacd

how long it’ll be until people start transferring their kids out of elite high schools and plopping them into underperforming schools somewhere else in 11th grade. Pick one that doesn’t offer any AP classes at all, where the average SAT score is 1030.

Some gaming of this kind may already occur in Texas, where rank is highly important in public university admission.

But doing it in 11th grade (versus before high school) may be too obvious to a holistic admission reader.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

They have other data, including profiles of home address locations, parental education, and so on.

But I am sure some people will try.

[sbinaz]

There was a very recent “Your College Bound Kid” podcast episode in which they talked about this very topic. Might have been 1 of last week’s episodes maybe.

Short answer to the question:
There’s a lot of info that college admissions officers get in the HS counselor’s school report that admissions people use in comparing the applicant to their HS in general.

[ucbalumnus]

@sbinaz

There’s a lot of info that college admissions officers get in the HS counselor’s school report that admissions people use in comparing the applicant to their HS in general.

Including specific questions about how the student ranks (in subjective categories up to “one of the top few” seen in career) compared to others in academic achievement, extracurriculars, and overall.

[RWatterson]

Are there any sample counselor questionnaires that a curious soul could look at?

[ucbalumnus]

@RWatterson

Are there any sample counselor questionnaires

From Member Support , here is The Common Application counselor’s report form: Salesforce . Take a look at the bottom of page 2 of this form for the questions asking the counselor to rank the applicant.

[Mwfan1921]

Just as a gentle reminder to people, there is no requirement for a counselor to fill out that form. In fact, many counselors don’t complete it at all, while some only complete certain sections and some do not check off the curriculum rating. It has become common practice for counselors to not leave any breadcrumbs that would lead to relative ratings/rankings for their students.

[Sammacd]

Yeah. Haven’t lots of schools even ditched class ranking?

[Mwfan1921]

Yes, the last estimate I saw was about 1/3 of HSs rank, and many of those are in Texas.

[tamagotchi]

Wouldn’t they all have to rank, in TX?

Although… in CA most HS don’t seem to rank… even though the UCs “rank” (for ELC). So I guess the TX system could rank even if the HSs didn’t…

[Mwfan1921]

I mean many of the US HSs which still rank are in TX. I assume most of the publics in TX rank, but fewer of the privates. Hoping someone from TX may know more details. The movement away from ranking started probably 15 years ago or so.

[ucbalumnus]

@Mwfan1921

Just as a gentle reminder to people, there is no requirement for a counselor to fill out that form. In fact, many counselors don’t complete it at all,

If a college requires the counselor school report, then does that mean that applicants whose counselors do not fill in the form at all get auto-rejected?

[Mwfan1921]

Nope (but I can’t speak for all schools), because it can also be an access issue. Plenty of counselors write a few sentences something like ‘due to a high student:counselor ratio, our school does not provide counselor letters’.

[MMRose]

Are you saying that admissions officers actually track the college GPA and other metrics of their admitted students during the four years they are at college in order to help assess the strength/rigor of that student’s high school curriculum?

@Mwfan1921 — curious as to your take on this too.