<p>I am aware that ECs are very important in admissions. Since many elite college applicants have very high GPA, AP, and SAT scores, only way to select student is basis of their achievements. I think it makes sense. </p>
<p>But I am just trying to find what would be a comparison of student on academic basis only in the same high school who have same 4.0 Un weighted GPAs and there is no weighted for taking APs or College level courses. </p>
<p>Majority humanities kid in order to boost their GPA do not take hard math and science courses but solely focus on taking AP course load in Humanities. This way their GPA is hovering about 4.0 but they have no AP BC calculus, or have no honors physics forget about AP Physics or AP chemistry. </p>
<p>Similarly majority math and science kid avoid taking AP in history or even taking foreign language to keep their GPA high (few choose to even take their parents native foreign language to boost their GPAs). 4.0 GPAs</p>
<p>Do elite colleges look the kid who has taken the five major subject (math, science, history, English and foreign language) each year and have done well in spite of taking even AP in them. </p>
<p>So an admission office if he is comparing three students from a same school and have identical 4.0 GPAs (this is a real case where 15 students will be applying who have similar GPA). </p>
<p>Liberal Arts Colleges - Who will have a higher rating a kid with higher humanities achievements but lacking math/science </p>
<p>MIT (tech schools) – kid who has better score in math/science and having no foreign language or history 4.0 GPA</p>
<p>The kid who has taken all heavy course load like multivariable calculus, AP US and World History, AP foreign language and has performed equally well (3.9 GPA) to his peer in math/science or humanities track? Will the kid be ranked lower in academic achievements as kid has no sense of direction?</p>
<p>All three kids from same high school and their grades reflect end of 11th grade achievements:</p>
<p>Humanity kid 4.0 GPA with AP in Euro, AP world, AP Us, AP foreign language and AP statistics or AP AB calculus – GPA 4.0 by 11th grade</p>
<p>Math/science kid – AP BC Calculus, Multivariable calculus, AP Physics, AP Bio, AP Chemistry and no AP history or no foreign language ( maybe for Asian kid Chinese or Korean but no Spanish, French, German, Russian etc,) GPA 4.0</p>
<p>Mixed kid - AP in Euro, AP world, AP Us, AP foreign language, AP BC Calculus, Multivariable calculus, AP Physics, AP Bio, AP Chemistry, AP English Literature - GPA 3.9</p>
<ol>
<li>Start your clock</li>
<li>Adcoms starts “evaluating” transcript A.</li>
<li>Count from one to twenty.</li>
<li>Adcoms starts “evaluating” transcript B</li>
<li>Count from one to twenty.
6 Adcoms starts “evaluating” transcript C
7 Count from one to twenty.</li>
<li>Adcom thinks all three kids did reasonably well in selecting the hardest curriculum available.
9 Stop your clock - Time elapsed on a good day: 1 and 2 minutes.</li>
</ol>
<p>Stop worrying about the amount of scrutiny of transcripts, they’ll pick the highest SAT score anyway.</p>
<p>Looking at people from my school who got into top universities, (I’m sooo far from knowing anything about admissions) I’m tending towards a skewed version of your mixed kid. I think colleges want to see kids with particular interests, so it may not be good to have AP everything with nothing standing out. Multivariable calculus in your sample mixed kid would stand out, but even better, if the kid is interested in math, I would suggest cutting out the AP Bio and going even further into the high level math. And, for example, AP in euro and world is superfluous (I know it’s just a sample) so the kid could cut one of those out and add in a high level physics, or intro engineering class. Supplemented with relevant ECs, this would be a really strong app, even though the gpa is slightly lower. Definitely variety is important though, and even a tech school wouldnt really appreciate math/sci kid that much.</p>
<p>Who knows how “colleges” will look at these 3 kids? Depends on the college (as you said), may depend on which adrep is the first reader of the app, may depend on…</p>
<p>I do know that some colleges will actually call the hs GC when they are evaluating several kids from the same school. Exactly the content of that discussion…???</p>
<p>If you haven’t read The Gatekeepers, you might want to. It does not directly answer your question, but provides an inside look at how these deliberations go at one elite school.</p>
<p>When admissions officers are reading files, they are not comparing one file with others, trying to pick which of the two to accept - they’re reading the files individually and then putting them in the accept, reject or waitlist piles. Even if they were to compare the students in your imaginary scenario, I bet that their transcripts would have little to do with their situations - each person has taken a challenging cirriculum and like you said, other things like EC’s and essays would come into play.</p>
<p>The OP can try posing this question on one of the boards where admissions officers hang out - JHU (Admissions Daniel), MIT (Ben, I think), Caltech (don’t know the name)… there could be others.</p>
<p>If you do that, usalover, come back and let us know what you find out.</p>
I assume you are being facetious, Xiggi? Obviously kids with relatively lower SATs get accepted at the same schools where kids with near-perfect SATs get rejected all the time. Like everything else, the SAT score is viewed in context with the transcript.</p>
<p>I do agree with you 100% about the time spent “reviewing” the transcript. The ad coms are looking for a pattern, and they can get that with a very quick glance. They are also looking in the context of what the student’s stated interests are. They are going to be very skeptical of the prospective math or engineering major who is not taking AP Calculus if his school offers it… but they won’t care if the prospective English major has a profile that looks like “Humanity Kid”. </p>
<p>One more caveat: my daughter got into reach colleges (well above what her SAT scores would indicate were reasonable targets) and she did NOT take the “most challenging” curriculum at her high school. She couldn’t because she opted to spend a semester abroad in 11th grade – and that simply eliiminated the opportunity to take many honors & APs courses. It obviously didn’t hurt her. I think the point is: “most challenging curriculum” is just one factor that the ad coms consider among many. If the student has done something else that stands out and offers a reason or explanation for the course selection, then the student may still look very attractive for the target school.</p>