<p>Normally I am the one chancing people, but I have a question to ask whose answer can be useful to other people who want to be chanced.</p>
<p>Let’s say that we have two students who apply to the same major at the same U, who come from similar economic backgrounds and come from the same level of high schools. Additionally, they both score at a very similar level on the SAT or the ACT (or, in the case of test-optional schools, this is one more degree of freedom). </p>
<p>And they have similar GPAs, both unweighted and weighted, with similar curricular rigor and, while they may have taken very different electives that are nonetheless either relevant or irrelevant to the major they have applied for, they are of a similar rigor level.</p>
<p>While their ECs can be very different, they are more or less the same level of quality as a whole. And they can turn out essays of comparable quality even if they may have chosen to write their essays on different topics. Same goes for recs. So they are similar in so many ways.</p>
<p>But here lies the trick:</p>
<p>Student A performs very inconsistently between courses in the same semester, as well as between a semester and another while student B is far more consistent.</p>
<p>How much can a lack of academic consistency hurt a student? I assume it varies by school a little, though.</p>
<p>My understanding is that colleges only see your final grade, so if you were inconsistent throughout the year (let’s say you got a B one marking period and an A another marking period), it’s okay as long as the final grade is in the A range (or B-depends).</p>
<p>So because you said that they have the same GPA, then I’m assuming that Student A has final grades of (A, C, B, C, A etc.) and that Student B has straight B’s. In my opinion, student B is a better candidate because it shows that they’ve managed to keep up their grades throughout high school while Student A slacked off now and then.</p>
<p>^ Colleges see whatever is on your transcript- usually not just final grades. It would depend on what the lower grades were in- say, ceramics vs physics. Ie, the specifics count.</p>
<p>In your example, neither would be good candidate for a highly selective.
Both inconsistency and consistently at a lower level are liabilities.</p>
<p>And clearly I don’t mean “reach-for-anyone” school, I mean schools more like URI, Ole Miss or CSU-DH, the sort of school that could accept either.</p>
<p>Well, you know DH has that kookie eligibility index, Ole Miss has something similar and URI is reputed to need only a C average in hs. </p>
<p>Maybe you can give an example. I came up with: A got 3 A, 7 B, gpa = 3.3. If B got 10 B+, same gpa. For some colleges, the former could very well trump the latter. IF the A’s were in tough classes, relevant to the major.</p>