For example, a college may give a condition of admission that the student “maintain your academic performance in your high school course work”. The result is that many students and parents get worried about rescission when their GPA drops, whether it is a small drop (like 3.8 → 3.6) or a larger drop (like 3.8 → 2.8).
But that means that lots of students get worried over nothing, while other students do not know until late summer whether their college plans are halted due to their GPA drop.
I agree that many schools could improve their conditions of admission paragraph wrt senior grades by making requirements more clear. The timing of rescission can be unfortunate, but if final transcripts don’t come in until June/July, it does take admissions awhile to get through those. Maybe this is an area where AI makes sense and could get thru the transcripts more quickly.
But…whether June or July or even August, students have let their other acceptances go (and bad grades could have impacted those admits as well.) Aside from community college or very high acceptance rate schools, there might not be many options for a student whose admission is rescinded, especially if they need financial aid.
I was just at a panel of college AOs and they talked about rescinding acceptances for poor grades. They all said they are really loathe to rescind. They do send a number of ‘what happened’ letters each summer where a student’s performance dropped significantly, but all panelists said they are more likely to start a student on academic probation and/or limit classes they can take than rescinding admission. It seems rescinding generally only happens for D/Fs (many HSs don’t give D’s anymore) AND if there was no reason for the poor grade(s) (sickness, big external stressor, and the like.) And yes, I know the UCs are pretty strict and may rescind for C-'s but they weren’t part of the panel.
Most UCs actually give clear grade and GPA conditions like “3.0 GPA with no D/F grades in in-progress and planned courses”, so there is a lot less guessing by the student and parents about whether there is risk of rescission (they also typically drop +/- from high school grades). But is that unusual among colleges?
It is like holistic admissions. It gives the universities more flexibility in acting.
It can also be warranted. What if you wrote a hard rule that a GPA cannot fall by 1 point. But then a student has a parent pass away or some other tragedy. Do you want to hold them to the rule?
The schools want to judge these things on a case by case basis. Sometimes, a GPA drop is legit and in other cases it is inexcusable.
They could write a “safe harbor” that a GPA drop of less than 1.0 (or whatever) with no D/F grades will not risk rescission, so that students whose GPAs dropped by 0.2 can stop worrying, but the college can still use discretion for those with bigger drops.
Yes. Most other US colleges are deliberately vague.
But with HS’s funky weighting systems that would become a nightmare. Theoretically a kid could completely blow off second semester senior year, drop the two hard AP’s (which the HS would just ignore- no grade, doesn’t impact the GPA) and NOT have it show up as below the threshold. A skootch of senioritis is one thing- a kid who checks out in December the day the applications get sent is something else, and colleges want to reserve the right to evaluate kids whose performance falls off the table.
My kids HS’s policy was if you signed up for an AP class, you were required to take the test. Period. Which meant kids needed to focus at least until April. That is not the norm nationally. And I know plenty of kids with seemingly strong final GPA’s who brag that they basically spent the second half of senior year making Tik-toks.
You list your senior year courses on your application. Changes need to be communicated to admissions, who reserve the right to review their decision accordingly
Changes are communicated by the guidance department-- which has a vested interest in making sure that a kid who has been accepted STAYS accepted. Guidance counselors don’t want to be burning the midnight oil in June trying to figure out a new college strategy for a kid who has been rescinded. So yeah- eventually the final/final transcript gets submitted. But “Dropped BC calc in January” and didn’t replace it with a course of similar rigor is NOT going to be highlighted at the top of the transcript.
The conditions of admission typically include having the previously reported (on the application) planned and in-progress courses listed on the final transcript, so dropping or changing (particularly to less rigorous) courses would be obvious risks of rescission.
Perhaps the case in your school. But most colleges expect the student to communicate changes. And that they do so sooner rather than later.
Admissions, at highly selective colleges at least, will absolutely cross-reference the final transcript with the application and will notice the missing BC course. Few admissions officers are delighted when they find such a discrepancy.
Wishing and hoping that an omission remains undetected isn’t a good strategy.
We have kids who regularly post here “I need to drop XYZ because I’m getting a D. If I don’t report it, will the college find out?” and it’s grownup analogue “Four years ago I started freshman year at a different college and was asked to leave because my GPA was too low. I’ve applied to a different college now that I’m ready to be serious about my education. If I don’t tell them, how long would it take them to find out on their own?”
And those same kids claiming MBA’s on their resumes that turn out to be “Completed a three day seminar at Wharton on Negotiating Strategies” or “Associate at Goldman Sachs” which turns out to be a temp job in the HR department.
I think colleges reserving the right to do whatever due diligence they want on a kid’s final performance is appropriate. Too many people skirt the system and are fundamentally opposed to being transparent if they think they can get away with it.
I expect the simple reason is because it’s in the college’s best interest to use vague wording. If the college instead gives an explicit threshold, such as may rescind with Ds/Fs grades or <2.5 GPA, then that encourages admitted students to slack off so long as they maintain a 2.5+ GPA . It also limits the college’s ability to vary threshold for rescinding, with the widely varied grading systems at different HSs; as well as limits the college’s ability to vary threshold for rescinding among different individual students. It may also open the door up to successful lawsuits, if a college wants to deviate from the explicitly worded thresholds for particular unique situations.