A student’s high school curriculum is the most important piece of the review process for us, and so as we spend time recalculating the GPA, we also are spending time taking a look at how challenging a student’s courseload has been over his or her four years of high school. GPA by itself means very little, so we ALWAYS look at a GPA hand-in-hand with a student’s curriculum. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples:

Applicant #1 – Sarah Student:

She has taken on a strong level of challenge, taking a predominantly honors-level curriculum over her four years of high school, and completing four years of each of the core subject areas. She finishes with a senior schedule consisting of the following:

-AP English Literature
-Honors Calculus
-Honors Physics
-Honors Government/Economics (her History course)
-AP Spanish Language (her 5th year of Spanish)

It’s a very good senior schedule—She has continued a high level of academic challenge in all 5 core subject areas. So, while the 3.61 PC GPA is “unweighted,��? it has this strong curriculum behind it… meaning it is looked at MUCH differently than a 3.61 with a weaker schedule, such as this senior courseload that I saw earlier in the day:

Applicant #2 – Jane Student:

-English 4
-Algebra 2/Trig
-Oceanography
-Honors Civics
-Intro to Marketing 1

The differences in challenge are apparent simply from the senior schedule, but as we consider Jane’s overall curriculum, we see an even wider gap between the two students: Jane has taken all College-Prep level English courses, while Sarah completed all four years at the Honors or AP level. Jane has only 3 years of a foreign language (French, in this case), and opts not to continue with French 4 senior year (while Sarah has taken on an AP Spanish class in her 5th year of study, having completed Spanish 1 in 8th grade). Finally, Jane has taken a science curriculum of Physical Science, Biology, Anatomy, and concludes with Oceanography senior year, meaning two important lab sciences, Chemistry and Physics, have been left out. Clearly, we have students who have taken on two vastly different levels of academic challenge during their high school careers.

One other note: Context is a very important word in our office while reviewing applications, especially in regard to students’ curriculums. Our example applicant (Sarah) has taken on a 5th year of language at the AP level, but a student would never be penalized for not taking such a course if his or her high school doesn’t offer it. At the high school I attended, there are no AP courses offered in foreign language, so a student applying from there would never be penalized for not taking an AP Spanish class. All strength of curriculum determinations are made in the context of the student’s high school environment (what is available to that student at his or her high school). When we receive a high school transcript, we also will receive a profile from that high school which will spell out for us the courses that are available in that school—and then we will take a look at the student’s transcript, now knowing what is offered at the school and comparing that to what the student has chosen to take. (And those last couple of sentences aren't the best ones that this English major has ever written, but I think you get the point...)

Got all that? I’ll give you some time to digest. More to come this weekend!