Distinctive

By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D.

Several years ago, the mom of one of my students expressed her frustration that no one before me told her that her son’s transcript was going to be the most important part of his college application process. She had hoped that his stellar SAT score would more than compensate for his lackluster freshman year. “Won’t they see that he’s smart from that?”

I felt bad for her. Like so many people, she got caught up in the misinformation that swirls around the value of the transcript. From friends, family, neighbors, and online forums, I’ve heard and read a slew of myths, and quite honestly, I even believed in several of them when I was growing up! I also have to admit that with all of the opinion pieces out there and an admissions process that continuously changes from year to year, it can feel painfully difficult to cut through the noise and figure out which pieces of advice about coursework are correct, which are not, and what to focus on.

“I heard that AP tests are really important. Should I take my AP Latin test, even though my teacher didn’t prepare me for it? Is it enough that I’m getting an A in the class?”

“As a future pre-med, is AP Biology or AP Chemistry a better choice?”

“Can I still apply to Pomona even though I got a C in English in 10th grade? Won’t they see that my English grade was an A in 11th grade?”

While I answer a slew of such questions every day that are specific to individual goals and circumstances, I want you to rest assured that there are few big picture guidelines that influence the advice I give and that should help you think through your options. And every piece of advice that I give revolves around the idea that nothing matters more in the college admissions process than your transcript. It is generally the best representation of your academic preparation as it takes a longitudinal view of your commitment to your education. When college admissions officers evaluate a transcript, they will, thus, train their eyes on three key elements that, like the three points in a GPS trilateration, determine their position on your academic capabilities: grades, rigor, and course choices.

Point 1: Grades

Generally speaking, the more competitive the college, the higher your GPA needs to be. Or if we were to translate that into American letter grades, you should be shooting for all As or as close to all As as you can get. If you wish to attend a top-tier school, like an Ivy, you should not have an unweighted GPA below 3.9 on a 4.0 scale, though there are a few special cases when there is some leniency on this (like hooks 2, 4, 7, and 11, which I address in “The Magical Admissions Gift“). Earning strong grades is probably the one piece of the transcript that is obvious to almost everyone, but if you weren’t aware, write this down and stick it on your refrigerator door like it is your favorite piece of childhood art.

Now one myth that I hear from time to time is that your grades freshman year don’t matter. I fear that that’s what my former student believed, which led his mom to despair when we first met. To set the record straight, your grades matter from the moment you enter high school. In some instances, when your school includes select middle school classes on your transcript, those can matter, too! So do yourself a favor and make your classwork your number 1 priority from the moment you read this. While it’s not always the most fun choice, and may require you to compromise on some social occasions from time to time, you’ll thank yourself as a senior when you want as many college options as possible!

With that said, since the start of the pandemic, grade inflation has increased, thus weakening the perception of some GPAs. If 50 out of 200 seniors from your high school are straight A students, that signals to admissions officers that those As were too easy to achieve. This is why the other two points, rigor and course choice, are also so very important (and why SAT and ACT requirements have started making a comeback – though we’ll save that conversation for another time).

Point 2: Rigor

Taking difficult courses is, of course, important. If you are college bound, you want to take the most rigorous course load you can handle, and what this looks like depends on your individual capabilities. It also depends on what your high school offers – I’ve met a student with 8 AP classes under his belt by the end of 10th grade, because his high school was very AP heavy; and I’ve worked with an Ivy-bound senior with only 4 AP classes, because her school didn’t offer many. For students in an IB curriculum, that curriculum takes care of the rigor itself, while students in private schools without standardized curricula have to take a more nuanced approach. Rigor can be tricky, because it looks different from school to school, and if you overdo it, you can find yourself in a situation where either your grades start to go down, or you forego sleep. Just in case you were wondering, those are clear cut signs that your rigor is too much. Conversely, if you underdo it, even if you’re earning all As, you still won’t be as competitive as your classmates taking harder classes and also earning all As.

Rigor also doesn’t compensate for low grades. One question that I and admissions officers frequently get is, “Is it better to get an A in a regular class or a B in an AP or IB class?” Admissions officers will frequently reply, “It’s better to get an A in an AP or IB class.” While this evokes nervous laughter from the information session’s audience, this is not helpful. So as someone who has spent years translating admissions officers’ half-truths and dissimulations, let me explain that that glib response basically means that they want you to push yourself and do well. There’s little room for compromise.

Additionally, I must point out that there is no clear answer to that question without considering it within the context of the rest of your schedule. Not all of your classes need to be at the hardest level, and it’s actually advisable that they are not. None of my IB students take 6 Higher-Level (HL) courses and 0 Standard-Level (SL) courses (in fact, almost everyone takes a 3-3 split between HL and SL classes). Similarly, none of my AP students take 7 such courses (and rarely do I agree to let anyone take 6 in a single year). It’s important to take a holistic view of your classes, taking harder classes that align with your academic strengths and easier classes that align with your academic weaknesses, while incrementally increasing your AP load each year.

Now what if you’re in a magnet program? Surely that should make you more competitive than if you attended your local high school? Not exactly. Just because your baseline coursework is harder than your peers’ at other non-magnet schools, that doesn’t give you a green light to let your grades go down. The expectation that you earn all As is still there. It’s just going to be harder to do so! This is why I encourage students who have offers to attend magnet schools to consider that point. Sometimes it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond and have an easier time earning straight As than it is to take part in an enriched curriculum where getting great grades may not happen. 

Point 3: Course Selection

Course selection is the third of the three transcript points that colleges consider when reviewing your application. While I previously explained the ins and outs in “A Blueprint for Course Selection,” I think it’s important to reiterate a few key points. First, you must take courses in all 5 academic areas all 4 years of high school. Those 5 academic areas are English, math, social studies, science, and 4 years of the same foreign language. Even if your high school has different graduation requirements or your school includes math and foreign language courses from middle school on your transcript, you still need to carry on with these subjects until the end of senior year if you wish to have the best possible chances for admission to colleges. If you absolutely hate a particular discipline, an issue I tackle in “What’s So Scary about Foreign Languages?”, it is possible to review colleges’ expectations through their Common Data Sets to determine if your choices want 4 credits of science, social studies, or a foreign language (almost everyone wants math and English through senior year). Just do yourself a favor and don’t gamble with this piece if any of your schools expect 4 years. You will be hurting your candidacy.

Of course, I can’t overlook one other piece of the course selection puzzle that occasionally becomes an issue: taking a full course load. Once in a while, I get a student who wants a lighter than usual schedule. Unfortunately, under no circumstance is it okay to take a lighter course load. Just because your high school doesn’t require you to take classes every period doesn’t mean that it’s okay for you to consider this, at least if you’re planning on going to a selective college. You need to take what your school considers a full load of classes each term, and your classes should be classes, not extra study halls or PE classes, teaching assistantships, or anything else without an academic focus. Art, music, and business classes are definitely okay, but they should align with your story if you choose them. Remember, you’re supposed to show off your abilities as a student to colleges, because they are first and foremost academic institutions!

As you prepare to tackle high school, keep your transcript as your lodestar. If your eyes are trained on it and you protect it from all three directions, you’ll be giving yourself the greatest gift you can have in the college admissions process: choice.