Back in high school (US, 1990’s), I was hoping to go to college (I did, so it worked out). I was given a little tidbit of advice back then on how to woo college admissions officers. They said that university admissions officers would rather see a “B” grade in a tough (high school) class than an A in an easy class, implying that I should push for the more advanced studies now. I didn’t think a whole lot about the validity of that statement back then.
Is this remotely realistic in terms of how university admissions officers think? I’d say that, given the thousands of high schools in the US and all around the world, it’s going to be dern difficult for, say, a University of Texas admissions officer to know whether “French Literature” at East Hill High, Podunk, Maine , is a challenging class for the uber-gifted where they read old French medieval romances in the original language, or whether it is just an alternative track to French III where you get to read The Little Prince and other relatively easy French children’s literature rather than concentrate on speaking fluency. Expecting the U Texas officer to know all about Pakistani or Romanian high school electives is really getting into bizzaro territory. (“Uhh, Joe, didn’t your sister once know a guy from Romania? Could you ask her to ask her friend whether “Fatherland Studies IV” is a tough class or not?”) Are US high school classes, programs, class series, and electives really that standardized across the country that one can look at a high school transcript from anywhere in the country and mark each class as “easy”, “medium”, “difficult”, or “genius”?
They weren’t talking about lit classes, they were talking about math and science. And I don’t know if it is true, but I’d pick a B student who did four years of h.s. math over an A student with four years of shop and one year of math.
In Ontario, at least when I was still in high school, people in the gifted class got no specific acknowledgement of their A.P. standing. We were told that that “G” for “Gifted” that our school board put on our course code wasn’t going to be seen by OUAC (the provincial university application service). Ergo, many of us made the sensible choice to no longer do AP math and science, since it in effect just made us look worse on transcripts. Not sure if that’s the sort of thing you meant.
That’s what I was thinking. I would think they break it down into categories. I.e. Honors/AP, then regular classes that recieve As, students who get Bs. When you take the AP test it’s so you get college credit. So, I would assume students in AP classes get some sort of priority.
I would also think, most schools have high schools were the majority the students either attend or apply. So, with some schools I’d assume the college would know how hard the class was.
Usually on the college admissions form, there’s a section asking if you took honors. And in your letters of rec, your course load better be mentioned. Still, since colleges track GPAs of incoming freshman, I wonder if that could hurt you? It doesn’t sound right. College admins are supposed to be a whole package.
College Board (the company that administers the AP and SAT tests) now requires a course audit for classes marked AP on the transcript. It’s not arduous–mostly a matter of submitting a syllabus–but it serves as a check that the AP class does address what College Board thinks it should. This was implemented because college admission officers wanted reassurance that the classes they were weighing more heavily were consistent.
There is a much mentioned study that shows that taking AP courses has a strong correlation with college success independent of AP scores. I am positive colleges take this into account.
I agree. The college admissions officers are familiar with the schools that tend to send undergraduates to them. They know at which schools a B is just as good as an A at a lesser school.
No, they can’t possibly know the exact curriculum of every class in every school everywhere. But they do know that Calculus is harder than Algebra II, Honors English is harder than regular English, French Literature is harder than Home Ec. Someone who takes Honors English, Physics, Advanced Biology, and Calculus and gets a couple-three B’s in them is academically a better bet than someone than someone who takes regular English, Math for Living, Marriage and Parenthood, and art and gets all A’s.
Yes, it matters. I’m not an admissions officer, but I volunteer for my alma mater in local college fairs in the area. I went to Notre Dame, and our admissions hurdles are admittedly a little higher than other schools. We attend sessions with the actual admissions counsellors every year, and go over the FAQs. This is a really popular one. Here’s what we’re typically told to respond with:
Student: I’m having a hard time figuring out what level of english/language/science/math/etc. to sign up for. What is Notre Dame looking for?
Me: A lot of people ask if it’s better to get an A in English, or a B in AP English. We want you to get an A in AP English. But ultimately, we want to look at your transcript and see that you’ve challenged yourself academically, and can rise to the ocassion. You’re going to be challenged in the classroom at ND, and we want to see that you’re ready for that.
In ND’s case, yeah - they DO know the curriculum of every high school they get applications from, because they take the time to find out. I’d guess that most schools do the same. You can’t rely on GPA, because there are a billion different grading scales out there, and you have to be able to assess what that student’s grades mean in that particular school.
At my school, all honors classes got graded on a five point scale. There was a separate GPA that judged all class on the four point scale, but the main one included the five point scale.
In fact, it created an odd situation where you were better off not taking a class rather than taking a regular class and lowering your GPA. Some students got around this by auditing the extra curricular classes they really wanted to be in (like choir or band).