<p>Hey there,</p>
<p>I'm a freshman at my local state school, looking to transfer for next year into a strong private / public school. I'm hoping that my GPA will be as close to 4.0 as it possibly can be, but I was wondering: do college admissions officers take into account the difficulty of the courses taken in relation to a GPA? I ask because I'm only taking one introductory course; the rest are sophomore/junior level classes. </p>
<p>Thanks for all your help (:</p>
<p>It depends. Of course the rigor of professors, themselves, vary. It can be easy to tell for some classes like calc 3 vs. prealgebra and harder with others. Some colleges require to submit course descriptions, so that could help clarify things.</p>
<p>The rigor of a course is determined holistically (insofar as I have been told by an Asst. Dean at USC). They will consider the number/level of the class, its individual number of credits/hours, the nature of the course, and even its title. For freshmen, it is not unusual to have a preponderance of lower level, introductory courses on your transcript, so don’t sweat it. Just make sure you’re taking around 18 credits (or the equivalent) and not doing the bare minimum.</p>