<p>Colleges look first at the difficulty of curriculum that you took. If your HS has a lot of AP courses, you need to take them. Next they look at gpa/rank. However, the gpa can't be compared across all high schools since some grade easier than others. They look at how you did in your particular high school and they know about your high school since a "profile" is included with your official transcript. Next they look at standardized test scores, primarily SAT/ACT and SAT II's. The AP scores are not as important.</p>
<p>After you qualify on academic grounds within your unofficial category (URM, legacy, athlete, development case, international student, VIP's), they look at your EC's, essays and recs. They try to get a feeling for you as a person and they want the people who are unique. In the EC's, try to show "passion" and long-term committment in one or two areas instead of a laundry list of uninvolved activities. Large public schools are more numbers driven and care less about this part.</p>
<p>The gpa's are so not standard across high schools and so it is not a good measure of whether a school is a safety, match, or reach. The SAT is better, but obviously a lot more goes into their decision. The 50% SAT range is for everybody who is accepted. It is statistically lowered by URM's, legacies, athletics, and ED applicants. For a non-URM, non-legacy, you need to towards the top of the 50% range for the college to be a match during RD. If the range is 1300-1500, then you need to be in the range of 1450 for the college to be a match. You can apply if you are significantly lower, but it is more of a reach. For a non-URM, non-legacy, you basically have no chance if you are at or below the bottom 25% mark.</p>
<p>The safety, match, reach concept is useful; but it is sometimes hard to implement in practice because you can't tell where a college fits. Think of it as an ideal that can never be realized in reality.</p>