Do colleges consider senior year courses?

Parents Forum
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@lastone03
Did your son use the Coalition app?

@LeastComplicated
The GCs at my kids’ school tell us that the senior year classes are very important. They should show increased rigor, particularly for kids applying to selective schools. The courses are self reported on the common application, and some sort of grades are sent, even for ED (mid semester grades, or trimester grades). I have read many stories on cc of admission officers calling GCs and requesting mid semester grades for ED candidates if they have not yet been sent.

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@Faulkner1897 - No. He used each school’s application (though most if not all had a coalition app option). Not sure if if that was a good idea (or if it made any difference). He went 3-6 despite being in the middle 50th for all.

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19. My daughter is going to take AP stats junior year. This year she is taking AP Calc BC and comp sci priciples. I just thought it might of looked better to have stats senior year instead comp sci since it is the easiest of the math AP

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Note that senior grades also matter. Admission offers are conditional on good enough grades in senior year courses. A few colleges have specific grade and GPA thresholds. Others leave it more vague, leading to anxiety from seniors with a significant senioritis drop. D or F grades are generally high risk of rescission.

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I think if you and your daughter pick a college that is a good fit/match academically and financially, you should apply ED. Colleges will see her course work into the senior year. Although they can’t tell how your daughter will do in AP (or other classes) in her senior year, her grades from 9-11 grades are indicators.

I’ve based my view on my D’s experience. She applied for college in 2017 (liberal arts, not STEM). By the end of her junior year, she had only one AP (5), English Lang. All other classes were honor classes. She had 3 more APs in senoir year. She applied ED by Nov 1. She was accepted to a very selective college. No legacy, no hook. ED, full pay, good grades, 4 APs. She was accepted ED long before had to report her senior grades to that college.

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But the OP daughter is Going to be a STEM major and 4 of her classes senior year are STEM classes .

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What I tried to say is since those are the best she can do re. Course work, why shouldn’t she try applying ED. She has nothing to lose.

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Thanks everyone for your input. It is very helpful.

Her #1 school, one of our state flagships, does not officially require a mid year transcript. The website states that the final transcript is required before August 1! I can’t imagine that they’d notify an applicant in late July that their offer was being rescinded due to bad senior year grades. Because of this, I’m thinking that they make darn sure that their candidates seem well qualified when they admit them. Transcripts accompanying RD applications have to be submitted by Jan. 15th (ED earlier than that), but midyear is late January, so it wouldn’t be a midyear transcript. Maybe it would include the first quarter grades of senior year? IDK. I’ll have to give the guidance office a call. But it looks like ED is probably off the table, unless there was a policy to defer 'iffy" kids to RD without any negative consequences.

Her school profile doesn’t have most of the information in #14. It contains the requirements for the two different types of diploma (standard/advanced) , the list of AP’s offered, the AP results/participation info I included in #9, the post graduation educational plans of the seniors (4- Yr College: 50% 2-Yr College: 35% Work/Military/Other: 15% in 2017) and that’s about it. So it’s no help to me to figure out how she compares to her peers.

Yes, my daughter doubled up on Math this year with both Math Analysis (pre-calc) and AP Stats. Last year she doubled up on science with Honors Chem and APES.

If it helps, here is her course/schedule so far. From left to right 9th - 12th grade in each core area. In math and FL the first classes were taken in 8th grade. the “/” indicates two classes taken the same year.

Math : Honors Algebra I, Honors Geometry, Honors Algebra II, Pre Calc (there’s no honors)/AP Statistics,— then senior year, AP Calc AB.
Science: Honors Bio, Honors Chem/APES, AP Bio,—then senior year, AP Chem/Honors Physics/Oceanography.
English: Honors English, 9/10/11, — then senior year, DE English (considered equal to AP Lit in rigor).
Social Science: Honors World History/Geography I, II, Regular US History,—then Regular US Gov’t/Global Issues***
FL: Spanish I,II,III - done with FL.
AP ComSci Principles planned for Senior year.

She’ll graduate with 6 math classes and 7 science classes.

She has a 4.0 UW GPA to this date - one month left in her junior year. No B’s in the last 5 years. As she doesn’t have to take finals per school policy (due to all A’s and AP tests), I don’t see her GPA changing before she applies to colleges.

While she was contemplating her senior schedule, I talked to each one of the AP instructors for the classes she was considering: Calc, Chem, Physics and US Gov’t/Comparative Gov’t (must be combined at her school). They all told me that they felt like she’d do very well in their classes. They gave me the impression that they do everything they can to help the kids be successful. I was blunt and asked them how many kids got Cs/Ds in their classes and was told that the kid would pretty much have to just not do the work to get a D. However, she and I both felt like those four combined would be overwhelming (along with DE English), so she opted to drop down to honors physics and regular US Gov’t (there’s no honors) and add ComSci Principles to make her schedule more reasonable.

Whew… I didn’t mean this to be so lengthy, but tried to address all the comments.

***Yes, this shows a weakness, with no AP’s but she refuses to take AP English or History classes.

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@rphcfb Well, I’d like to think she’d have nothing to lose. Hopefully I’ll get some input on what happens to kids rejected in the ED round.

This is what the university has on their website:

“Applicants not offered admission at that time may be deferred and receive unbiased consideration in the regular admission process. In some cases, a student may be denied admission and will not be considered with the regular decision applicant pool. (Students denied admission during the early decision process should not reapply for regular decision admission, but may be considered for transfer admission after a year at another accredited college or university.)”

It sounds like she’d have nothing to lose. Would they totally reject a 4.0 student ranked in the top 2% of her large class (assuming her SAT score was decent)? Would her consideration in the next round really be unbiased?

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@LeastComplicated - AP Chem, AP Calc, AP Comp Sci, Honors Physics, DE English Lit…those would be pretty brutal courses to get through all at the same time for a lot of kids. It’s good that you asked your DD’s teachers about it and they agreed that she would likely do well in their classes.

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Would they reject a kid in the top 2% of her large class? I don’t think it’s a guaranteed no. It depends on a variety of factors. For example earlier you were talking AP’s. My daughter’s school for example has 2000 students that took 1308 AP test getting 3+ on 1065 which is 81%. Out of 5 schools in the district its number 3. My point is how does your daughter’s school compare to other schools and more importantly kids applying to your University.? A top 2% at your school may not be a top 2% at another school. Test scores. How does your daughters SAT compared to other kids applying?

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“Would her consideration in the next round really be unbiased?”

It seems to me extremely unlikely that the admissions committee would hold the fact of having applied ED but been deferred against an applicant upon reconsideration in the RD round.

If anything, I would think you can’t get much higher in the “demonstrated interest” category than applying ED, so if they consider demonstrated interest at all, it could possibly be a slight benefit when it comes to the RD round.

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@LeastComplicated ,
I do understand your concern about risking applying ED as college admission appears to get more competitive each year. I don’t see it as a risk. I agree with @colfac92 that it shows “demonstrated interest”. If your D got deferred in ED, it could be they wanted to see how she did in a senior year. She could send her final test scores for consideration in a RD round. Also, as you know, there are other factors taken into consideration for college admission besides course vigor and GPA but these two are the biggies.

Can you find out how many kids per year from your D school that were accepted to this state flag ship? Can a GC or Naviance tell you? Getting such stat from the last five years may help you have a better picture re. your D’s chance. All the best.

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I agree with post #32. If there is anyway you can get your specific school’s data for your daughter’s top choice, that would be helpful. 13 combined math/science classes is great but if she’s competing with kids from STEM schools, she may not look quite as competitive. Obviously you can only do what’s offered in your own school and adcoms are quick to point that out, but in terms of gauging acceptance numbers, knowing statistics from your own school will be helpful.

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If the final high school transcript for an admitted student shows a previously unreported D or F grade in senior year courses, the risk of rescission is high.

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@Nicki20 I know her grades and stats aren’t a guarantee for admission, but that question was asked in the context of ED admissions and whether she’d get outright rejected or deferred to RD.

I’m also not clear whether she’d be competing more with kids outside of her school or within it. I’ve gotten the impression, from posts on CC, that some large universities have quota systems for schools within the state. They want their students to be evenly disbursed across the state, so each year they accept a certain number/percentage of students from each school that best meet their requirements. That system makes sense to put students statewide on a level playing field. That’s the whole point of one of the features of Naviance - to see how many and what types of students are admitted each year from specific high schools. So I do think that she might have a higher chance of being admitted than a more qualified student from another school if she was one of the top two or three applicants from her school. I’ll get some input on that opinion, hopefully. If I’m wrong, I’d appreciate knowing that.

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@rphcfb @momofsenior1 I agree, it would be a big help if we had her school specific data, but her school doesn’t hat that on Naviance. The guidance office has not impressed me. As I stated in an earlier post, her GC can’t even tell me what the school standards are for checking the “most rigorous curriculum” box on the Common App. When I was talking to her when my D was thinking about her senior year schedule, I asked her if she could give me some outcome stats re the APs she was interested in (basically what’s the percentage of kids that get passing grades). She told me she wasn’t allowed to discuss outcomes. I’m thankful that the teachers themselves were willing to give me that info.

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Yikes on the lack of information for the guidance office. Definitely makes trying to figure out actual chances more difficult. At this point though, your daughter is a strong student and candidate and it’s going to be in her hands to write great essays and pull together a compelling application. Sounds like she has great help with you in her corner!

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@momsenior1 Thanks! Yes, were already thinking about strategies. She doesn’t have awe inspiring EC’s but she does have a couple of things that might make her stand out from the crowd a bit.

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Applying ED is the best day of indicating interest so even if deferred it helps. However you must run the NPC beforehand because ED prevents you from comparing offers. At a full need college where the NPC indicates an amount within budget it’s totally fine but if you need merit and/or the college doesn’t meet need it’s risky.