<p>When colleges receive the mid-year report, do they use the updated transcript as your official transcript and throw away your old one? Or do they use your old one as the main transcript and use the mid-year as a reference?
I was just wondering because my reported rank was better before 2nd quarter of senior year was factored in. :(
Help appreciated!</p>
<p>Admissions directors don’t “throw away” anything. Your mid-year report will be added to your file and they will see both. In terms of ranking, as the mid-year report is the most current transcript, they will use that one.</p>
<p>That being said, Harvard uses more expansive criteria than just ranking and test scores to judge applicants. See: [Guidance</a> Office: Answers From Harvard’s Dean, Part 1 - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/harvarddean-part1/]Guidance”>Guidance Office: Answers From Harvard's Dean, Part 1 - The New York Times)</p>
<p>"While we value objective criteria, we apply a more expansive view of excellence. Test scores and grades offer some indication of students’ academic promise and achievement. But we also scrutinize applications for extracurricular distinction and personal qualities.</p>
<p>Students’ intellectual imagination, strength of character, and their ability to exercise good judgment — these are critical factors in the admissions process, and they are revealed not by test scores but by students’ activities outside the classroom, the testimony of teachers and guidance counselors, and by alumni/ae and staff interview reports.</p>
<p>With these aspects — academic excellence, extracurricular distinction, and personal qualities — in mind, we read with care all the components of each application.</p>
<p>Efforts to define and identify precise elements of character, and to determine how much weight they should be given in the admissions process, require discretion and judiciousness. But the committee believes that the “best” freshman class is more likely to result if we bring evaluation of character and personality into decisions than if we do not."</p>