<p>How does a college know if a high school is highly competitive/difficult? For example, we do not have honors or AP English/honors social studies, but they are honors-level. Does our school express this to colleges?</p>
<p>Speaking from my own perspective as a student with somewhat of a “high-SAT-low-GPA” combo (2350 SAT, 3.8 unweighted GPA), I’m guessing that they really do mean it when they say that the transcript is the most important component of the application. I just got rejected from Stanford REA a week ago, and although I believed I was a rather unique candidate and thought that my unusual circumstances would be taken into account (especially the fact that this is my 3rd high school), it seems as though that wasn’t enough to convince Stanford that I was a good candidate. 
You can search through my most recent posts to find my complete stats, but I’ve bee thinking about what might have caused the rejection, and only my GPA seems like the weakest portion of my app by far. Of course, this is only speculation, but it seems like a pretty good guess.</p>
<p>I’ve been* thinking about</p>
<p>Haha, sorry. I typed that previous post from my phone. :p</p>
<p>Maybe someone was just more unique</p>
<p>^ That’s also possible. 
But I still think my GPA was probably the most detrimental part to my application.</p>
<p>FWIW … I’ve read numerous articles and books written by former adcoms and the consensus seems to be that high grades/low SATs are the more desirable of the two options. The believe is that with enough SAT prep anyone can score well, but it’s the course work over years that shows the kind of contributor to class and community the student will be.</p>