<p>First let me say I was unaware that these were even included with apps prior to discovering this site. I glean much information from here and hope to contribute something meaningful from time to time in the future.</p>
<p>I contacted DS high school to see if they had a proile and if I could have a copy. They emailed me a copy of last year's and it is, to put it mildly, disappointing. Over half (3 of the 4 columns) is dedicated to school awards dating as far back as 2001. There is a paragraph about # of teachers, a paragraph about schools students have been accepted to in the past(mostly from our own state) and a demographics paragraph. This is a New American High School, Blue Ribbon School and on the Newsweek Top High Schools list. There is a section that is equal to 1/4 of a column with this academic information
The 2008-09 average daily attendance at xxxxx was 97.2 %.
100% of the Class of 2009 met the career completer standards.
96% of the Class of 2009 met the University of xxxxx course entrance standards.
The average SAT score of xxxxx of 2009 is xxxx; our participation rate was 71.5%.
678 Advanced Placements were taken in 2008-09 school year; 81% scored a 3, 4, or 5.</p>
<p>This is also a magnet school that students must test into- there are no zoned students attending. I am concerned about the information missing that would help colleges unfamiliar with our school. Things like Freshman (and maybe sophomores) are not allowed to take AP classes. A's in AP classes are rarely given (as one admissions person at Gettysburgh told us, "Oh it is really hard to get an A there. They don't give many of those.") While I am glad he knew that, I wonder about those colleges outside of our immediate geographical area.</p>
<p>So, would you recommend contacting the school and providing some examples (even the College Board's template) and offering to help with this during the summer if finances/personnel is an issue? It's a public school so the Guidance Secretary is in all summer but I don't think the actual counselors are in much.</p>
<p>Thanks for hanging in and reading this far!</p>
<p>I wonder if anyone has a model of what they would consider to be an “ideal” profile? If they shared it, those of us whose high schools produce a less than an ideal profile would have a model. I’d like to offer to help my son’s school as well. I haven’t seen my daughter’s (she will graduate from a different school).</p>
<p>I found that the school profile our HS used was written in such a way as to be most useful to prospective parents and Realtors. I read some books and met with administrators to talk about the kinds of information that would be useful to a college admissions staff when trying to understand and put our HS and students into context. Ours is not a well-known school system.</p>
<p>End result: 2 “profiles:” one for PR and general info and one for colleges.</p>
<p>The school profile sheet that our school sends out with applications is wonderful. It is one sheet with school and class info on both sides. It lists all the AP classes and what the school recommendations are for courses each year. It also gives the middle 50% of Sat scores. There is a pie graph with GPA and the percentage of students who fall into each area. In the margins it lists all the schools our students have been accepted to an has an asterick next to the schools at which our students have matriculated. This is a small private school.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can say “we rarely give A’s”, but you should provide some kind of chart/graph/ranking that helps put grades in context. Some schools publish median and mean GPAs, some rank students (and explain the ranking system), others indicate roughly how many students are at GPA levels. Other have Bell Curve type graphs with grades. All our school does is rank student and there’s a brief statement about the ranking system.</p>
<p>Information that our school has. List of the AP (and dual enrollment) courses offered. (No statement about who can take them. My son took one as a freshman in Computer Science as an elective - but I don’t know of anyone else who has taken an AP as a freshman.) They list the number of students who got AP awards, which I guess helps a bit in figuring out how many students take multiple APs. We also publish medians for the SAT subject tests.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. I think I am going to email the principal. </p>
<p>Mathmom - I agree that it would not be a good idea to include “we rarely give A’s”. I am more interested in less subjective data based statements/graphs such at the ones mentioned.</p>
<p>Mafool - Having read your reply, I think that is a great way to sum up our current profile-PR focused.</p>
I assume it’s so that admissions officers can contact one of the GCs if they need to clarify something about the curriculum or a student’s application.</p>
<p>OP - I was in your position 2 years ago with D1 and I did a couple of things - first, I marked up a copy of the profile with my suggestions for improvements and sent it to the principal and to the district communications/PR person. They incorporated many of my suggestions, most of which I gathered from extensive CC research ;)</p>
<p>Second, for things that the profile didn’t/couldn’t reflect (like, even though the school offered x number of AP classes, many of them were offered only once and/or at the same time of day so it is difficult for a student to take very many), I asked D’s GC to include that kind of information in his recommendation letter, which he did.</p>
<p>I think that’s pretty standard though. Our includes contact info for the superintendent of the district - not just the high school numbers. Now that’s stupid!</p>
<p>I did a quick google search and found these profile outlines on the Northwestern and Michigan websites (directed at GC’s). I think I will also put some work into improving son’s high school profile. My biggest beef is that no where does it say honors and AP classes are weighted the same. </p>
<p>Doesn’t it seem odd that these are identical? Plagiarism from major universities? I’m amused. Maybe they both used the same source and cited it but I did not notice.</p>
<p>Okay, I looked again. Michigan cited Northwestern. That still seems odd to me but at least Northwestern was given credit. (I spend far too much time teaching kids about citing sources.)</p>
<p>OP - Did you specifically ask for the high school profile that is sent with the transcript to college admissions depts? The one you describe sounds like something that is given to real estate agents and used for PR purposes. I’m fairly sure our HS has two “profiles” - one for each of these purposes.</p>
<p>Hi all-
We were off visiting some colleges so I just caught back up. I did specifically ask for the one that went to colleges (I just double checked the email). I did email the principal, with links to some examples, but I have not yet heard back from him.</p>