I plan on applying to top 20 schools, and I was wondering how important it is that the guidance counselor says that your schedule was the “most rigorous.” Do you think it would be detrimental to my application if she says “very demanding” or just “demanding”?
Check the common data sets for the colleges you are interested in. Look at section C7. It will tell you how the school considers academic rigor in the application process. In my experience, rigor is usually in the “very important” category.
I don’t know a ton about this but I assume it’s very important because it helps them put your GPA and other parts of your application in the context of the difficulty of your classes. A 4.0 will mean more from a student with 5 AP’s than with a student who took regular classes all 4 years.
It is very important, but can be offset by other attributes.
Are you sure the guidance counselor wouldn’t say most rigorous? I ask because at least a couple of students in my d19’s school have gotten into incredibly selective schools (ie a couple of the most selective) and I personally wouldn’t call their schedules the “most rigorous”. They weren’t in accelerated math and science in middle school through high school and they didn’t take nearly as many AP courses as a chunk of the top (GPA wise) students. Either the GC marked most rigorous anyway or a check mark of rigorous added to atheletics, high grades and (assuming) high SAT/ACT along with the rest of the app hitting the right notes was all they needed.
Some of kids I would have termed having “most rigorous” didn’t get accepted into those extremely selective schools even though they have everything else besides athletics.
Not saying athletics made up for rigor for AO’s, but it’s very possible that the school guidance counseling office has a minimum for most rigorous that they don’t share with parents/students but is much lower than the level many students are actually working at. Unless your school has actually told people how they define rigor, you are just guessing. In the end, it’s lrobably best to just do your thing and see where it gets you, without worrying about whether it checks off someone else’s boxes.
Thanks for the advice. Do you think it’s more important to do more extracurricular activities and excel in those, or get your schedule labeled “most rigorous”?
It’s most important to to excel in ECs and have a schedule labelled “most demanding.”
“Demanding” is unlikely to cut it for a T20, particularly if there are other applicants from your school with “most demanding” applying to the same colleges. On the bell curve,“demanding” probably covers the 5th -8th decile at a particular HS. There may be exceptions if you are seriously hooked, like a recruited athlete of a major donor.
“Most demanding” vs.“Very demanding” may be OK with a valid reason, although for the life of me, I can only think of one - attending a school where only IB Diploma Candidates get “most demanding.”
@RogerNadal “do more extracurricular activities and excel in those” is an almost surefire way to be starting a thread next year bemoaning the fact that you had “excellent” ECs but did not get into “the school of my dreams”.
Choose ECs that you are passionate about, not “more extracurriculars”. It is very difficult to actually excel in something that you are adding just to check a box. People excel at their extracurriculars because they are passionate about them, not because they added those to their list and are trying to “excel in them”.
As for course rigor - if you cannot keep up with a very rigorous schedule, WHILE excelling at your ECs, that means that you are unlikely to do enjoy being at colleges which require you to have a very rigorous course load.
The “elite” colleges are not, in any real sense, objectively “better” than “lower ranked” colleges. They are simply geared towards kids who enjoy and thrive on very rigorous academic program. If that is not your thing, than you are just setting yourself up for a world of pain.
Take the most rigorous course set that allows you to also spend time doing the ECs about which you are passionate. During your junior year, you look for colleges that match your interests and the level of academic intensity with which you know you are comfortable.
The problem with every major set of college rankings is that they measure only one thing: how well these colleges are suited for a specific type of student. As a result, every parent or student out there who is chasing prestige does their best to emulate that particular type of student. Now, some of these prestige-chasing students are that type of student, or similar enough that they can do a pretty good impression. Others make themselves miserable for four years in HS, and then end up miserable for the next four years in college, trying to be somebody other than themselves.
Don’t spend your HS years trying to be the person that you think Harvard wants you to be. Spend them trying to be the person that you want to be. Then find a college where that person will be happy.
@MWolf Rather than doing more ECs, do you think going deeper into a couple ECs (that are very time consuming) is more important than having the “most rigorous” schedule? I know that doing both of these would be ideal, but if you had to choose, which one do you think would be more important?
Google each school on your list and look up their common data set. That will tell you if you need to focus on rigor or EC.
As stated repeatedly above, T20s are going to expect both.
I also agree with @MWolf - don’t make this about what Harvard wants, make it about what you want. Chances at T20s are so low anyway that you may as well spend your time making yourself happy.