It may also be out of date or not entirely accurate. In some cases, it may be to the student’s disadvantage if the school profile lists a large set of advanced courses, but the student is unable to take them because they are rarely offered, or the student lost out on rationing of space in those courses.
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I am sure that is the case with many profiles, but it’s not supposed to be that way since the whole point is to give context. Our school offers 20-30 APs, which is stated, but it also says students aren’t allowed to take more than 3 at a time and not until Jr year. Being shut out by things like scheduling conflicts should also be addressed by the GC as part of their statement.
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The high school profiles in our area typically include a diagram of weighted six-semester GPAs by decile or quartile. Accordingly, the rough place in the class for a particular student will depend on how many weighted courses they took by the end of junior year vs unweighted.
It seems to me that diagrams of quartiles/deciles really show rank even though high schools in our area say they don’t rank. Comparison of weighted GPAs fuels a race for the most weighted courses (APs/CEs). A kid can have a 4.0 UW, have 5 rigorous APs/CE by the end of jr yr, bringing their weighted GPA to somewhere around 4.25. Then the kid takes another 3 or 4 senior year, for a total of 8 or 9 over all four yrs. Seems to me that should be sufficient rigor. But what happens if there are kids taking more APs/CEs (or somehow fewer unweighted courses), making the top quartile something like 4.2-4.7, how would selective colleges view the student near the “bottom” of the top quartile even though they have 4.0 and what ought to be sufficient rigor over all 4 yrs? Maybe they think “this high school grade inflates”? Do they lean more on test scores? It’s just a little confusing - “we consider the context of your high school” vs " this isn’t a race for the most APs."
About test scores - if a student has a score well over the average for the high school, is the student expected to also be at the top of the pile of weighted GPAs in the diagram?
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@AnonMomof2 , this is one of the reasons AOs cover dedicated regions. It sounds like a gigantic task, but if you are supposed to know all the schools in Massachusetts, for example, you will know the differences (or at least most of them). Private schools often are able to invite reps to school and can explain more about how course selection, grading, etc happens, so I suspect that they may have an edge where not many of their students apply. But I do think it’s hard for any kid, anywhere, to apply to a school that is an unusual choice.
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Many colleges target specific high schools - so they steer their marketing toward them - knowing there’s a better chance of getting in high stat kids that have money and can and will pay. Call it a racial bias if you will.
Public school admission officers may have more ground to cover but they know the hotspots.
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You don’t have to know the details of each High School. If you just need to know what schools are in the two tails.
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Yes, and they tend to know the tippy rop high schools, so it’s rarely a disadvantage to be coming from one of those, even though most of us whose kids have attended those worry about that.
Anecdotally, my kid attended a BS. Applicants are self-selecting and admissions makes further selections. My kid was probably at the bottom of the top half (they didn’t rank) and had very good results - in terms of admissions and merit. Had I posted his stats here on CC, the consensus would have been that he needed a new list of colleges. But the AOs understood the context.
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But actually, many / most when they hear private, boarding or elite recommend you speaking to the counselor that you are paying tuition for.
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Based on our experience last year, I don’t think self selection is quite the thing in a TO environment. And the student that did not listen to the CC who advised they weren’t competitive and would waste their ED is happily at an Ivy.
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I was referring to how the student body of a BS is made up. The fact that the student who may not have been cream of the crop at your BS but was still seen as desirable to an Ivy actually supports what I am saying. The college AO s understand that there are good students well beyond the top decile.
Sorry, in re-reading my post, I see how it’s confusing.
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Indeed, @tsbna44 – that’s exactly what we did and how the list was developed. (Still have a shrine to that CC in our home!) 
While I’m sure it’s been mentioned in this thread, as well as threads from previous years, a piece of advice I received years (YEARS) ago, regarding EA applications: find the colleges/universities that LOVE your high school. If your HS is using Naviance, this is the tool to use. While an acceptance might not be to one’s dream school, playing the percentages for an EA acceptance eliminates a lot of stress going forward.
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Read an article recently where TCU’s admissions office expects applications to jump from 20,000 to 50,000 as a result of the College Football Playoffs.
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I’d hate to be their “yield forecaster” in their admissions office.
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Here’s the Dean of Admissions himself, he’s a good Twitter follow.
https://twitter.com/HeathEinstein/status/1609449532668141568
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I suspect this is an extreme exaggeration, perhaps as an effort to get more students to apply. If you look at other teams, they never have this degree of application increase due to their football team’s success.
I chose Oregon as an example because they don’t have a long history of championship games, like TCU. However, in 2010 for the first time they made it to the championship game and had a close loss (TCU’s 65-7 loss was not as close as Oregon’s loss). A summary of how applications changed is below. There was not a significant change in overall trends following the football championship game. If anything, the application increase was smaller than typical in the year following the football championship game.
2008 – 11k applied, 37% yield
2009 – 15k applied, 33% yield
2010 – 17k applied, 29% yield – played in football championship
2011 – 18k applied, 27% yield
2012 – 23k applied, 25% yield
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Wonder if the common app changes anything? Don’t think Oregon was on the common app until 2017.
After my son applied to schools last year my impression was that EA was the new RD. We had read stats showing that EA applicants were accepted at higher rates than comparable RD students, so my son applied EA to every school where that was an option.
The college application process during the COVID years was chaos. With many schools going SAT/ACT optional, many students with respectable GPAs applied to schools that they probably would not have if they had been required to send test scores. Applications to highly ranked schools spiked, while fewer students applied to middling institutions. Finally, schools had difficulty managing class sizes after their historic yield rates did not apply (I’m looking at you, Purdue engineering). Hopefully, now that COVID madness has subsided (sorta, for now, we’ll see) the application process will reach a new normal and be less chaotic.
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After reading all of these posts, I’m in a bit of a panic. I guess I have a “high stats” child, and she applied to her dream T10 school. This meant she couldn’t ED anywhere else, though. She was denied in December. She also did one EA to our state university, but the results for that don’t come out until mid-February. She did a rolling admission to her safety back in November but we still haven’t heard back. All the rest were T25 schools and regular admission. Now I’m panicking because it sounds like RD is very difficult to get into and sometimes only as space available?? I will be the worst mom in the world if my daughter with a NMSF has no college to go to. What do students do April 1 if they don’t have an acceptance? Does it happen often?
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If her safety was a true safety, I wouldn’t panic. And an NMSF should be in at their state school too. Hopefully she likes both just in case because it sounds like the rest of the list are reach schools.
And yes, every cycle there are stories here of students who don’t have an acceptance. There is a list that is released every spring of schools that miscalculated yield and are still taking applications. Usually there is a smattering of surprisingly good schools on that list.
It all seems to work out in the end! Hopefully your D will get some good news soon.
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