What would be a ranking of the most important parts of the application from most important to least important out of these:
GPA
SAT/ACT scores
Essay
Recommendations
Extra curriculars
Subject Tests
AP Scores
Demonstrated Interest
There is no one answer. It varies by school.
your appearance. (LOL just kidding). Most schools clearly state they view applicants holistically, whether you believe it or not !
OP: look up school data on their “common data sets”.
@MisterStudentt You’re clearly mistaken. The vast majority of US colleges ONLY admit based on the numbers and don’t have the time nor inclination to holistically evaluate applications.
@T26E4 - MisterStudentt is correct. While there certainly are schools that openly do their admissions on a strictly numeric basis, most competitive schools look at much more. The GPA and standardized tests are useful indicators of student ability, but an excellent essay - or a truly wretched one - can have as much or more impact. Awards, activities projects, and even hobbies can also be strong indicators of student potential and initiative outside of, or even in direct contrast to, the picture painted by the numbers.
3 is much more correct than #4.
Be sure to consider the vast majority of colleges outside the top X that everyone writes about here.
@ProfessorD poster #2 says “most schools” There is no way that +50% of US colleges utilize holistic admissions. Zero.
I recruit for an Ivy. I’m very familiar that competitive schools do use holistic admissions. I wanted to correct poster #2s broad assertion. Like ubcalumnus and you implied – many of the schools discussed on THIS site practice holistic admissions – but this site is not reflective of the 3000 US colleges and unis.
Another anecdote: some schools’ “holistic” appearing admissions criteria is simply window dressing. I attended a Purdue engineering info session. The officer said they only recently and reluctantly started accepting applicants’ Common App essays. Previously, they’ve had no problem admitting great students and maintaining their status as one of the top engineering schools extant. She said they only did this basically because their competition accepts essays but it had almost no bearing on all for most students. Indeed only the essays for the topmost students, vying for merit scholarships were read. The vast majority of admitted students’ essays weren’t even being read.
Given the list of criteria mentioned in the OP, I did, in fact, presume that we were speaking of selective universities.
Many colleges are only moderately selective, but use only high school record (courses, grades, and/or rank) and test scores. Or they may admit/reject most applicants based on those criteria, and use additional criteria only for borderline applicants or special programs (e.g. visual art portfolio, performing art audition). It is mainly the most selective colleges that are most likely to do holistic admissions on all or most of applicant pool.
Of course, the most selective colleges using holistic admissions do so because so many of their applicants are at the top end of the range of high school record and test scores. An applicant not in the top end of the range on those criteria will be at a significant disadvantage.
As a practical matter, the OP can look up each individual college’s common data set (section C7) or the admissions tab on its entry in http://www.collegedata.com , to see what it considers “very important”, “important”, “considered”, or “not considered”. Sometimes, a more complete picture can be found on the college’s own web site.