<p>I understand that all the top ranked colleges most important factor is that they take into consideration the strength of a students high school transcript. But can anyone name top ranked colleges that look at your application in a holistic manner (personal statement, essays, recommendations) and giving your extracurricular activities a slight edge over the rest of the components of the application, such as SAT's and possibly GPA in the pure context of just the extracurricular activities.</p>
<p>I really don't think there is any highly ranked school that takes ecs over GPA/course difficulty...There maybe a few schools that rank ecs over Sat's but probably not transcripts...</p>
<p>I don't know of any school at all that gives ECs more of an edge than it does one's transcript. The best predictor of college performance is h.s. gpa. Having wonderful ECs may make one a great contributor to the EC life of a college, but that doesn't mean that one can pass. Colleges want to accept students who are likely to graduate.</p>
<p>I believe many schools do this, but there is a problem. The top well-known schools have become very selective. They have way more great applicants than they can take and many of these great applicants not only have good SATs and solid grades, but a boat load of awards and EC's. In short, they get applications from a lot of smart and basic well rounded kids. In looking at the whole person, they often look extra hard at someone with some major achievement outside of the normal school and EC's. Having really passionate interests and demonstrated successes can be worth a lot for admissions.</p>