Most HSs don’t send such detailed school reports to the colleges. What HSs are you referring to?
Funny, I did not have the heart to tell him/her.
AFAIK all HSs have them and send them along with the student GC/CC report on the application.
HSs vary greatly on the extent that they make the report or profile available to parents or even students.
Here is an example: https://www.greatneck.k12.ny.us/cms/lib/NY02208059/Centricity/Domain/697/NH-Profile-Class-2020-101519-4p.pdf
The school report you attached is fairly standard but it doesn’t have grade distributions for specific classes.
I helped a friend research high school profiles for her kid’s fairly new high school. They vary greatly. Some have distribution of grades for classes but most don’t.
It seems like people here are conflating “class” with “course.” I think the point being made is that most (but not all) profiles will have some grade distribution guidance for e.g. the Class of 2022. Few will have distributions by course (e.g. USH) and none AFAIK will have grade distribution by course section (e.g. Mrs Smith’s AP Lang).
Yes, that seems to be where the confusion comes from. I’ve only seen one HS profile that listed grade distributions for some of its AP courses and the distributions of the corresponding AP exam scores, presumably to highlight the qualities of its AP programs. I don’t even know if the school does it every year or just did it for that particular year.
I don’t get my info from CC and I don’t think I interpreted anything incorrectly
That makes sense.
I thought we were writing privately lol.
@Mwfan1921: check out the book by Rachel Toor. She used to be an adcom member at Duke. High Schools are read in order by state/region. The docket is listed in descending order by high school rank/GPA and test scores. In cases where high schools don’t rank, they can estimate based on previous applications, and GPAs from current students who apply. The recent harvard litigation also seems to suggest that they impute rank whenever they can.
Rachel Toor’s book on admissions was written in 2002 (she has another one on essay-writing dated 2017). Ivy League admissions are holistic and not as numbers-driven as implied above. Also, they prospect for students at schools that are less known.
ps I believe 2002 was even before the financial aid initiative at Harvard. So the socioeconomic diversity was very different.
Princeton started its no-loan financial aid initiative in 2001, and Harvard offered its in 2004.
Also, back in 2002 admissions was paper based. I am sure the order in which the applications were read was somewhat dictated by grouping physical file folders. Now with everything electronic based the applications can be sorted in whatever way the admission officer wants. I bet colleges have their own methods and individual admissions officers have their own preferences as well.
Almost every high school I’ve ever known sends a “Profile” to colleges. Some provide the GPA distributions, and others don’t. Here is an example from a well known private school in my area that provides GPA distribution for each course:
Actually in Toor’s book, she describes a computer print out that was used at every committee meeting. Believe it or not, computers were widely used in 2002.
They probably relied on paper files to review letters, etc. But the admissions process was highly computerized, even back in 2002. I can imagine its even more computer-driven nowadays.
I don’t find Rachel Toor’s book (I’ve read it) or the Harvard data to show compelling enough evidence that one can say schools are imputing class rank when reading apps (which is what I initially asked about).
I have heard AOs say they don’t impute rank if it’s not in the transcript, and although admissions practices at a given school can change dramatically, and quickly, (there’s a lot of turn over in admissions leadership) I think using class rank in the admissions process has decreased significantly in the last decade or two.
I’m not saying that there aren’t any colleges that impute rank, I just don’t think it’s common. And nothing in these last dozen posts suggests otherwise.
Lastly, no AO needs to input rank to compare students from the same, or any, HS.
I agree that use of imputed class rank varies considerably among the colleges. The more selective, the more likely they are going to want a class rank. Schools that are not super selective won’t expend the extra effort to estimate rank, I agree. But nowadays with test optional, the class rank/GPA becomes even more important.
But this student was specifically asking about Ivies and T20. These schools most certainly do care about class rank.
They would probably be better off not providing. As one who is not an AO, it seems to me there is a big disconnect between grading and exam results in some courses, particularly evident in calc.
Do you know if Pingry includes this level of details in its school profile every year? It’d make comparisons easier if all schools are required to publish such data, whether they shed a positive light or not.
I first became aware of Pingry’s college report when my son applied as an 8th grader. Was shocking to see that they report grade distributions for each course. This was true in 2014 when my son applied, and I assume its still the same. Pingry does not rank its students, so instead they provide this report.
With this level of detail about grade distributions, it is very easy to estimate a student’s rank within the class.