<p>Do they look at quarter grades or semester? And what year do they focus on the most?</p>
<p>Depends on which college. I’d assume that top tier colleges look at all the grades in the permanents records. For example quarter grades may not be the ultimate letter grade u get counted, maybe it’s the semester grades that count toward your GPA. So it depends on each high school’s grading policy.</p>
<p>They will also look at your course load (ex. # of AP’s taken out of # of AP’s offered)</p>
<p>Finally there is the school rank. It compares you with other students, which give even more meaning to your GPA.</p>
<p>They will look at the grades that appear on the transcript your HS sends them. I get the impression that these are the semester (permanent) grades and nothing else. This is what our HS reports out on the transcript.</p>
<p>As to what year they focus on … generally speaking, the soph/junior years are looked at more critically. Some schools don’t consider frosh at all and if you’re applying ED/ED, they won’t have anything other than a senior year schedule (so may it rigorous) to look at before a decision is made.</p>