What counts and when? That is the question I hear every day from clients and friends. Everything from the first day of freshman year up through the end of senior year matters in building your college application portfolio. Moreover, what your student does-- even as a freshman-- can affect her ability to garner financial awards from colleges. This month's series will cover my top five factors to pay attention to.

First on my list is your student’s course selections and grades - the transcript. This is arguably the most important factor in a student’s application. The admissions committee is considering the strength of the transcript based on grades and difficulty level of classes. Colleges are asking “How has your child performed compared to her high school peers in taking the hardest classes available and earning the best grades possible?” 

Why Course Selection Matters

The trajectory of which class your student is in by fall of senior year is set by the level of coursework she is in as a freshman. If she wants to be in AP Calculus by senior year, she will need to have completed Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II and Pre-Calculus by the end of junior year. If she wants to apply to art school and wants the prep work of AP Studio Art for her portfolio, she will need to take the prerequisite art classes earlier in high school so she can enroll in that class as a junior. This is why careful planning of coursework matters from freshman year on. That said, pushing a student into coursework for which she is not prepared can backfire: as much as schools want to see students push themselves, a transcript littered with Cs and Ds in Honors and AP courses isn’t doing her any favors. If that is happening, it is better to drop down a level to stabilize the GPA. 

Do my Freshmen Grades Matter?

Grades matter not just for getting into college but for obtaining merit aid or “discount” money from schools. The averaging of GPAs means that poor grades during freshman year can sink a GPA all the way through high school.

What’s the difference between Weighted and Unweighted GPA

Many high schools weigh grades, giving more weight to AP classes than to Honors classes and more weight to Honors classes than to Academic classes. For knowing where your kid stands with respect to her class, pay attention to the weighted GPA-- this tells the whole academic story of rigor and grades. But don’t forget the unweighted GPA, which some colleges care about too, wanting to see high grades across the board, regardless of the difficulty level of the coursework. 

If you want to take a deep dive on this topic, check out my Resource Room page, which includes reading on merit aid and how to find it, including references to Jeff Selingo’s Who Gets in and Why? and Ron Lieber’s The Price You Pay for College. The bottom line is that in an era in which test scores may be on the decline, the transcript is the biggest determining factor for both getting into college and garnering merit money at colleges that lure students with those financial rewards. 

CTK pro tip: Push/inspire your child but don’t try to challenge her beyond her mental and emotional capabilities. The kids who are accepted into top-20 schools these days have 1500+ SAT scores and grades in the top 10% of the class (and usually much higher) and extremely competitive activities and leadership-- e.g. nationally ranked athlete AND top five student in the class AND hackathon winning coder AND 1550 SAT. Kids have to be motivated on their own for this level of competition and selectivity. 

If your kid is not in this category, focus on pursuing strengths and keeping weaknesses from dragging down the GPA. We are growing humans here, not just resumes. In that respect, help your child hone her skills and interests. Is she a builder who likes math? Take the engineering elective class, sign her up to learn CAD, and get her going on understanding if she is interested in different types of engineering through some summer programs. She can drop the foreign language class and move down a level in ELA if she makes up for it in her area of strength.