Know where you stand...

Assessing your academic qualifications

I can't begin to tell you how extremely important it is to know where you stand academically. In fact, it is most important. When considering colleges, you will have to evaluate yourself based on what your 'numbers' are. Be honest when evaluating your academic abilities; don't bank on the record that you are “going to have”. Look at what’s already on your record.

By the time you are in your senior year, you should have an idea of where your academic abilities lie—as evidenced by your transcript, and your standardized test scores.

Colleges, after all, are academic institutions and they must be sure that you can handle the workload there. One way they find out whether you have what it takes is through your school transcripts.

If a college is on your list of possible choices, it’s because you have the ‘numbers’; that is, you are academically qualified to go there. The thing to remember is this: no strategy will work if you do not have the necessary qualifications for a particular college. If your transcript has only two grades, D and F, and your SAT scores are 400-400-400, don't waste your time looking at Yale.

Rejections

On the other hand, top schools reject a lot of qualified students, too.  I remember an article a few weeks ago in Newsweek Magazine, which pointed out that most colleges accept about 85% of their applicants. Princeton University once declared that they reject two-thirds of valedictorians who apply.

That’s a lot of rejections going out to valedictorians! This just goes to show that while you need ‘numbers’ to get in, ‘numbers’ alone won't do the trick. Applying to college is a holistic process; by holistic I mean, they look at everything you have. Everything.

Why your GPA is so important in college admissions...

Standardized tests like the SAT and ACT also help you know which colleges are reaches, matches and safeties. One way to look at it is to check out the profiles of the schools you are interested in, and see where the middle range lie. This represents what the middle 50% of the incoming student body of that particular year scored. If your scores fall into the range, the school is probably a match for you. You can usually find this data by doing a search for their “incoming class profile”.

Again, don't take these statistics as a cut-off point. Remember that 25% of applicants scored above the range and another 25% scored below the range. These statistics should serve merely as guide for you
when you are building your college list.

So what kind of grades and scores do you have? Again, your guidance counselor may be able to recommend several schools that match your academic criteria. After you have a clear idea of which school suits you academically, it’s time to take a look at what can you do at the school.