The Formula For the Highest Academic Achievement Rating in the College Admissions Process: The Curriculum That Will Get A Student Admitted Every College in the Country
“Academic Achievement” (AA) is the one category that anchors an applicant’s candidacy and admissibility in the college admissions process. You have to see your AA as your spinal cord or your nervous system in the admissions process. So if your AA is “wonky” then the rest of your candidacy will also be enlightened with that context. As noted previously, remember that an AA rating is strictly academic fact based on these categories:
Curricular Strength And Rigor
Academic Performance/Grades
Your Place Within Your Graduating Class/Class Rank
School Strength (How Many Students Are Going To 4 Year Colleges)
Testing (If Applicable)
After reading this piece on AA you will have all of the ingredients, including examples of nuance within the context of highly selective admissions, to not only be able to synthesize how a college or university renders an academic rating but will also have a basic foundation for admissions decision-making processes. You will know how to think about academics like an admissions officer.
Where We Begin
When you first open a file, you read the general information about an applicant: name, high school, parent information, and all other basic information. You quickly jot down anything of note (did their parents go to college, is this a legacy, do they have a sibling in college, etc). Then you leap to the high school profile as discussed in part 1. Recall that the high school profile gives, well, is supposed to give you everything you need to know about how to evaluate an applicant's academics. The core of an academic rating starts with understanding and contextualizing the student’s curriculum! When reading the high school profile you want to contextualize the graduation requirements and what is offered at the institution. As mentioned in Part 1, we are utilizing the Cate School’s high school profile as an example and this is how they’ve shared their curricular information.
We can contextualize that they offer their own specific curriculum that relatively reflects the AP curriculum in its’ cataloging (not necessarily the curriculum itself), and generally, there are no restrictions from course enrollment outside the assumed basics: must have the grades and course prerequisites to be approved for advanced coursework. This means this curriculum is semi-open, so while they must qualify for the courses there is no cap on how many advanced courses they can take so it’s assumed the best students here are generally in 3-5 their junior year and 4-5 their senior year.
Typically students are enrolled in 6 courses with 5 of them being core academic solids with exceptional students enrolling in 6 academic course solids likely in senior year (but it’s clear that is not common no matter the level of the course).
The Curricular Roadmap
I am going to outline the ideal curriculum for each of the 5 academic core solid subjects: Mathematics, English, Foreign Language, Science, and History. Some of these will fluctuate depending on the type of curriculum you are in (International Baccalaureate, British Curriculum, school-based curriculum, etc), but this is a recipe for success and being admissible at every single college or university in the country if not the world. Each academic year a student should be enrolled in 5 core solids throughout the year. No, summer courses do not count. If you are in a dual enrollment course, then generally as long as the course gives the highest barring credit upon completion, a semester course will count as 1 academic full-year course UNLESS you are at a high school that is integrated and has been designed within a college such as Bard Early College (the students here are incredible and have been some my personal favorite) in the Bronx. The expectations are personalized to that school per the high school profile. advanced level arts courses “count” towards the academic core solid generally. Typically, coursework is evaluated for mastery within the context of that discipline and then assessed accordingly. These are going to be the core classes you will want to follow.
Mathematics
Senior Year: Calculus BC
Junior Year: Calculus AB/Calculus
Sophomore Year: Precalculus
Freshmxn Year: Algebra 2
Yes, I know, but just let me share first. If you get up to Calculus AB/Calculus you will be fine. Top colleges still and will continue to accept students who just have calculus, however, it feels the bar is shifting. More and more top students are qualifying and taking Calculus BC (and oftentimes they are taking the course in conjunction with Multivariable Calculus, an Advanced Statistics course, or another advanced course in another academic subject). There is a strong math bias and there always has been; out of all academic subjects math fluency is the most important. Why? Because it’s standardized. Math is math, can you do it or can't you; this feels even more relevant than ever within the context of the test-optional admissions landscape. During my time in highly selective admissions at Haverford College (less than a 15% admit rate), if you only had up to Precalculus your admit rate was 0%. Students were admitted without calculus, yes, but the admit rate was still 0%. So if 100% of the admits have Calculus, now do you see how having a level or 2 higher makes you far more appealing in the admissions process? People are figuring that out.
What happens if you do not have access to these courses? Do not worry! An old colleague of mine Ashley Pallie, whom I met when she was at Pomona College when I was formerly an admissions officer at Haverford College, has now moved to CalTech as the Executive Director of Undergraduate Admissions (congratulations, friend)! CalTech is working with Khan Academy and Schoolhouse.world to make these courses offered for free online! Here is a small portion of her post about this from LinkedIn:
Here is the link to learn more about the great access work CalTech is doing:
https://www.admissions.caltech.edu/apply/first-year-applicants/academic-requirements-for-first-year-applicants
It is possible to jump over Algebra 2 if you entered high school in Geometry. You must be confident and skilled in math with generally A’s in your coursework. You would take Algebra 2 over the summer, with approval from the math department head, and then pass a placement test upon the start of the year to enter Precalculus. While generally not recommended, this can also be done with Precalculus, but this jump is for the brilliant. It is just hard to see success jumping from Algebra 2 to Calculus AB compared to jumping from Geometry to Precalculus. In the past, all of my students saw success on the school-based placement test, and in the Algebra 2 or Precalculus course and took their summer course at New York University. My last student to do this enrolled at Cornell University this past fall. Here is the link:
https://math.nyu.edu/dynamic/courses/course-schedules/
I will be posting a piece about students with a learning disability that affects their math capabilities soon, sit tight!
Science
Biology
Chemistry
Physics
A 4th year of science within those 3 disciplines; advanced coursework in environmental studies or related science is also fine.
Is it okay for a student to drop science their senior year if they have already completed the science trinity and want to take an advanced course of study in an area of relevant academic interest instead? There’s debate, I do not recommend it but I would not stop a student from doing it either especially if science has been the best of friends to them over the years.
Foreign Language
Complete up to at least the 4th level. Ideally, students will enroll in an advanced foreign language course in their senior. More and more, students are entering high school at the 2nd level of their chosen foreign language, therefore seeing that advanced level foreign language course is becoming from common.
I will be posting a piece about students with a learning disability that affects their foreign language capabilities soon, sit tight!
Here is a fun fact for students who are still learning English or considering English as a Second Language, your “foreign language” should be your native language. Why? You have to translate basic phrases like “I like chocolate cake” from English to the selected language and then from the selected language back into English. This helps students struggling with the English language learn grammatical structures, comprehend complex diction, and assist their mastery of English overall at a faster rate! Then later as the student masters English you can just take a placement test at your high school to jump into the advanced offerings!
Side note: I laughed with my students who would be fluent in their foreign language course but would fail their in-class writing or exams. Why did they fail? The exam’s questions weren’t in the language being taught, they were written in English… so therefore students couldn’t understand the question given the level of their English and would just make up a beautifully written response that didn’t address the question at all! My apologies for the anecdote, anywhoodle!
History/Social Science
Generally, 3 years of history is solid if you want to drop history your senior to take an advanced course of study in an area of relevant academic interest.
English
It is a mandate that all students take 4 years of English in high school.
The Rigor of the Curricular Evaluation Process
Here is a shorthand for the curricular roadmap outlined above:
4 years of Mathematics; get to Calculus BC if possible
4 years of English
4 years of Science that include the core trinity: Biology, Chemistry, and Physics
Foreign Language course completion up until the 4th level or ideally reaching an advanced course by their senior year but it’s okay if that doesn’t happen
3 years of history plus a 4th year in history or another core academic solid
Do you want to know a fun fact? If you take and do reasonably fine in it (fine being B-ish range with maybe one lower grade) you can do the work at any college or university in the country! Yes, from Harvard University to Tulane University to Arizona State University, you can do the work at all of those schools. Unfortunately, unlike when traditional high school parent-aged folk applied to college, college admissions is no longer about being able to do the work. Colleges can make dozens and dozens, if not more, first-year classes of completely different students with their application pools. The fact of the matter is that 80%-90% of students in most college application pools can do the work at the college. I rarely saw an inappropriate candidate for admission during my time at a highly selective institution, but I acknowledge that if you know what Haverford College is or even where I attended for undergrad Amherst College, that can be seen as a bit niche so naturally the applicant pool can be a bit more self-selective but generally this statement holds true across the board. So if 80%-90% are all academically admissible then where do you draw differences outside of the obvious, a student’s grades? The answer is simple, it is how rigorous the context of that coursework is, how well they’ve done in it, and where that places them within the context of their graduating class.
Remember friends, your high school determines the foundation of what rigor is, while your course selections determine where you fall on the how rigorous scale. So if your school legitimately limits advanced coursework to 3 a year while Becky’s child’s school down the street doesn’t, it does not hurt that student with the limit at all. Each school is understood in context. So those pushy parents who for whatever reason sent their kids to schools that have kindly limited their curriculums so their students are actually sane, please stop demanding your special kid be the exception to the rule, because you are ruining what that High School is doing for their students. The limit will be respected if the institution in question actually holds themselves accountable for implementing their curricular mandates. If that’s you, that’s fine that you want to push your student in a way that doesn’t follow the institutional academic perspective and philosophy, you should really enroll your student in a different institution that is more aligned with your own expectations of what rigor is.
I’m sorry, as I was saying before I was interrupted by that one imaginary parent, your school determines what rigor is and it is the course selection that determines how rigorous that curriculum is seen. For example, if your school’s curriculum limits advanced coursework to 3 a year, the student taking Advanced Placement: Calculus BC, Physics C, and World History has a stronger curriculum than then the student taking Advanced Placement: Statistics (no BC on transcript), Environmental Studies and European History; why? The math and science selections are just significantly more rigorous. If people, would like a list of “hard” and “soft” advanced courses, please let me know in the comments.
In sum, to consider your curriculum the “most demanding” your school has to offer you are maxing out the number of advanced courses you can take at the highest level. That’s not for everyone, and that’s okay, but it is important to understand what you can and can’t handle. People always ask, is it better to take a harder class and get a B rather than taking an easier class to get an A? Don’t be annoyed with me when I say this, but that depends! For me, if you are getting lower than normal grades taking advanced coursework that is within your academic interest then it is my belief you should shy away from that coursework. Let’s say you are applying to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and they have 2 B’s… well those B’s mean something very different when let’s say student A has those B’s in foreign language and history while student B has those same grades in math and science. I’m sure you see what I’m getting at by citing those examples. So for me, it’s not a great thing when you are taking advanced coursework and seeing a whole letter drop. Dropping a whole letter is gigantic. Now let’s say I can predict the future and u know if you take 2 advanced courses and have split grades, A and B in those classes, then fine totally, that B is a fine B and will not crush you. There’s a lot of nuance here yes, but it’s not hard to understand or see, there’s just a lotof background knowledge and examples that are not a “one size fits all”. This is why colleges and universities are so general when discussing these matters, which makes it feel as if they are being standoffish. It all depends on the situation and that specific applicant in the pool. The trick is, finding someone who will tell you and will support whatever situation it is that needs to be understood in context.
Sigh, But I Think This Is Right
Friends, I was not anticipating that this section would already be this long when only detailing just point 1, curricular strength and rigor, but alas it is. I hope people have found this somewhat helpful. Please let me know if so in the comments, by simply emailing/messaging me feedback or simply giving this post a like, clap, or whatever it is! I hope to have the next 4 sections written and detailed for everyone by Tuesday! Thank you all for your patience and understanding! Talk soon, friends!
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