How colleges calculate the Academic Score
In our last newsletter, we discussed how colleges score applications. Here, we’re doing a deeper dive on the Academic Score – an evaluation that combines a student’s academic profile (grades, strength of curriculum, test scores) into a single score that admissions officers use as they evaluate applicants.
Calculating the Academic Score
Using the Academic Score
Implications for counseling students
Note: Much of this issue is a synthesis of great material from a variety of sources on college application evaluation, such as Who Gets In and Why by Jeff Selingo and the thousands of pages from recent Harvard admissions court documents.
Calculating the Academic Score
Colleges typically combine all academic information on an applicant into a single Academic Score. The purpose of this score is to determine which students are the most likely to succeed academically at their college. Many colleges have refined their academic scoring system over the years based on how accepted students performed academically in college (and whether they graduated). And many even look at how students from your high school performed academically (if your students perform well, they’re more willing to take a chance on more students from your school).
The simple way to look at the Academic Score is the combination of grades, strength of curriculum, test scores (SAT/ACT, APs), and the strength of your high school. But there are some nuances that can be helpful to understand. College scoring systems tend to:
Remove grades in non-academic courses (e.g., gym, drivers ed, band)
Not include freshman year grades (many colleges consider freshman year a transition year and freshman year grades are far less predictive of college academic success)
Weight grades (or AP scores) in more difficult courses more heavily (Calculus)
Weight more recent grades more heavily
Consider your high school and how students of similar academics performed in college
Consider the strength of curriculum you took compared to the curriculum available to you through your high school (i.e., taking all of the most challenging classes available in your high school is very helpful).
Use SAT/ACT test scores to fill in academic gaps (e.g., students who switched high schools frequently, students from high schools that the college is less familiar with).
Using the Academic Score
The main purpose of the academic score is to determine if a student is above the college’s academic bar (i.e., they believe the student can succeed academically). And then determine if the student is strong academically compared to other applicants.
A good rule of thumb is that 4 in 5 applicants are above the academic bar. And 2 in 5 applicants have strong academics. This is because students self-select where they’re applying based on their academics (grades, strength of curriculum, test scores).
Academics aren’t everything. While strong academics are helpful, colleges are mostly fine accepting any student that is above their academic bar. We’ll use Harvard as an example only because they had to publicly release their admissions data as part of a court case.
About 8,000 Harvard applicants per year received a perfect 80 out of 80 on their Academic Index (a calculated input to the final Academic Score).
These 8,000 applicants are part of the approximately 24,000 applicants with strong academic scores.
The acceptance rate for applicants with strong academic scores was only 13% in 2019, making up 75% of admits. Applications are about 50% higher now than in 2019. So, the admit rate today for strong academic performers is probably around 9%.
1 in 4 accepted students have sufficient academics (i.e., are above the academic bar). But these students had something else the college valued (e.g., a strong Personal Score).
Implications for counseling students
It’s critical for students (and their parents) to understand how colleges evaluate them. There are many myths circulating about college admissions. For example, academics-wise:
Many students mistakenly feel that they are academically strong compared to other applicants. When in fact, they are academically similar to other applicants.
Many students mistakenly feel that being slightly better academically than other applicants will give them the edge. When in fact, colleges view academics as indistinguishable, placing tens of thousands of applicants in the same Academic Score category.
We suggest talking with your students and parents about how colleges score applications and what colleges look for in applicants. Or you can sign up for a free 30-minute family webinar where a Prompt team member will walk through this information (click here to sign up).
In our next issue, we’ll be doing a deeper dive on the Personal Score.
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