How colleges score applications
Every college admissions process is different. But at Prompt, we like to simplify things for students and parents. And I expect you may find this framing helpful:
Colleges evaluate academics and non-academics.
Academics. Colleges combine grades, strength of curriculum, and test scores (SAT/ACT, APs) into a single “Academic Score.”
Non-academics. Colleges combine essays, activities list, additional information, and recommendations into one or more scores. For simplicity, we’ll call this the Personal Score, as it’s the most common.
Note: We’ll avoid athletics, legacies, and other special non-academic admissions situations for now.
In this newsletter, we’ll briefly explore how colleges score applications. The next two issues will do a deeper dive on the Academic Score and Personal Score.
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.
A visual representation of application scoring
Scoring applications is the way admissions officers give hard numbers to the many difficult-to-measure components of applications. The chart below is the simplest way to think about application scoring – a score for academics (the Academic Score) and a score for non-academics (the Personal Score). Some colleges use more scores (e.g., breaking non-academics into an Extracurricular Score and Personal Score). But we find simplifying it into just two scores makes it most clear how the system works.
The higher each score, the higher the probability the student gets in. But high scores don’t guarantee admission.
There’s an academic bar. Students below the bar rarely get in as the college believes it’s unlikely the student is capable of succeeding academically at their college.
There’s a personal bar. Students below the bar rarely get in as the college believes the student may have character flaws (a red flag for success in college and beyond).
Now, let’s take a look at the scores applicants typically receive.
4 in 5 applicants are above the academic bar; nearly all are above the personal bar.
It’s easier to have a high academic score (2 in 5) than a high personal score (1 in 5).
It’s rare to be exceptional in the Academic Score or Personal Score (the top boxes).
Colleges don’t only rely on scores. If they did, only applicants with strong Academic and Personal Scores would get in. However, at highly-selective colleges, applicants with strong Academic and Personal Scores are only about 75% of admitted students. At colleges with large class sizes, students with strong academics are likely to be accepted without strong Personal Scores (as there aren’t enough applicants with both strong Academic and Personal Scores).
The scores are guidelines. Colleges will consider other factors beyond the scoring when making final decisions – which is why high scores sometimes aren’t enough. For example, admissions officers may consider the opportunities the student had available, priority students (athletes, legacies, children of faculty or donors), demonstrated interest in attending their college, ability for the family to pay, intended major, special circumstances (family hardships), or something particularly unique in an application.
Implications for students and parents
The implications of this are important for students and parents to understand.
Most students are very similar academically to other applicants. This is because students self-select where they’re applying based on their academics (grades, strength of curriculum, test scores).
Colleges with more academically-qualified applicants than spots use the Personal Score to differentiate between applicants. At highly-selective colleges, the data indicates a strong academic score increases admissions chances by 3x; a strong personal score increases admissions chances by 10x.
Students who want to get into selective colleges need to focus on their Personal Score – what they write about (experiences) and how they write about it (essays).
Even having a spectacular application (strong Academic and Personal Scores) doesn’t guarantee admission.
Implications for counselors
We run webinars for tens of thousands of families each year. It’s an eye-opening experience for students and parents to understand how colleges score applications and what colleges look for in applicants. We find families have two key takeaways:
Their academics are unlikely to set them apart from other applicants. This better sets admissions expectations and gets students to have more balanced school lists.
They need to focus on their non-academics – e.g., essays, activities list. Students will start working on their applications earlier, spend more time on their applications, and may pursue more growth opportunities to show their traits (e.g., leadership, self-learning).
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 Academic Score.
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