College Selection Tool: Academic Metrics

Level 5 - Ivy League

Welcome back! In the last few posts, we have been focused on the importance of college selection and providing a step by step guide on how to properly select and curate your colleges. 

The importance of this has been stated several times, but we want to reemphasize it.

College selection is the most critical aspect of the admissions process because it is one of the few areas that you actually can control.

Remember, college admissions is a game of probability, not absolution. If you are applying to any college that has selectivity, that means there is no guarantee that you will be accepted. 

So if you cannot guarantee admissions, then the best thing you can do is select colleges where you will be at a competitive advantage. 

That is the foundation of the college selection process that we provide, where competitive advantages, ability to achieve your goal, and other factors influence how you choose the colleges you choose to apply to. 

With that being said, we focus today on academic selection. 

What is academic selection?

Previously, we spoke about the academics of a college - how a college or university actually aligns to the intended goals you set. 

In that, we specifically focused on how you actually select a college on how it will get you into the intended career or opportunity you are looking for. 

Academic selection is different.

This is about how your quantitative academic record compares to the overall admissions process. 

In other words, how does your GPA compare against accepted students? 

This is most often what is thought of when someone debates on whether to apply to a college. 

Although colleges offer holistic admissions, we are going to focus less on the subjective aspects of the application (e.g., college essays) and focus more on the objective aspects of the application (e.g, standardized test scores).. 

When you select a college, you have to make sure that your academic metrics compare to the schools that you are trying to apply to.

This is where you will hear our common refrain that college selection is about putting colleges and universities in three categories:

• Safeties

• Targets

• Reaches

We have written about it frequently, but the general categorization makes it easier to slot schools. But more importantly, it helps you in two different ways:

1. You can determine if you are overloading or underloading any one particular category

2. It helps you keep focused on what you need to be able to improve your chances of getting accepted into a given college or university

The first part is very important. One of the most common issues we see is a family that overloads in one area. For example, an applicant applies to 5 schools, 4 of which are reach and 1 is a target school. Then decisions come out, they are rejected from 4 and waitlisted at a target school. Now it is too late and they have no ability to fix it. 

The second is useful for goal setting. When a student is entering even the 8th grade, it is important to start thinking about the kinds of colleges that you want to attend. We will get into this later when we put it all together for students in various circumstances, but it is important to translate college academic standards into real terms.

For example, let’s say that a hypothetical college’s GPA standards show that 75% of students have at least a 3.9 out of 4.0, on an unweighted scale. That translates to roughly a 94 average across all classes. 

Statistically, that means that you need to have a solid A in nearly everything you do to be able to meet that profile. Obviously, averages mean you could have a B in something and make it up for it with A+ in another course, but break that down even further.

One “B” significantly lowers your average, and it means you need to do a lot of strong work in other areas to make up for it to fall within the statistical range of accepted students.