What is Holistic College Application Review?
All top-tier colleges review candidates holistically. So, what does this actually mean?
In short, the context of your environment and the opportunities available to you matter a lot. Your course rigor, grades, and test scores (if required/accepted) must be strong enough for you to even be considered for acceptance. If a college is highly selective, the other components of your application must also be exceptional. If a college is moderately selective, the other components need to show a high degree of effort and diligence.
Below, I go through each part of the application and how it factors into the admissions decision:
Contextual Information
Grades
Class Rank
Course Rigor
ACT/SAT Scores
AP, IB, & SAT II Scores
Teacher Recommendations
Counselor Recommendation
Extracurricular Activities
Essays
Additional Information
Contextual Information
Consider these two fictional students.
Sophia
Lives in an urban-metro area
Attends a school with 32 AP courses
Plays Varsity Tennis
Captain of Varsity Lacrosse
President of Robotics Club
Traveled without her parents to Ecuador to teach English and lead a children’s drama camp
Has attended summer programs at Stanford, Notre Dame, and University of Chicago
Emma
Lives in a rural area
Attends a school with no AP courses
School offers limited opportunities for extracurriculars
Works on her family’s farm
Takes care of four younger siblings while parents work
Girl Scout Ambassador
Heavily involved in 4-H, receiving two state-level awards
Worked additional job to help pay her family’s bills at a local feedlot while her father was hospitalized
Sophia and Emma both sound like exceptional young women. In my example, I have not given any information on the students’ grades, course rigor, or test scores. Instead, I chose to focus on the context of their environment, the opportunities available to them, and a few of their activities.
Many students assume that a student like Sophia would be more impressive to Admissions Readers than a student like Emma. After all, she has taken coursework at elite institutions. She has multiple held leadership positions and has traveled solo across the world. Sophia has grown many of the skills that colleges are seeking: leadership, independence, and academic curiosity.
However, Emma’s activities show her own strengths: she is a leader within Girl Scouts and her own family. She had handled an extraordinary amount of responsibility by caring for her siblings, working on her family’s farm, and even working another job to support her family financially. She has risen to the top level within Girl Scouts and has achieved success within 4-H.
The classes and extracurricular opportunities available to Sophia and Emma are different. Emma has faced financial stressors that Sophia has not. When reviewing each of these applicants, these contextual factors are extremely important to admissions readers. Emma will not be penalized for not taking AP classes, as her school does not offer them. Additionally, Emma’s lack of school-related extracurriculars will be viewed in context of her other responsibilities. In short, admissions readers value diverse student experiences. Emma and Sophia would both make potentially strong applicants at elite colleges.
Grades
Grades are a useful metric for comparing applicants from the same school. Top-tier colleges have “feeder schools,” which are high schools from which many students typically apply, and application readers are familiar with the grading systems of these schools. GPA is less useful for comparing students across different schools, as the difficulty of receiving an A or a B in any particular course can vary widely across schools. Still, colleges have guidelines for what constitutes strong, borderline, and weak GPAs. If your GPA falls into the “weak” category, the reader will look for additional contextual information to determine whether you may still be a strong applicant.
In general, colleges are more accepting of lower-than-ideal grades in 9th and 10th grade, as long as there is an upward trend in grades. They are also more understanding of slightly lower GPAS if there is context explaining the dip in grades. For example, I remember reviewing an applicant from South Korea who received all C’s at her Korean high school. She moved to the US in her sophomore year and her transcript reflected nearly all A+ grades since then (with just a couple of regular A’s). She also had a near perfect ACT score and her teachers raved about her in their recommendations. In other situations, I have seen admissions readers look past a temporary dip in grades explained by a student experiencing a serious illness, a parent being deported, or a close family member passing away. If a traumatic life event affected your school performance, it’s important to address this in either your essay or the additional information section of the application.
Class Rank
Many high schools rank their students: usually, students are given one rank based on their weighted GPA and another based on their unweighted GPA. This metric gives application readers another clue as to how you stack up compared to your classmates. The most selective colleges are looking for students who fall into the top 5-10 percent of their class.
California residents who rank in the top 9 percent of your graduating class and have met the A-G requirements are guaranteed a spot at a University of California school. (See more info here.)
Course Rigor
Course rigor is another area in which application readers will compare you against the other applicants from your school. Colleges want to see that you are taking the most challenging courses available to you. Most high schools have a secondary school report, which lists the school’s AP and/or IB courses. If your high school has an IB program or AP courses, colleges want to see that you have taken advantage of them. If your school does not have these advanced courses, admissions readers will not hold this against you, but they will expect to see how you’ve gone out of your way to expand your education. For example, it shows initiative, motivation, and intellectual curiosity when a student goes out of their way to take community college or online courses on a topic that interests them.
Of course, course rigor and GPA can be somewhat at odds with one another, as it’s much easier to maintain a high GPA with easier courses. My advice for students is always to take the hardest courses that your schedule can accommodate, take classes with the best teachers available, and play to your strengths. If AP Physics is a really tough class, but the teacher is known to be one of the best at your school, then take AP Physics. You will not regret taking a class with a great teacher, even if you have to put in a ton of work. If you’re a talented artist and so-so at math, then take AP Studio Art instead of AP Statistics (but still take another math course -- you need four years of math). Ultimately, figuring out the right balance of courses that will be appropriately rigorous is highly personable.
Test Scores
In recent years, many schools have decided to go test optional and test blind.
Test optional: When a school is "test optional," it means that they do not require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores as part of their application for admission.
Test blind: When a school is "test blind," it means that they do not consider standardized test scores, such as SAT or ACT scores, in the admissions process, regardless of whether an applicant submits them.
For colleges and universities that are not test blind, SAT and ACT scores are the easiest metric for application readers to use when comparing applicants across schools. Many schools have guidelines as to what constitutes exceptionally strong, strong, borderline, and weak scores.
Schools may say that they do not have score cutoffs, but in reality, if your scores fall into the “weak” category, your application must be exceptional in other areas in order to be considered. If you want to know what constitutes a “strong” score at a particular school, just Google the college’s name + SAT or ACT percentiles. Many colleges publish the 25th to the 75th percentiles test scores for enrolled first-years.
AP, IB, & SAT II scores
Similar to ACT and SAT scores, AP, IB, and SAT II scores give admissions readers another useful metric for comparing applicants across different schools. These scores are not weighted nearly as heavily as ACT or SAT scores, but they help differentiate applicants. Some colleges require certain SAT II scores to apply, although these requirements have eased somewhat in the past couple of years. These scores can give helpful context to your grades. If your admissions reader is not familiar with your high school, then the A’s in your AP or IB courses will have more weight if they are accompanied by perfect AP/IB test scores.
Teacher Recommendations
Teacher recommendations have two components: a form and a letter. The form includes categories such as intellectual ability, leadership potential, and maturity, on which the teacher can rate the student according to a scale that ranges from “concerning” to “best of my career.” Some teachers are more liberal in their use of “best of my career,” so if possible, readers will compare these forms across students from the same school to get a sense of whether a particular teacher is overly stingy or overly generous in their praise.
The letter should be a more personalized component, in which the teacher speaks to your specific strengths. The best recommendation letters speak to specific experiences in which the teacher witnessed your determination, intellectual curiosity, or another quality. An outstanding teacher recommendation can push a borderline candidate over the edge towards acceptance. On the flip side, a negative teacher recommendation can disqualify your application, regardless of the strength of the rest of your application. (I truly do not understand why teachers agree to write recommendation letters if they don’t have anything positive to say. This is rare but it does happen.)
Teacher recommendations can also give context to your accomplishments. Teachers who know you well can speak to how you have grown as a student and how you have overcome obstacles. For example, I have seen recommendations where the teacher mentioned that the student maintained a consistently high academic performance despite experiencing homelessness or the divorce of their parents.
Counselor Recommendation
Your high school counselor must submit four items to supplement your applications: a form, a recommendation letter, your transcript, and your school profile. A school profile includes important contextual information, including the percentage of seniors who graduate, the percentage who go on to attend 2- or 4-year institutions, and the list of AP and/or IB courses.
Similar to the teacher recommendation form, the counselor recommendation form requires your counselor to score you on various components, including academics, extracurricular involvement, and character. At large and under resourced high schools, it’s common for counselors to not have a close relationship with each student, so their recommendations are often vague and simply refer to a student’s GPA and course rigor, as well as what they’ve heard about the student from their teachers. As a result, these recommendations are usually minimally helpful in making an admissions decision.
Extracurricular Activities
Extracurricular activities are one component that can really set an applicant apart. Colleges are looking for students who take initiative, show resilience, explore their intellectual curiosity, demonstrate leadership, and achieve impressive accomplishments. They’re also looking for sustained, impactful involvement. So, four years of an activity is better than one. Being the president of a club is appreciably better than being a member. Founding an organization and making an meaningful impact in your community through raising money or needed supplies for a cause is even better. I will dive more into extracurriculars in future posts.
Essays
Essays are another component that can push a borderline candidate over the edge towards acceptance. Essays give you the chance to tell the reader who you are in your own words. It is critical to use this space to give the admissions readers information that they will not gain anywhere else in your application.
Additional contextual information
The admissions readers do not know anything about you, other than the information presented in your application. The Common App and the Coalition App both have space to put additional information that you think may be helpful to the reader.
Here are the types of the situations to include in this section:
You experienced a major life event that impacted your academic performance, including a major illness, injury, or loss of a close family member.
You are limited in your ability to participate in extracurriculars due to supporting your family financially, taking care of younger siblings or disabled relatives, or your lack of reliable transportation to and from school.
You were unable to take a certain AP or honors course because it was offered at a time that conflicted with another required or AP course.
You were diagnosed with a learning disability during high school, so did not receive proper accommodations before this.
You do not have access to a computer and have to fill out the application on your phone.
