The Most Important Part of Your Application You’ve Never Seen
One of the most important pieces of a student’s application is something that many high schoolers have never heard of: the School Profile. It’s such a vague, ambiguous name, yet it’s an integral part of the college admissions process. A school profile is a brief document that summarizes the most critical information about your school. It talks about the kind of students who go there, the grading scale, special programs, and where graduates attend college.
A School Profile accompanies every single college application. Between 1-3 pages long, this important document is vital when it comes to providing context on your school. Without the profile, a transcript can be pretty meaningless – and potentially misunderstood.
Reviewing your school’s profile will allow you to put yourself in the shoes of the admissions counselor; you can see your transcript and application in the context in which they will see it. Understanding what information is included will help you determine what parts of your application may need additional explanation. For example, sometimes students will participate in Independent Learning Projects that are only briefly mentioned on the profile, but there is no detail on the student’s specific topic or the work involved. Maybe your school has a new Global Leadership program that you have enrolled in, but there is no mention of this program on the profile. You’ll want to be sure to provide some information about this program on your application so colleges know what it is. (The Additional Information section of the Common Application is a perfect place for this!) Your counselor may also want to highlight this information in their Counselor Recommendation.
Key Information on the School Profile
- What do students do after attending high school? Do the vast majority go to college? If so, do most students go to 4-year colleges? 2-year colleges? Furthermore, where do students go to college? Have they ever sent a student to X College? Do they send students regularly to X College? This information gives the colleges a sense of the school community and college-going culture.
- How are you performing within the context of your school? Many high schools provide a chart or graph showing the distribution of GPAs across the senior class. This is something colleges find very helpful in contextualizing what your GPA means in comparison to other students in your grade. Even if your school does not provide a class rank, colleges will sometimes guesstimate where you might be within your class based on the distribution chart.
- How are GPAs calculated? Profiles often give insight into course weighting and GPA calculation. Are Honors +1 and APs +2, or are Honors and APs weighted equally? Every high school does this differently!
- What are the average test scores (SAT and ACT) in your school? How do your scores (if you have provided them to X college) compare?
- What courses are offered at your school? A full slate of AP classes? Dual Enrollment with the local community college? Something else entirely? Some schools use numerical course coding to determine the course level. Rigor of schedule is one of the most important things colleges consider when reviewing your transcript, and the profile helps admissions counselors determine how challenging your schedule is compared to what is being offered.
- Does the school limit the number of advanced or AP classes? Colleges will not hold it against you if you have not taken advantage of opportunities you did not have. For example, if your school limits 11th graders to 3 APs per year;the admissions office will view a schedule with 3 APs as “most demanding”, while 3 AP courses at a different school with different opportunities may look less demanding. Context is everything!
- Special Programs and Opportunities. What sort of specialties does the high school offer? Did the student take advantage of any of these? These could include an independent study, a research program, dual enrollment, or a variety of other options.
- Does the school offer a wide assortment of activities or just a handful? Are there some unique opportunities relevant to the student’s interests? Have they taken advantage of these?
Here are a few random samples of profiles to give you a sense of what they include and what they look like:
Cannon School
Fox Lane High School
Marin Academy
Morristown-Beard School
Westfield High School
School profiles play a really important role in your college process. We require students to share school profiles with us as soon as we start working with you because we want to make sure we are assessing you in the context of your school community. And guess what? Colleges will do the same thing! So be informed, put yourself in the shoes of an admissions counselor, and be a self-advocate. Make sure that the profile and your application reflect all of the information you think a college should have about your school, its curriculum, activities, and any other special programs or accolades.
Any questions? We can help! Contact us to get started.