S5E9: How to Recover Your Admissions Strategy If You Fell Behind in High School (Course Rigor, GPA & Strategy)

And this student said, what if I didn't really work hard, just took a standard curriculum during the first year and start of second year.

And now a bunch of opportunities to take the most rigorous courses are not available.

I can only take like one AP and two honors in junior year, and I fear it's too late because while others are ahead, I only have senior year to take the more rigorous courses.

What should I do? We see this a lot.

I see this a lot when we're talking to students.

And it's one of the things that gets to planning ahead.

And I know, you know, I talk about this a lot, plan ahead, be strategic, think ahead, because we don't have a time machine.

And this is a result of that.

Why? Well, because if you get off track, if you get off the honors track, it's very hard to make that up.

it's very very hard to catch up and i spoke to a student the other day where we're like okay you want to study business but you're only on track to hit basically pre-calc senior year can we accelerate that and they went back to the school and the school is like yeah no we're not going to accept outside credits we don't have any summer accelerated credits that's your track you have to stay there and the student was very distraught because the reality is is that because a school offers Calc AB and BC, but they're not eligible for it, it's going to impact them when they're applying to top schools.

And that's a situation that this student has found themselves in.

Now, I can, you know, definitely, we could definitely work with this student, for example, to say, okay, let's talk to the school will the school allow you to do some acceleration here will the school allow you to take some credits over the summer or take some concurrent credits or maybe dual enrollment credits and then leapfrog into some of those other ap classes because the challenge that we have here is that you are, of course, evaluated first relative to the other students in your school or class.

So the admissions officer is going to open that school profile and see, okay, you took three AP courses, but there were really 15 available.

And so that doesn't look good from a rigor standpoint.

And then once you get into weighted and unweighted GPAs and the acceleration you get for these honors classes, It's something that definitely can put you at a disadvantage.

But Thomas, I can hear some of you saying, what about extracurriculars? What about testing? And so for a student like this, yes, extracurriculars are going to make a big difference.

And certainly in the additional information essay or in the Common App personal essay, we're going to want an explanation of what happened, right? And Keep in mind that admissions officers are human and they do appreciate that people grow and mature and develop at different rates.

And so there is a story here about how, you know, I started high school somewhat immature and had to kind of find my way.

Now, the question here is what grades were received freshman, sophomore year when the rigor was a little bit lower? Because if we have low rigor and low grades, it's pretty hard to recover from that.

Now, there are some

things we can do to mitigate this.

For example, if the counselor says, hey, listen, this student really has stood out.

They had a slow start, but they really have found their footing.

They're really exceptional.

Look, they're doing all these extracurricular activities.

And this student said, what if I didn't really work hard, just took a standard curriculum during the first year and start of second year.

And now a bunch of opportunities to take the most rigorous courses are not available.

I can only take like one AP and two honors in junior year, and I fear it's too late because while others are ahead, I only have senior year to take the more rigorous courses.

What should I do? We see this a lot.

I see this a lot when we're talking to students.

And it's one of the things that gets to planning ahead.

And I know, you know, I talk about this a lot, plan ahead, be strategic, think ahead, because we don't have a time machine.

And this is a result of that.

Why? Well, because if you get off track, if you get off the honors track, it's very hard to make that up.

it's very very hard to catch up and i spoke to a student the other day where we're like okay you want to study business but you're only on track to hit basically pre-calc senior year can we accelerate that and they went back to the school and the school is like yeah no we're not going to accept outside credits we don't have any summer accelerated credits that's your track you have to stay there and the student was very distraught because the reality is is that because a school offers Calc AB and BC, but they're not eligible for it, it's going to impact them when they're applying to top schools.

And that's a situation that this student has found themselves in.

Now, I can, you know, definitely, we could definitely work with this student, for example, to say, okay, let's talk to the school will the school allow you to do some acceleration here will the school allow you to take some credits over the summer or take some concurrent credits or maybe dual enrollment credits and then leapfrog into some of those other ap classes because the challenge that we have here is that you are, of course, evaluated first relative to the other students in your school or class.

So the admissions officer is going to open that school profile and see, okay, you took three AP courses, but there were really 15 available.

And so that doesn't look good from a rigor standpoint.

And then once you get into weighted and unweighted GPAs and the acceleration you get for these honors classes, It's something that definitely can put you at a disadvantage.

But Thomas, I can hear some of you saying, what about extracurriculars? What about testing? And so for a student like this, yes, extracurriculars are going to make a big difference.

And certainly in the additional information essay or in the Common App personal essay, we're going to want an explanation of what happened, right? And Keep in mind that admissions officers are human and they do appreciate that people grow and mature and develop at different rates.

And so there is a story here about how, you know, I started high school somewhat immature and had to kind of find my way.

Now, the question here is what grades were received freshman, sophomore year when the rigor was a little bit lower? Because if we have low rigor and low grades, it's pretty hard to recover from that.

Now, there are some

things we can do to mitigate this.

For example, if the counselor says, hey, listen, this student really has stood out.

They had a slow start, but they really have found their footing.

They're really exceptional.

Look, they're doing all these extracurricular activities.