Overview: Applying to college
About this video
This overview lists what goes into a college application file. The student submits an application with biographical information, activities and essays; the high school sends a transcript, school profile and counselor letter; and there may be teacher recommendations, test scores, an interview, and samples of special talents. Selective schools put the most weight on your courses and grades.
You'll be able to
- list what the student submits and what the high school submits.
- name optional or extra parts of an application file.
- explain what selective schools usually weigh most heavily.
Key words
- Transcript
- The official record of the courses you took and the grades you earned.
- School profile
- A document from your high school describing the school so colleges understand your context.
- Letter of recommendation
- A letter from a counselor or teacher describing you as a student and person.
- Selective school
- A college that admits only a portion of the students who apply.
Transcript
- So to give you a big picture of what will be presented to a college, from your point of view as a student, you'll be submitting an application. That application will have in it biographical information, your extracurricular activities, essays that you've written.
Basically giving an overview of who you are and what you're doing, but there'll also be lots of other information that's submitted that an admissions office will use. From your high school, they will submit a transcript with your grades and courses you've taken.
Hopefully they'll send along a profile that sort of details that school and gives some information about the school you're in. There also will be probably a guidance counselor or college counselor letter of recommendation. A lot of schools also require one or potentially two letters of recommendation from teachers, so that could possibly be in the file as well.
If the school requires any kind of standardized testing, from SAT, ACT, potentially AP or IB scores, those sorts of things, they could be in your file as well. You may be required to do an interview for that school. And there are also opportunities to submit...
If you have special talents, in things like the arts, theatre, music, athletics, there may be special ways to submit samples of your work to also be evaluated. So, in general, I would say most selective and highly-selective schools are going to put the most emphasis on your programming grades, number one, just to make sure they feel you can do the work at their school.
How they use the rest of those components will vary greatly by school.
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