A student's high school may use a program called Naviance or SCOIR. These are college planning tools, and if your student’s high school makes it available to you, I would definitely encourage you to use it. The student may not have a choice; schools use these tools to help the college counselor keep track of letters of recommendation (LORs) and transcripts (GPA.)
Grade inflation
Grade inflation is definitely a thing. Somewhere in the middle of this chart is when I was applying to college, and the percentage of students who had 4.0s was about 34 percent. Now, it hovers between 68 and 70 percent. Think about it: your great student has a 4.0 average, but so do 70 percent of applicants.
A student’s grades from their junior year are really important. It’s the last full year that colleges will see of grades from that student. Grades in a student’s core classes are especially important because those are the teachers who will be asked to write a letter of recommendation (LOR).
Waive your rights
It sounds like a scary legal term (it is) but students definitely want to waive their rights because if they don’t, that could warn colleges. Maybe there’s negative feedback the teacher or counselor is afraid to divulge because the student didn't waive their rights? In these cases, colleges and universities may not even consider the applicant to make it fair for other applicants who did waive their rights.
Waive. Your. Rights.
Students: consciously show your teachers and counselors humility, teachability, and curiosity. These are the traits that we want oozing out of your letters of recommendation.
You need to be your own best advocate. What does that mean? You need to be the person your teachers and counselors hear from if/when there is a problem or concern.
Parents: allow your student to show self-advocacy. If high school counselors and teachers are constantly hearing from a parent instead of the student, they're not going to be able to write in a letter of recommendation that the student is independent and showing a readiness to leave home.
Here’s a book for parents who struggle with that:
Admissions decisions are based on grades, essays, extracurricular activities, talents, achievements, letters of recommendations, standardized test scores, student aid index, profiles, hooks, and other factors. There’s a lot that goes into the admissions process, and like I said before, no school is ever going to give you their algorithm, and they're never going to divulge why you did or did not get into their college.
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