This week we welcome Assistant Director of Admission, Danielle Foote, to the blog. Welcome, Danielle!
In the college application process, there are a lot of pieces you will likely start and finish within your senior year—writing essays, gathering documents, synthesizing your resume of activities—these are just a few.
However, one foundational piece of your college application is a series of decisions and culmination of day-to-day work over several years… your course rigor. You’ve likely heard an admission officer, college or school counselor, or Redditt post mention “rigor,” but what does that mean in practical terms when we sit down to evaluate your application at Georgia Tech?
Holistic Review
I love food and I love analogies, so track with me here: your college application in the hands of a college admission counselor is like a highly personalized, build-your-own pizza. We are considering the whole pie, which is made up of many parts, when we read your application. (Pro tip: if you want to take a deep dive into our holistic review process, check out our website.)
While we all have our own preferences and choices of flavors, I think we can all agree that the crust or dough is the most critical part of the pizza. It’s the foundation—if it’s weak, that poor little pizza is going to fall apart before it even gets to your mouth.
Your academic preparation is your college application “crust.” Two big components of your academic preparation are your grades and the rigor of your curriculum. The best predictor of your success in college is your high school performance, typically quantified by your GPA.
However, we also want to see that you’ve challenged yourself with the most challenging classes available to you in the context of your high school. Success in those challenging courses gives us more confidence in your preparation for college and your likelihood of success once you are a student on our campus.
Rigor Alphabet Soup
So, what’s considered rigorous? Your favorite college admission answer: It depends.
Some of the most common advanced curriculum options we see include Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), Dual Enrollment (DE), Advanced Level (A-Level, AL, formerly known as AICE), Post-AP coursework, and school-specific rigor (commonly found at boarding schools, independent schools, etc.).
The common theme here is challenge. In these courses, students are challenged to develop critical thinking and analytical skills, require significantly more study time outside of class, typically move at a faster pace, and are similar in difficulty to the courses you’ll take in college. In some settings, honors and advanced courses may be a student’s most rigorous choice.
Context is Everything
We know that curriculum offerings, access to opportunity, funding, scheduling, and many other factors affect a student’s coursework decisions. We compare your rigor and grades within the context of your high school.
Your counselors provide us with a school profile which provides our team with information about the curriculum you had access to, and then we carefully evaluate your transcript for what you took advantage of within those opportunities. Because of that context, we are not directly comparing students at a high school with over 25 AP options to the students at a high school with one AP course!
Finding Balance
Think progressive overload here, just like weight training—we don’t expect you to “lift” five AP classes your freshman year. Start with one, then add rigor as you can confidently and successfully handle it. You want to be just challenged enough to get out of your comfort zone and build your academic “muscle,” without feeling like you are being crushed under the load.
At the end of the day, this conversation is a highly individualized one. What may be an appropriate course load for some may be overwhelming for others. Think back to our holistic conversation—consider balancing extracurriculars, responsibilities, and mental well-being with your academic courses. The key is to challenge yourself to the best of your ability while still keeping strong grades, while at the same time leaving margin for health in other areas of your life.
Aiming for “x” or “y” number of AP, IB, DE, or other college-level courses because you saw it in a discussion group online is not going to serve you. Surveying your commitments, asking teachers and counselors about course loads, and having open-minded conversations with your family will help you plan a rigor load that is right and will serve you.
Danielle Foote joined the Georgia Tech Office of Undergraduate Admission in 2022 after serving as a high school counselor in Georgia for eight years. As the Assistant Director of Early Outreach, she is passionate about encouraging and empowering students in middle and early high school to navigate the college admission process with as much education and transparency as possible. She is also passionate about equipping high school counselors (from the “other side of the desk”) with all of the knowledge they need to support their students in their college-going journeys.