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From the College Office   Statement of Purpose   
 

Planning your High School Curriculum

1. COLLEGES ADMIT STUDENTS
Despite all the hype you've heard about SAT's, sports, leadership, special categories, etc., the vast majority of all admissions decisions made by selective colleges are determined by two factors: grades and course selection. Don't fool yourself; it's a very rare candidate who jumps over better students because of an editorship, a filthy-rich grandparent, or an amazing jump shot. To get into a "good" college, you've got to get "good" grades in "good" courses.

2. EVERYTHING ELSE IS RELATIVE
What is a "good" college for you? Only a thorough, individualized college search will reveal your right answers. Similarly, colleges at various levels of competition for entrance will have varying ideas of which courses and grades are "good enough" to get you in. But, as a rule, selective colleges seek applicants who have succeeded in the hardest courses they can handle across the five basic disciplines. How many, how hard, and how successful are the questions which distinguish levels of competition, and make application outcomes at selective colleges hard to predict.

3. THE FIVE BASIC DISCIPLINES
Although colleges will ask you to choose a major after two years and to specialize increasingly throughout your career, most expect their candidates to be well prepared in English, Mathematics, History/Social Sciences, Laboratory Sciences, and Foreign Language. The closer you can come to four years of college preparatory work in each of these disciplines, the stronger a candidate you become. Many students are not pleased to learn this truth because, after all, few of us are equally good at and equally fascinated by all areas of learning. And since "everything is relative", it is surely true that exceptional advancement and achievement in one or more areas may excuse minor shortage in another. But the principle stands, and should be your polestar in high school curriculum planning.

4. HONORS, A.P., I.B., ETC.
Every selective college you visit nowadays will tell you it's seeking students who have challenged themselves with the hardest courses their schools offer. For most, that means honors selections, Advanced Placement courses and, in some schools, International Baccalaureate program studies. The principle is simple to state -- "Get the highest grades you can get in the hardest courses you can handle" -- but tough to execute. Much depends on your school's grading and ranking systems (and everything ultimately depends, as we said, on how selective a college you're aiming for), but one thing is clear. Don't take a course which for you is so hard it's likely to put a "low" grade on your transcript. By all means, "stretch yourself", but not to the breaking point.

5. IMPROVEMENT
If you are one of those numerous human beings who is somewhat less than perfect, the earlier in high school you can make your bigger mistakes, the better. "Colleges", the aphorism goes, "are more interested in who you are now than who you were in ninth grade." If you can't do straight A's for four straight years, try to keep improving your grades (and course selection) year over year. Colleges love this evidence of growth and maturation. The senior year is especially important. In most cases, the senior first semester grades are the last information your colleges will learn about you. "The best grades you've ever gotten in the hardest courses you can handle" are of course what you want to show them. And don't start your vacation half way through senior year, either. Every college adminission is contingent upon "successful completion" of your high school studies. Colleges can, and occasionally do, cancel the admission of some hapless individual who took a dive in her/his last semester. Why? Those final grades showed he was not the student the college thought it had admitted.

6. THE BALANCE
Selective colleges are seeking, and finding, successful, serious students. Most also want people who are givers, joiners, good at many things, and great at one or two. Some (like members of the Ivy Athletic Association) can get absolutely anything they want in every applicant they admit. Others are grateful to get a class that can make it to graduation. Most are in between. The most successful candidates for selective colleges will be those who take plenty of hard course across the five basic disciplines, get consistently good and/or steadily improving grades, and still find time to do other things well. But here in the Land of Opportunity, there are college opportunities for any serious high-school graduate who wants higher education.