Brilliant … But Bouncy

All of This Information is on the Transcript.

Dear Admissions Officer for an Unnamed College:

As a former marketing professional, I just wanted you to know that, after having visited colleges all over the country, your school was one of only six to which my son planned to apply. He visited twice – once on our own and once for a tour – and enjoyed his visits immensely. He thought the campus seemed friendly and the students seemed happy.

But today my son (a rising senior) was working on his Common App, and decided to remove your college from the short list of schools to which he will apply.

And WHY did he do this…?

Because your college is the only one on his list – and perhaps in the world – that requires the Common App’s Courses and Grading section to be completed. For my son, and likely for many other prospective students, that’s a deal-breaker.

The Courses and Grading section requires students to list every single class that they’ve taken, sorted by year, including those taken in middle school. Each class must be entered into a category next to the specific name of the class, and its corresponding label (i.e., Honors).

THEN students need to enter the grades for each quarter, semester AND final grade – as well as listing the credit for each course by semester and year – so, 0.5, 0.5, 1. To complete Courses and Grading, they must do this for each and every high school class they’ve taken.

ALL OF THIS INFORMATION IS ON THE TRANSCRIPT that would be sent along with his application! But for some reason, your college still insists on having the students transpose that information manually into the Common App form.

In my son’s case, this even means adding the name of his middle school into a different section of the Common App, because he took high school level courses in middle school. Since my son’s high school uses a semester system, it means that he would have to individually type in the names of 48 courses, including their label, category, and quarter grade, semester grade, and final grade for each and every one of those 48 courses. This, of course, doesn’t include the courses he’ll be taking in his senior year.

Basically, your college – and only your college – expects him to retype his transcript into the Common App form.

While I tried to persuade him to enter this information anyway, since he really loved the school, he simply can’t bear it. It took him nearly half an hour to put in courses from just the first half of ninth grade.

He finally said, “They seemed kind of out of date anyway,” and this just confirmed his suspicion that your college might not be a good fit for him after all.

I realize that you probably have your reasons for requiring this laborious and completely unnecessary process. But if I were a college admissions officer, I would want to know that there are prospective students out there who have visited, and who LOVED your school, who were planning to apply – and who decided not to apply even though your application is free. And I would want to know why.

Courses and Grading is an agonizing process that would be duplicated in its entirety when the transcript is sent.

So I thought you should know, and I took another half-hour out of my day to tell you. Maybe in the future, you could drop the requirement like so many other schools have already done. Good luck with your future candidates.

Sincerely,

Mom