Senior Year Grades..Do they matter for Admission?

[Anonymous]

Yes, schools will get quarter grades, semester grades and a final transcript.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, schools will get quarter grades, semester grades and a final transcript.

Not many colleges ask for first quarter grades for ED, though naturally the ones that do are very selective schools. (As an aside, most high schools don't run on quarters, and some colleges ask counselors to go into Canvas and pull grades, which are often terribly incomplete.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, schools will get quarter grades, semester grades and a final transcript.

Depends on the school. VA Tech does not get any senior year grades. It says so on the Common App.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For EA it doesn’t matter. If you’re deferred to RD then you’ll need to submit mid year grades. For most schools you’d have to be seriously failing for your offer to rescinded. The final grades aren’t sent till mid summer

That’s not true. A lot of schools want first quarter or first trimester for EA or ED.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For EA it doesn’t matter. If you’re deferred to RD then you’ll need to submit mid year grades. For most schools you’d have to be seriously failing for your offer to rescinded. The final grades aren’t sent till mid summer

Depends on school. DC's school (top 15) requested first quarter grades for ED but never asked to see them again after acceptance.

[Anonymous]

Short answer is yes it can matter but it will depend where they are applying and if you are talking about a B vs an A in a class or suddenly Cs, Ds, and Fs when the student was either accepted or had a good chance of being accepted to a competitive college program on the basis of a much higher GPA/profile.

The school that my kid applied to EA required a snapshot of senior grades (could be official/unofficial) by a certain date and semester grades when available. The high schools my kids attended automatically sent semester grades to all colleges applied to whether the college required it or not. They also send final transcripts to the college the student will attend. One of the checklist items for my kids college portal was receipt of the final high school transcript.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For EA it doesn’t matter. If you’re deferred to RD then you’ll need to submit mid year grades. For most schools you’d have to be seriously failing for your offer to rescinded. The final grades aren’t sent till mid summer

Depends on school. DC's school (top 15) requested first quarter grades for ED but never asked to see them again after acceptance.

This is extremely rare. Nearly all the most selective schools require final grades and will consider rescinding offers if there are multiple grades of C or lower. With one grade of C or below, the college may require the student take a remedial course.

[Anonymous]

A student from our high school got rescinded from Duke in late July for getting one D and one C in the last quarter of HS. The D iwas in AP Chem and they were going as a premed major so that is probably why.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A student from our high school got rescinded from Duke in late July for getting one D and one C in the last quarter of HS. The D iwas in AP Chem and they were going as a premed major so that is probably why.

Good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A student from our high school got rescinded from Duke in late July for getting one D and one C in the last quarter of HS. The D iwas in AP Chem and they were going as a premed major so that is probably why.

This type of situation is certainly a concern, but nonetheless rescinding for this has been relatively rare in the past, so rare that it's not easy to find solid anecdotes in college admissions forums. I hunted high and low for this type of info a few years back, when my kid got a D in AP calc BC (the college was not as highly ranked as Duke, more like T30, didn't even get a warning). It was very, very difficult to find much information on rescission for low grades beyond Columbia sending scary warning letters for Bs. I came across statements the UChicago admissions dean made some years ago at an accepted student event, where he was ribbing students for "sweating over that C in AP Chem" or similar, implying that it was no issue whatsoever.

Warnings seemed more common in summer 2023 than in the past. Thinking out loud, the increase in warnings plus the above Duke anecdote makes me wonder if emphasis on the final transcript is increasing now that there's greater emphasis on grades due to test optional policies in general or perhaps even for specific accepted applicants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For EA it doesn’t matter. If you’re deferred to RD then you’ll need to submit mid year grades. For most schools you’d have to be seriously failing for your offer to rescinded. The final grades aren’t sent till mid summer

Depends on school. DC's school (top 15) requested first quarter grades for ED but never asked to see them again after acceptance.

It is a near certainty that your DC's T15 school received your DC's final transcript during the summer. High schools send out final transcripts to the college the student is attending relatively automatically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A student from our high school got rescinded from Duke in late July for getting one D and one C in the last quarter of HS. The D iwas in AP Chem and they were going as a premed major so that is probably why.

This type of situation is certainly a concern, but nonetheless rescinding for this has been relatively rare in the past, so rare that it's not easy to find solid anecdotes in college admissions forums. I hunted high and low for this type of info a few years back, when my kid got a D in AP calc BC (the college was not as highly ranked as Duke, more like T30, didn't even get a warning). It was very, very difficult to find much information on rescission for low grades beyond Columbia sending scary warning letters for Bs. I came across statements the UChicago admissions dean made some years ago at an accepted student event, where he was ribbing students for "sweating over that C in AP Chem" or similar, implying that it was no issue whatsoever.

Warnings seemed more common in summer 2023 than in the past. Thinking out loud, the increase in warnings plus the above Duke anecdote makes me wonder if emphasis on the final transcript is increasing now that there's greater emphasis on grades due to test optional policies in general or perhaps even for specific accepted applicants.

You're probably right. Its also possibly because they have such an expanded pool of applicants, they can afford to be fussy towards the end and cherry pick who actually attends. Not those getting D's in AP Chem, but those still getting the A grades. Makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, schools will get quarter grades, semester grades and a final transcript.

Depends on the school. VA Tech does not get any senior year grades. It says so on the Common App.

Virginia Tech does not require the Mid Year report, but does get the final transcript per Common App (like virtually every college in the US).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A student from our high school got rescinded from Duke in late July for getting one D and one C in the last quarter of HS. The D iwas in AP Chem and they were going as a premed major so that is probably why.

This type of situation is certainly a concern, but nonetheless rescinding for this has been relatively rare in the past, so rare that it's not easy to find solid anecdotes in college admissions forums. I hunted high and low for this type of info a few years back, when my kid got a D in AP calc BC (the college was not as highly ranked as Duke, more like T30, didn't even get a warning). It was very, very difficult to find much information on rescission for low grades beyond Columbia sending scary warning letters for Bs. I came across statements the UChicago admissions dean made some years ago at an accepted student event, where he was ribbing students for "sweating over that C in AP Chem" or similar, implying that it was no issue whatsoever.

Warnings seemed more common in summer 2023 than in the past. Thinking out loud, the increase in warnings plus the above Duke anecdote makes me wonder if emphasis on the final transcript is increasing now that there's greater emphasis on grades due to test optional policies in general or perhaps even for specific accepted applicants.

You're probably right. Its also possibly because they have such an expanded pool of applicants, they can afford to be fussy towards the end and cherry pick who actually attends. Not those getting D's in AP Chem, but those still getting the A grades. Makes sense.

With the caveat that UCs have long stood out as sticklers over final transcripts (compared to top privates), few years ago, some of the UCs were rescinding so many students for any mere technicality related to the timing of when the final transcript was received because they were overenrolled. It was so egregious that it made the NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/29/us/uc-irvine-acceptance-rejected.html

Many top schools have struggled to manage yield since switching to test optional, so perhaps it's unsurprising if rescinding becomes more common. In my opinion, that's exacting a pretty big penalty on a kid who just gave up all other admission offers. The more traditional high bar for rescinding makes more sense to me than just a C and a D, though maybe additional context was involved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A student from our high school got rescinded from Duke in late July for getting one D and one C in the last quarter of HS. The D iwas in AP Chem and they were going as a premed major so that is probably why.

This type of situation is certainly a concern, but nonetheless rescinding for this has been relatively rare in the past, so rare that it's not easy to find solid anecdotes in college admissions forums. I hunted high and low for this type of info a few years back, when my kid got a D in AP calc BC (the college was not as highly ranked as Duke, more like T30, didn't even get a warning). It was very, very difficult to find much information on rescission for low grades beyond Columbia sending scary warning letters for Bs. I came across statements the UChicago admissions dean made some years ago at an accepted student event, where he was ribbing students for "sweating over that C in AP Chem" or similar, implying that it was no issue whatsoever.

Warnings seemed more common in summer 2023 than in the past. Thinking out loud, the increase in warnings plus the above Duke anecdote makes me wonder if emphasis on the final transcript is increasing now that there's greater emphasis on grades due to test optional policies in general or perhaps even for specific accepted applicants.

I don’t think online message boards would necessarily reflect the frequency this occurs. Tends to be a situation people don’t want to advertise.