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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]College aren't behind the ridiculous AP expectations, parents are. Colleges admit the best of who applies. Parents are the ones pushing their DDs and DSs to have more APs than the last kid who got in.

Going to a school that limits how many APs you can take in a year is a great thing for stress and wellness.[/quote]

I agree with what you said about the value of AP limits. (Though high schools get measured by AP participation so it won’t happen any time soon.) But when colleges give weight and actual credit for AP they are part of it. When you can load up on credits in HS and save a semester or two of insanely expensive tuition it’s hard not to try. My first made himself miserable with APs but it did probably get him into the school he really wanted. He didn’t make up the rules, nor did we. He heard ‘most rigor possible at your school’ and the importance of class rank and at his school that meant APs. [/quote]

[b]FCPS isn't even reporting the rank anymore. I know people here say admissions guesses or knows, but that can't be so for every college.

I interpret the rigor comment as get to the AP at some point in each subject. I don't think it means take all 5 history APs, 4 science APs, etc. [/qu[/b]ote]

There's a simple answer.  Every year the high schools provide a "class profile" sheet to the universities and colleges.  It's a bar chart showing where the rising senior class stands in terms of GPA (because not all high schools are equal as you know).  So the chart will show that a 4.44 means that Largo is in the top 1% of the class or the top 25% of the class in the case of TJ.  The first thing that the readers hired by college admissions officers do is pull out the ACT, SAT and SAT II scores and put them at the top.  Then they align the student's end of junior year GPA across the class profile and figure out their class rank.  Takes less than 2 seconds.  In most large universities, if the student doesn't make that cull then the application doesn't proceed.  Other facts that might be culled out at that point are URM, Questbridge (separate application program), first-generation, legacy if significant bucks and "development" if the dad is Steve Jobs and the University thinks a building in the future might be in the offing.  Only after meeting the University's standards for GPA and class rank does the application go to the next stage for an EC check.  Lastly letters of recommendations and the essay.  When colleges are receiving 35,000 applications a year they can't read all of them. The average application at a SLAC gets 6 minutes of read time.  Less so at a popular university.  The bar charts are all explained in Dean J.'s materials at UVA.  That's why they can tell you "FCPS doesn't rank!" but then when the class is formed, the President of the University will say that 94.6% of the admitted or incoming class is in the top ten percent of their high school class.  Also, each FCPS counselor writes their own letter of recommendation and indicates where the student stands vis-a-vis their own class in their own statement.[/quote]
Maybe you are one of the pessimistic people who think the colleges are lying about everything. I think that the schools that say they read the applications holistically are actually doing so.

Vanderbilt gets 35,000 applications.
[img]http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/vandybloggers/manage/files/20150831AR0050-1.jpg[/img]

Columbia gets 38,000.
[img]https://arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-spectator.s3.amazonaws.com/public/4WETTRCOSZH5DIVEGLRJM673MU[/img]

Seems like they have enough people to read all the applications.
[/quote]

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