High School Profile
Helpful items to include on a high school profile:
DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
- School name and address
- Counselor(s) name, address, phone number, e-mail address, fax number
- Number of seniors in the current graduating class
- Percent of seniors who go on to college
CURRICULUM
- List minimum requirements for graduation
- List names of honors and Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate
- Courses offered. (Grouping by academic department is helpful, or list all honors together, all AP together, all IB together.)
- Specify whether there are school rules that dictate how many H, AP, or IB courses a student can take or if they are not allowed to take them until a specific grade.
- State any specific high school extra requirements, (i.e., "All seniors are required to take a fine arts course." "All juniors and seniors are required to do 100 hours of community service each year.")
- Explain any course abbreviations on the transcript, if difficult to understand, (i.e., MaII = Intermediate Algebra, Myths of Mankind = 11th grade English).
GRADE POINT AVERAGE
- List an interpretation of your grading scale, (i.e., A = 90 - 100, B = 80 - 89, etc.)
- Explain if the GPA is weighted or not. If weighted, how is it weighted?
- Explain what is included in your cumulative GPA – only academic courses, all courses, only 11th grade, all years, etc.
- Then, please calculate a cumulative GPA, or at least a GPA for each school year.
RANK IN CLASS
- Make a clear statement of whether you provide rank in class or not.
- If you provide a specific rank, is it weighted or un-weighted? If weighted, what does it include - weights only for H, AP, IB? How much weight is given?
- Many schools give two ranks: a weighted rank and an un-weighted rank (all course rank).
- Do you have shared ranks? (There may be a place on the counselor report to answer this - more appropriate than in the profile.
- If no rank is given, colleges need a grade distribution.
- Provide a GPA range. The lowest GPA in the class and the highest GPA in the class and the mean GPA for the class. This is a minimum requirement.
- Providing a grade distribution by deciles or quintiles or quartiles is preferable.
- OR, some schools provide a visual representation of grade distribution by using graphs, bar charts, or scattergrams.
- OR, some schools provide a grade distribution by each course taught in the 11th grade (or for 9th, 10th, and 11th grades). This tends to occur at small private schools where the whole class is taking a similar curriculum.
TESTING
- List mean or median SATs or ACTs (or both) for the junior class.
- List score distribution or median/mean AP results at the end of the junior year.
OPTIONAL
- List of colleges your students have attended for the past year or several years.
- Description of the community your high school is located in.
- Web site address for the high school, if a web site is available.
- Other "bragging" items about your students or community.
Prepared by Carol Lunkenheimer
Dean of Admissions, Northwestern University
