This is Raj common law again with lesson number 11. What colleges look for in high school students. Remember, we said a few lessons ago that there are 4724 degree granting colleges? How many of these are actually selective? We said about 215 or so are somewhat selective, but the majority of them 95% are not really selective. So what do selective colleges look for in high school students?

The National Association for college admissions counseling, called NASDAQ asks the top 250 colleges What they look for in students. This survey is closely watched in the world of higher education. So what are those selection factors? There are 16 different admission decision factors that colleges have been using to select students. In this table, the N column represents the number of colleges that responded to the survey. The percentages in the right hand side of the table indicate how many college admissions officers find a particular factor important.

For example, 79% of all admissions officers said that grades in college prep courses are of considerable importance, making it the number one factor in college admissions. In fact, the top five factors have not changed in over 40 years. Most colleges use just two factors to gauge student quality and preparedness for college, the cumulative high school GPA and the composite score on the AC t. So let's go back to the top five selection factors again. In fact, this is what we will do in the next several lessons because they're so important to understand. No matter what you think about your teachers and parents, they have been consistently right about one thing. Grades matters and grades in college prep courses are by far the most important factor for the nation's selective colleges.

So what are college prep courses? Us hi Students generally take courses in various subjects broadly classified into college prep, and traditional college prep courses, those that are important for college preparedness and success, the core courses English language arts, math, science, social studies and at least one foreign language. The foreign language requirements by college they vary. Harvard, for instance, requires you to have completed four years of foreign language, whereas Yale does not have any requirements at all. The second most important factor is a student's grade in all high school courses leading to high school graduation. That is both core and traditional courses.

The number of courses required to get a high school diploma varies in each state. So the grades in all courses are simply the sum of the college prep courses. Plus courses like PE or fine arts of speech or electives. The State of Texas requires 26 credits to graduate from high school, although it allows fewer credits for some students with learning disabilities. We will discuss all about grades and the strength of curriculum is factor number three in the next lesson. If you have any questions, please let us know.

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