Okay, I admit that if someone else wrote this article and I was reading it, I would think that title sounds a bit like clickbait. Below I’m going to show you a scenario when it is 100% accurate. When applying to universities, there are definitely times when your grades don’t matter.
First off, your grades matter. They matter a lot. Admissions offices always identify the transcript, the document that communicates your high school academic achievement, as the most important document in your application file. There is good reason for this. First of all, it includes information about the classes that you chose throughout high school. The rigor of these courses is very important to the admissions office. They will be looking at your choices and cross-referencing this with your high school profile to see how much you challenged yourself within the context of what was available to you. Second, there are obviously the grades themselves. The admissions office will be quite critical of these grades looking for strengths, weaknesses, trends, and implicit information (i.e. weak English scores will push more attention toward your TOEFL results).
So why say grades don’t matter in the title? Easy. They don’t matter to universities where you’ve already met or exceeded their academic profile. Let’s take a few steps backward and start from the beginning.
A good counselor will always advise students to apply to a range of universities based on the entirety of the student’s application (academic, extracurricular activities, essays, etc.). Everyone has their own individual approach/strategy for their applications, but, in general, students are typically advised to apply to a couple “reach schools,” a couple “target schools,” and a couple “safety schools.” All three of these categories are relative to the individual student. In other words, a reach school for one student might be a safety school for another student. Before we move on, it’s important to get a better idea of what these categories look like in practical terms.
Reach Schools – When you take your GPA, standardized testing, and course rigor and compare it to the published averages at that university, you are on the low end of that middle 50 percentile. In other words, there are lots of applicants that are presenting a stronger application.
Target Schools – When you take your GPA, standardized testing, and course rigor and compare it to the published averages at that university, you are right in the middle of that middle 50 percentile. In other words, you are an average applicant for that school.
Safety School – When you take your GPA, standardized testing, and course rigor and compare it to the published averages at that university, you are on the high end of that middle 50 percentile. In other words, you are presenting a stronger application than most other applicants.
So when do your grades matter the most and when do they not matter at all?
When an admissions officer reads your application, their number one priority is to make sure you are academically strong enough to excel at their university. When you are applying to a reach school, your academic record is not going to be overwhelmingly convincing. You are already on the low end of their academic profile. That doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to get rejected, it just means that they will be very critical of your grades and general academic abilities. If you have some great extracurricular activities or present your story well in an essay, that’s icing on the cake but will rarely get you in. For reach schools, your grades are everything.
When you apply to target schools, your academic record is right in the middle of their averages, so the admissions officer is fairly certain you’re going to be fine academically. They will corroborate this information with other elements in your application. They will pay attention to your essays and letters of recommendation and your general ability to fit into the school’s culture. Their evaluation of you is equal parts academic and non-academic factors. For target schools, grades matter as much as all elements of your application.
For safety schools, there’s a different story to be told. Your academic record is already well above the average applicant, so there’s very little question as to whether or not you are going to thrive in this particular university environment. Suddenly….your grades don’t matter. The focus of the reviewer shifts to everything else. Your essays tell them who you are and what you value. They also give them a tangible example of how well you write. Your recommendations offer clear illustration of your performance in the classroom and school setting. Your list of extracurricular activities shows how you spend your time (presumably how you will spend your time in university). All of these elements become much more important relative to your academic record, which has already been determined to be very attractive.
Does this mean you can’t get rejected from your safety schools? Absolutely not!
When an admissions officer at a selective school reads boring essays or flat recommendations or a patchy list of extracurricular activities, they immediately question what you bring to that campus. Being academically able isn’t everything, especially at smaller campuses where a single student’s involvement has the potential to play a significant role in the school’s culture. I have seen many, many amazing students get rejected by a school where their academic record is well above the middle 50 percentile. They just fell flat on everything else. This is why it’s so important to present strong essays and to get involved in your high school community in one way or another.
So you can see that the title isn’t actually clickbait. When students apply for their safety schools, they can’t relax or get lazy with presenting a convincing and attractive narrative that goes beyond just grades. For these safety schools, your grades don’t matter…but everything else does.
