Although Fall Term grades will not be officially determined until after finals on December 7, many colleges will receive the projected term grades of early applicants, according to Sean Logan, Director of College Counseling.
Until 2009, students who applied early decision or early action to college submitted their applications without their grades from Senior Fall. Three years ago, the College Counseling Office (CCO) began asking teachers to report projected grades for early applicants to schools that requested fall grades, according to Logan.
As applicant pools have become more competitive and colleges increasingly selective, a greater number of schools now require grades from the first quarter of Senior year in order to better identify the strongest applicants, according to Logan.
Logan said that Amherst College, Babson College, Bates College, Hamilton College, Middlebury College, Trinity College, Tufts University, Washington University in St. Louis, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University and Williams College have traditionally requested projected fall grades for all early applicants.
Other colleges request fall grades on a case-by-case basis, depending on the academic transcript of each applicant, Logan said. These schools will usually not request projected grades if a student has a strong Upper year transcript.
Students who apply early are not notified if schools are requesting their projected fall grades.
“We tell [students] to assume schools will be asking [for grades] and plan accordingly with their studies,” wrote Logan in an e-mail to The Phillipian.
“What I’ve told my students is that if you are applying early action or early decision, be aware that the school may ask for grades and those grades will probably be wherever they are before Thanksgiving. So if you’re the kind of student that needs that final to pull that 4 or 5, you may not get that shot [by applying early],” he said in an interview.
Almost all colleges defer early applicants if fall grades are requested but not submitted, according to Logan.
Methods for grade projection vary from department to department and from teacher to teacher. While projected grades in math and science are often based on test averages alone, determining projected grades for humanities courses is more complicated because instructors weigh papers and exams differently, according to Logan.
“I think it’s a tricky situation for faculty… It may be a little bit easier for the Math Department to do because you’ve got… the test scores [and] the quizzes, but in your [Religion and Philosophy] course where you’ve had a couple of papers and one exam… the teachers may not be quite ready [to project grades],” he said.
Some teachers are more subjective when projecting grades, according to Thomas Cone, Instructor in Biology. If a student’s performance in class is improving or declining, teachers may adjust grades to accommodate for this fluctuation.
Teachers are usually asked for projected grades either right before or after Thanksgiving break, since early applications are typically due on November 1 or November 15.
Logan said there is no one type of student that he would recommend for early action or early decision programs. However, he generally discourages students who have weak Upper year transcripts from applying early because waiting until the regular decision round gives them a chance to show improvement in their Senior year grades.
“[Seniors] may, at the last second, pull the plug [on early applications] if they decide that it’s the end of October and their grades are not where they need to be,” Logan added.
