Decoding Transcripts

Admissions Beat

How do admissions officers read and interpret high school transcripts, the official academic record of the courses an applicant has taken in high school and the grades received? And what role do “school profiles” play? They are the narrative descriptions that high school counselors prepare for admissions offices, chock full of context on a school's student body as a whole, and the wider community the school serves, among other details critical to assessing an applicant and application. In this encore episode of Admissions Beat, from November 2021, host Lee Coffin of Dartmouth explains that transcripts are so much more than “numbers,” and that those primary source documents reveal not only how an applicant has performed in the classroom thus far, but their potential to soar in a university setting. Dean Coffin is joined by Calvin Wise, director of recruitment at Johns Hopkins University, along with two experienced college counselors: Darryl Tiggle of the Friends School of Baltimore, a Quaker school, and Candice Mackey of the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, a large public high school.