How To Write a Winning Personal Statement or SOP







By Rajkamal Rao  


If you're a student about to embark on writing your first college essay, personal statement, or Statement of Purpose (SOP), this image probably describes you well.

For international students, especially, this feeling is for a good reason.  Students from India, China and other parts of Asia are rarely asked to write creative essays through their high school and early college years.  Engineering students are at a special disadvantage here.  Semester exams never test creative writing and reports written at the end of projects, internships or for conferences are far too technical.

The SOP is the most important subjective element of a student's application package.  It brings together the entire student into a single 2-page essay, essentially, a human story.  The SOP is NOT a resume but a good SOP includes highlights of your abilities.

We like to define the SOP as the essay version of a Google roadmap.  Describe who you are today (origin), describe where you want to go and why (destination), and articulate how you want to get there (the route map).

Writing an SOP is not easy

As a professional writer and essay reviewer, and someone who served as an international op-ed columnist based in the United States for the Hindu group of publications (including as a weekly columnist for the "World View" column for the group's MBA student publication (BusinessLine on Campus) for over 11 years, I take my essays seriously.  Every column I have written is edited by a team of professional sub-editors.  To date, more than 650 columns of mine have been published (including editorials for Tipp Insights).

Over the years, my columns are published largely as originally written, with minor edits to style or format.  But on three occasions in the last 12 months, I have had to completely re-write my column because it did not meet editorial muster for one or more of eight elements of my submission.  As described by the English Department at Brown University, an Ivy League school, these are Idea, Motive, Structure, Evidence, Explanation, Coherence, Implication, and Presence.

In my experience as a reviewer of student essays, I find several patterns.  Most students overestimate their ability to write and are unwilling to accept genuine criticism of their writing.  International students, in particular, consider the SOP as a necessary evil to complete the application and are willing to use boilerplate SOPs written by someone else.  Indeed, cloud versions of SOPs for every branch of study are already available - all you have to do is modify the statement just a bit for your use.  International students would also much rather engage in peer reviews of their essays which are free, although the peer has no professional writing experience.

Lacy Crawford, author of the book, "Early Decision: Based on a True Frenzy," said it best in an article in the Wall Street Journal on Aug 24, 2013:   "In my years handling applications to elite schools, from Harvard to Haverford, Davidson to Dickinson and everything in between, I was often surprised by where students did gain acceptance. But in every case, it was a student who wrote a fabulously independent essay. Not necessarily hyper-sophisticated. But true."

She also adds,  "Find someone who did not raise you from infancy to proofread your essay."

Breaking Down a World-Class SOP

To help students, we have constructed a simple framework to attack this most important part of a college application.  It focuses on the international student applying to graduate schools but a U.S. high school student applying to college can easily adapt the framework to excellent use.

A good SOP has the following structure, 1,000 - 1,200 words long, each point below representing a paragraph:

Paragraph 1.  Write something about you, a personal story about what drew you to your current field.  If you're an electronics engineer, perhaps your father had a garage at home that got you interested in electronics.  Make it personal.  This should be a pre-12th grade experience.  Limit: 100 words.

Paragraph 2:  What really interests you?  What is your passion?  Preferably this should be a class of problems that you want to solve - nothing as generic as solving world hunger but nothing as specific as a particular problem at a particular enterprise.  It should be something in between and be bite-size.  If you are an applied physicist interested in the dynamics of fluids, you could say you want to develop solutions for a class of aerodynamics problems in moving objects that encounter drag - cars, boats, planes, etc.  Limit: 250 words.

Paragraph 3:  What is the current state in this field?  Which companies or organizations (such as IEEE, ASME) are doing outstanding work that inspires you?  Why?  Look for information about the departments you’re interested in at your target institution, including professors and their research.  Are there academics whose research interests parallel yours?  Check the specific program; it is recommended that you name a professor or professors under whom you might want to train.  This is where you need to convince the faculty of your target school that you understand the scope of research in their discipline, and are engaged with those research themes.  Limit: 250 words.

Paragraph 4:  This is about why you are particularly qualified to dream this big.  Give the reader what your accomplishments were in college (academics); practical work outside a pure class setting (project) and outside college (internship) - all should point to what you learned and how this prepares you for doing what you want to do.  These paragraphs should not be long recitations of your resume but highlights which can help the reader connect the dots to paragraph 2.   They should also highlight your other skills - Communication, Teamwork, Planning and Organization - and how these have helped make you who you are.  You could break this all into multiple subparagraphs.  Limit: 300 words.

Closing arguments - ask for admission assuring the committee that you will do well, contribute to the student body and learn from it.  Limit: 100 words.

While our recipe above works well for most students, you could also review the guidelines of what an SOP should contain from Cornell University. 


How we can help

Our SOP review process is very structured.  Please review all links in our essay primer.




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How Many Extracurricular Activities Are Good For a High School Student?




By Rajkamal Rao  


In a piece recently, we discussed how important extracurricular activities are for high school students.
In this companion post, we will discuss how many extracurricular activities are good for a high school student.

As we have said before, extracurricular activities have come to define what college admissions officials say they look for in a high school student when they conduct a "Holistic Profile" evaluation.  Holistic in this sense refers to both academic performances and to activities that begin when the last class of the school day ends.



How Many Extracurricular Activities?

There's obviously no right or wrong answer here but any number greater than four becomes automatically suspicious.

A meaningful extracurricular activity for the purpose of college admissions is a pursuit where the student is so passionate about the activity that it draws the student to it, much like a magnet draws a piece of wrought iron.  It's something that the student thoroughly enjoys, loses all sense of time in doing and does not mind any associated heavy lifting if such effort is required.  It's what the student is most comfortable talking about, the most comfortable reading and knowing more about.  It's what defines the student.

Jeff Brenzel, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Yale says it best:   "My usual advice in this area is simply do things that you truly enjoy in high school, rather than trying to outguess an admissions committee. Why? Because what you truly enjoy, you're probably going to be good at, and you're probably going to get better at—whether it's one activity, two activities, three activities—don't obsess on whether it's an activity that everyone else in the world is doing, and therefore, one that's not going to distinguish you; or an activity that no one's doing and colleges are going to think is bizarre." 



By this standard, it is hard to envision children with more than a few passionate pursuits.   This is why the Coalition for Access & Affordability app – a platform used by over 80 elite colleges for college admissions and a new competitor to the Common App - includes slots for only two extracurricular activities. MIT which uses its own application platform called myMIT has reduced the number of slots for extracurricular to four, down from ten a few years ago.  It specifically advises applicants not to list activities from the ninth grade, which MIT says should be “a time for exploration."

Richard Weissbourd, a renowned Harvard psychologist, takes issue with the amount of emphasis on organized clubs, sports, far-flung charity trips, and other costly endeavors, the so-called "community-service Olympics with.  He says, “Many high-schoolers do volunteer, but it seems the public service doesn’t always come with pure intentions.   It doesn't advantage you to go to Belize – it’s just as good to work in a local soup kitchen.” His report on college admissions has been endorsed by more than 120 colleges and universities.




Our takeaway

Do just a few things but do them well.  How well you do is not as important as how committed you are to the cause, and how the experience helped you become who you are.  It is this that you will describe in your supplemental essay. And it is this which will bring out the human in you.



A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

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Should High School Students Audit a Class?



By Rajkamal Rao  



We are used to college students telling us that they audited a particular class in a semester.  Auditing a course allows a student to take a class without having to appear for exams or earn a grade or credit.  College students do this to explore a topic area or for self-enrichment without having to do the heavy lifting of taking a course for credit.

But, can a high school student audit a class?


Absolutely.  It is done all the time and for reasons different from those for a college student.






How High School Audits Work

An audited class is an extracurricular or elective class not needed for high school graduation.  For most students, this is an additional course in band, choir and athletics.  We say additional because most states require only one credit during the four years of high school in one of these topics to graduate.

Suppose a student has been in band through middle school and loves it.  In the 9th grade, she takes her first high school band class for credit and continues loving it.  At the end of her 9th grade, she has already satisfied the high school graduation requirements for band, so what should she do in her 10th - 12th grades?

She is faced with a Hobson's choice - if she were to sign up for band in her 10th grade, which is usually an on-level 4.0 GPA course, she risks lowering her overall high school GPA.  Check out our post to know more about weighted and unweighted grades.

But not taking band would make her unhappy because she is being prevented from pursuing her interests.

So high schools allow her to take band for her 10th grade but audit it.  In effect, it won't be material to her high school GPA.




Audit Conditions

To prevent abuse, school districts impose many conditions before a student can audit a course.

The most common is that the student should be enrolled in a certain minimum number of courses during a semester before he can audit a course, generally five.  Students can generally not audit a class that carries weighted credit, such as an Honors or AP course.   They can also not audit a CTE (Career and Technology Education) course - they do not want auditing students to distract other students who are genuinely enrolled to learn a skill.  Finally, many districts require students to have earned a decent enough GPA already before they can begin auditing classes.

All of these conditions make sense.  Students should recognize that auditing a high school class is a privilege and not an automatic right.








Our takeaway

Auditing a course is a great way for a high school student to pursue an interest without having it impact the graduating GPA.  The audited course will appear on the transcript but just won't carry any grade or credit. 


A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
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A Primer on College Essays






By Rajkamal Rao  

Essays are crucial to college admissions. Image Credit: Rao Advisors LLC

Primer on College Essays

High school students already know that the most crucial subjective part of their college application is, without a doubt, the college essay.  

Why do colleges even need essays?  They already know a lot about you through your grades, honors courses, AP exams, and admission tests.

As you probably guessed, grades and admission test scores tend to bring you down to a number.  Students are human and bring with them compelling life stories that are not captured by these numbers.  

The college essay provides you, as a student, an opportunity to present a human side to college admissions officers. Members of your audience who will review your essays are experts in the field. Admissions officers with just 5 - 8 years of experience may have read over 10,000 student essays in their careers!

Composing essays takes practice. You should pay attention to the style of writing - it can't be informal, like an email you would write to your friend. Neither does it have to be formal, such as an academic research paper. It has to be somewhere in between, where you can and should liberally use the word "I."

For most essays, you should adopt the role of a storyteller.  The reader does not know you and wants to understand who you are. So oblige the reader. For some essays - such as "Why is an odd number odd?" - the storytelling approach may not work quite as well, but you can still try to inject your personality into the essay.

Depending upon the essay, the tone should express confidence, joy, or optimism. In some cases - such as a student describing a story in which he/she overcame trauma - such a tone would be inappropriate.




 

Please contact us for more information.




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The Cancer of Fake Resumes in American IT Staffing





By Rajkamal Rao  




Many of us in the technology industry are as opinionated as everyone else - so dissent among our ilk is just as common as within members of the larger public.

But if there's one thing that just about all of us agree on, it is that the cancer of fake resumes - especially in the IT staffing industry - is growing rapidly.  To say that the situation is now terminal is not an exaggeration.

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Yet, not much has been written about it.  Nor has there been much reporting in the media.  Most of us know it exists, so we have agreed to move on, helpless that we can't fix it.




The Basics:  What Do We Know About The Problem?

A CareerBuilder survey in 2014 said that nearly 58% of resumes overall were suspected to be fraudulent, with 63% of resumes in Tech earning this dubious distinction.   Three years later, in 2017, CareerBuilder said that this problem was on a rise, with nearly 75% of all resumes being somewhat fake. But it did not include a breakout for IT workers.

On a more anecdotal level, there was a superb piece of video journalism by the NBC local affiliate in the Bay Area.  In Sep 2015, it ran an investigative story about a company called Beta Soft which was alleged to have charged job-seekers $1,000 to train them in a technology field and then create fully fake resumes to place them in contract IT jobs.

There is one other reference:  John Sule of Horizon Technology Partners, one of the oldest and largest IT staffing providers in Chicago, said in a March 2017 blog:  “Resume fraud happens in every industry, but it is rampant in IT.”  

So what exactly is resume fraud?  In the traditional sense, this happens when candidates exaggerate their contributions to a company,  elevate a skill set or claim credit for what was the effort of a team, betting that hiring managers will not verify the claims.





Fake Resumes in American IT Staffing

The fake resume in American IT staffing takes fraud to a whole new level.  It starts with candidates adding several years of experience on their resumes just to make their profile look stronger.  Job titles, work performed, dates of employment, skills used and honed, achievements - everything is fake.  In such resumes, the name of the company worked for and the location are both accurate.  But the candidate probably has never even seen the place, far less worked there.

The trick works because large companies, such as Bank of America and Cigna, which  regularly use staffing companies to fill IT roles, have not taken the problem seriously.  Across America, Indian-owned companies specialize in recruiting and placing IT contract resources.  These "body shops" rarely contract directly with the big American corporation but are tiered two or three levels below, sub-contracting to the prime staffing vendor.

The growth of these boutique body shops can be traced to market forces as corporate America demands inexpensive, short-term IT labor to coincide with an increasing supply of Indian-origin tech workers.  While the number of H-1B visas continues to be capped at 65,000 each year, most of which are grabbed by the big IT majors from India, what fuels the staffing company labor pool are Indian and Chinese graduate students who are designated 20,000 additional H-1B visas not included in the 65,000 annual cap.

Then, there are thousands of students with graduate degrees on the so-called OPT-STEM training visas.  In 2008, there were 29,000 students on this visa, but in 2017, there were 149,000 students on it, with multiple chances to convert to H-1Bs.  The OPT-STEM visas are granted for a 1-year term with generous renewal terms for up to three full years, so, collectively, there are nearly 450,000 students eager to find and keep employment.

Finally, since 2016, President Obama’s H4-EAD visa benefit released hundreds of thousands of H-1B spouses in to the workforce, all anxious to work even under substandard conditions.  Employment under H4-EAD is largely unregulated.  Beneficiaries can work in any industry and for any wage, even if below market.

Taken together, all of these groups amount to a pool of nearly 1 million candidates, each eager to out-shine the next to appear the most employable.





So, How Does It Work?

On fake tech resumes, the "Marketing Team" of the staffing company - say ABC staffing - carefully creates a resume which is completely false.  The resume makes explicit mention of a big name client (say, Bank of America) where the candidate is supposed to have worked but buries the actual employer name - ABC staffing company - somewhere deep in the resume.  A JP Morgan Chase hiring manager evaluating the resume is encouraged to call ABC staffing for verification, not the Bank of America supervisor.  When the call is made, ABC staffing not only validates the candidate’s claims but also provides positive feedback on the candidate's performance.

ABC staffing provides another valuable service to the candidate - it prepares him with a series of canned technical responses to the Chase interview drawn from a question bank.  Both the question bank and responses are maintained by more experienced ABC consultants who have worked at Chase and are familiar with its managers, systems and processes.

Thus hired, the candidate shows up at work, ever nervous that his lack of integrity and competence could be exposed at the most innocent of moments, such as at the water cooler.  The real risk is during the conduct of actual duties.  A candidate who has faked four years of experience into the resume is expected to possess a certain set of competencies which the new employee just does not have.  Eyebrows are raised when the employee makes elemental mistakes, or worse, acknowledges through actions that he is inept at performing the task, risking dismissal.



The Bottom Line

Faking resumes is not illegal in America.  But in life, the legal bar is often lower than the ethical bar.  In an intensively competitive Darwinian job market where the person with the most attractive resume survives - however fake - it is sad that it makes it impossible for genuine candidates to shine through and become recognized.

Much like real cancer, there are no easy cures for the fake resume problem as well.  Much like real cancer, there is hope if there's a concerted effort among all the players to limit its spread.  But for this to happen, someone has the bell the cat.

The Trump administration has taken some steps unknowingly which can indirectly help.  It announced recently that students on the STEM-OPT visa effectively cannot seek employment where they are trained by a third-party client of the staffing company.  In other words, JP Morgan Chase cannot train the candidate because the training responsibility falls squarely on ABC Staffing which maintains an employer-employee relationship with the candidate.  This rule unfortunately makes thousands of candidates with real resumes ineligible to work in the IT staffing industry, altogether, but it certainly eliminates the problem of fake resumes among these students.






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Recommended GRE Scores for 140+ U.S. Universities




By Rajkamal Rao  





For admission to Master's programs at U.S. universities, a vexing question which confronts students is:  What is the recommended GRE score?

The short answer is that no one can answer it with absolute certainty.  Graduate committees consider a variety of subjective and objective factors - country of origin, the reputation of the undergraduate institution, undergraduate GPA, test scores, recommendations, cover letters, work experience, projects, papers published - before granting admission to an aspiring student.  But one thing is categorically and undoubtedly true.  The GRE score is by far the single-most important objective metric that defines a student's profile.

Why is the GRE so important?


For one thing, it is a measure of graduate student readiness.  The GRE tests you on English and Math skills that you are supposed to have as a Bachelor's degree student or holder.  Preparing for the GRE requires practice to hone test-taking skills under extremely tight conditions, rather than endless hours trying to learn content - a characteristic of all aptitude tests.  True, international students often have to improve their vocabulary through learning because many are not native English speakers, but this too is a competence that ETS expects you to have going in to the test.  In this sense, the GRE is vastly different from GATE, a graduate test in India, that is focused more on measuring domain knowledge in specific areas.

Second, the GRE is a uniform exam in every sense of the word.  Test topics and sections are well known, so there are no surprises.  The test is conducted world-wide to exacting but uniform standards.  The security on the test is uniformly world-class.  Because it is a Computer Based Test (CBT), evaluation is not subjective, so there's zero bias in scoring.  Also, ETS spends millions of dollars each year on researching questions to keep the test uniformly challenging and contemporary.  When students from all over the world, attending different universities with different standards for setting curricula and evaluation compete, having them take a uniform exam with identical rules for everyone is valuable.  The GRE serves this purpose exceptionally well.

Third, the GRE is a great predictor of student ability and competence.  Because cheating on the GRE is largely out of the question, a person with a score of 330 can be safely assumed to be more capable than one with a score of 310.  It is harder to say the same when the range narrows - that is, a person with a 328 score is not necessarily inferior to one who scored a 330.  This bring us to the next point which is probably the most important.





The GRE is an excellent predictor of a student's overall profile as well.  What we mean by this is that a student with a 320+ GRE will most likely have other elements of his profile - GPA, Class Rank, TOEFL - to be consistent with the student's caliber.  For example, it is unlikely that someone with a 320 score has a 6.50 CGPA with multiple backlogs.  The opposite is generally true too.  Someone with backlogs and a low CGPA is likely to have scored lower on the GRE, more in the 300 or sub-300 range.

Meanwhile, on the subjective side of a student's application - the side which humanizes an applicant beyond a number - the single-most important factor is the Statement of Purpose.  This is a carefully crafted document which provides a roadmap into a student's proposed career - from where he or she has been for the last few years to where the student wants to go and why.

So how did we arrive at our GRE table?


Years of experience counseling hundreds of international students and helping them gain admission to excellent schools gives us a unique perspective.   For the last six years, we have a record of every student client's GRE score.  We know their background well because we spend a lot of time understanding who they are and what they want to do in their graduate school careers.  We help them develop and fine-tune their SOPs, almost to an art-form.  We maintain a record of which schools they gained admission to.  And finally, we advise them about which school to ultimately choose because most of our clients do get in to multiple schools.

This year alone, our students entered such reputed institutions as the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, UT Austin, Texas A & M, University of  Utah, University of Minnesota, U-Mass (Amherst), USC, North Carolina State University, Arizona State and Virginia Tech.

Our GRE table is constructed based on 32+ years of experience living and working in the United States. Our lead student mentor has graduate degrees from Carnegie Mellon and Villanova University, so this counts for some of our wisdom.  We have a strong understanding of a school's reputation (as opposed to ranking); supply and demand (most international students choose universities in urban areas even though universities in rural locations may be better ranked); and finally, a school's proximity to job clusters.  Each of these impacts a school's selectivity and yield (when an admitted student ultimately enrolls) - and thus, the school's GRE floor.





So here's our GRE table for the top 20 schools.  For a downloadable .pdf document of all 147 schools, please take advantage of our low cost professional profile evaluation service.





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All about essays



By Rajkamal Rao  

 
An EV charging on the Stanford University campus, June 2019. Image: Rao Advisors.


The Essay or Writing Sample ranked 5th in the admissions factors list and continues to be a critical component of a college application. It is the one thing that brings out the true personality of a candidate unrelated to objective measures such as grades and exams. Good essays can be winners, all other things being equal.

According to the College Board, essay questions on college applications can be broadly grouped into three types.

1.  The “Describe” essay - is intended to know more about who you are.  Examples:
  • Please complete a one-page personal statement
  • Describe a person you admire or a book that you love?
  • What is an extracurricular activity that has been meaningful to you?
  • Describe one way in which you have contributed to your community, whether in your family, the classroom or your neighborhood - MIT
  • A community to which you belong and the footprint you have left. - Yale
  • A time in the last few years when you felt genuine excitement learning about something.

2.  The “Explain why you want to attend our college” essay - intended to know more about what your goals are.  Examples:
  • Why do you want to attend this school?
  • Tell us about your career goals and any plans you may have for graduate study
Please review our post about how to compose such "Statement of Purpose" based essays. 


3.  The “Discuss the Issue" type essay - intended to evaluate your ability to think.  Examples:
  • Do you believe there's a generation gap? Describe the differences between your generation and others.
  • What's so odd about odd numbers? - University of Chicago
  • If you could live for a day as another person, past or present, who would it be? Why? (35 words or fewer)
     
While there are no hard and fast rules about how to write essays, the following tips should help.

“I think it's actually best to present yourself as who you are to a college, rather than how you imagine that they might want you to be. First of all, you want a college to take you - not your imaginary friend.  And the second is, show your essay to a teacher who knows you well, or to a parent that you're on good terms with, or even to a close friend, and say, "Does this sound like me?" If the friend, the teacher, or the parent says, "You know, this really sounds like you," you have succeeded in your college essay. Because presenting yourself as who you are is your best bet in the college admissions process.”  Jeff Brenzel, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, Yale.

“The best advice that I would give to any student writing an essay is to, number one, answer the question that is asked—that's generally important—and do it as honestly and as personally as they can. So don't try to be somebody else, and don't have anybody else's voice shine through in your essay. Just be yourself in your own voice, tell us the answer to the question, and that's all we want to know.” Stuart Schmill, Dean of Admissions, MIT.

Have your work reviewed by someone whose English is excellent but is also neutral in criticism of your work.  "Find someone who did not raise you from infancy to proofread your essay."  Lacy Crawford, Author. 



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Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please  contact us for more information.

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Is an International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma a good choice?






By Rajkamal Rao  

Many US school districts are offering high school students in the 11th and 12th grades a choice to graduate with an International Baccalaureate® (IB) diploma.  The IB program is not new.  It has been around since 1968.  It is only in the last ten years or so that US school districts have begun to recognize that this could be an additional path for gifted and talented students.

An IB curriculum aims to do more than other curricula by developing inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who are motivated to succeed.  According to IBO, the non-profit educational foundation which oversees the IB program, more than 4,000 schools so far have chosen to teach this curriculum with its "unique academic rigor and their emphasis on students’ personal development."  More than one million students worldwide are studying for their IB diplomas.

In all states, students must also complete graduation requirements for each state over and above the IB diploma.  For example, in Texas, IB students must fulfill TEA elective requirements – so some TEA required courses (like Health, Technology, Communications) may have to be taken in the 9th and 10th grades, or in accelerated summer sessions, or online, or at external institutions, before entering the IB program.



Students who pursue the IB diploma must take six subjects: one each from Groups 1–5 and either one from Group 6 or a permitted substitute from one of the other groups. Three or four subjects must be taken at Higher level (HL) and the rest at Standard level (SL).  The IB recommends a minimum of 240 hours of instructional time for HL courses and 150 hours for SL courses.

So, how does the math work out? In Texas, students are expected to spend 75,600 minutes of instruction each school year including recesses and breaks. This amounts to 1,260 hours a school year, over 36 weeks or 180 days, or 7 hours a school day. If one subtracts an hour each day for lunch, recesses, and breaks, we are left with 6 hours of learning each day, or 1,080 hours a school year.

A full high school credit can be earned by typically completing 135 hours of learning. In a double-blocked environment, this equates to eight credits a year (1,080/135). At 150 hours, therefore, an SL course is the equivalent of completing one course a year, plus a little more. At 240 hours, an HL course is a little less than two courses a year. An HL course is roughly equivalent to a double-blocked course, but the student earns only one credit.

The reputation of the program shows.  Even for the Ivy Leagues, IB acceptance rates are marginally higher than traditional HS degrees.  For many in the Top 40, IB acceptance rates are significantly higher – see Carnegie Mellon University example below.  Of course, the quality of the IB coursework matters (6/7 or 7/7). One student client said that she got a $30,000 bonus in scholarships (over the $100,000 she had already received) when SMU, the school she was interested in, came to realize that she was an IB graduate. Another got into Boston University on a full scholarship, applying from India.

The IB website allows you to search for IB schools in your area by using various filters. This link searches for Texas IB schools that offer the IB Diploma program but are public (so, no tuition fee).



Texas law requires that every IB diploma holder whose IB test scores are 4 and above will be granted a minimum of 24 college credit hours at public colleges in Texas (equivalent to 8 AP classes).  This is another big plus of the IB program.

So who is IB for? The IB program is known for its stress on deliberative thinking, so someone who likes to discuss, analyze and write well is a good fit. The required 4,000- word essay, on which students spend upwards of two months to write, is almost like a college thesis where students have to "defend" what they write. IB is also good for students who have an international flair. Most 11th and 12th grade IB students travel for several days to a foreign country taking in its culture. Students have to pay for their travels but most report that they make strong friendships during their time away from school.

The College Board's AP program, which is largely exam-based, is an excellent competitor to IB. Students in the AP stream have far more choices (34 courses are offered by the College Board), and for those students interested in doing theses-like research projects, the College Board now offers the AP Capstone program. Launched in 2016 with the approval of over 250 colleges including the elite institutions, over 2,500 students worldwide graduated with an AP Capstone Diploma in 2016. Several North Texas ISDs offer Capstone, including Frisco, Grapevine, Colleyville, Ft. Worth, Irving, and Flower Mound.

What are the differences between the Advanced Placement program and the International Baccalaureate program?

[Hurst-Euless-Bedford (HEB) ISD was one of the first schools in North Texas to set up a dedicated IB World School as part of its Advanced Academics program. We thank them for the following content].

Both programs are weighted, college-level in nature, and may earn students college credit, depending on university policies.

Advanced Placement: Advanced, fast-paced, and more complex content; no application process but recommended criteria to qualify; students may choose from among a menu of advanced courses in grades 10-12; exams scored and recognized nationally; students expected to take AP exams; AP score comes from one end-of-course test.

International Baccalaureate: Most rigorous, comprehensive secondary program for 11th and 12th graders in the world; time management and self-motivation required; application process; students required to take exams in 6 specific areas of study; students become aware of world issues; much emphasis on independent, compassionate, critical thinking; independent research project; 150 service hours; exams scored and recognized internationally; required internal assessments involving creativity, writing, group projects; IB score comes from final exam plus various internal assessments; students may qualify for International Baccalaureate diploma as well as high school diploma. An IB Diploma recipient who has completed the diploma requirements and has earned scores of at least 4 receives 24 hours of credit at any state university in Texas.

For the class of 2020, the top 10 students in each HEB high school, Bell and Trinity, graduated from each school's respective IB World School.

How easy is it to gain admission to a public school's IB program ?

The answer depends upon supply and demand. At Plano and Frisco ISDs, for example, there are so many more applicants than spots, so the districts resort to a lottery. Like all districts, Frisco conducts a student-parent seminar about its IB program - click here for a detailed presentation. 

At other districts, such as Allen and HEB ISDs, strict qualifying criteria exist but most students who qualify gain admission. In all school districts, the IB program is generally marketed as a jewel of their advanced academics offerings.

The choice between IB and AP should be largely left to the student. There are pros and cons for both choices - so the key factor is to make the student aware of all the facts before a choice is made.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
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How to improve strength of high school curriculum



 
By Rajkamal Rao  


Image Courtesy: Texas Education Agency



Demonstrating that you took difficult courses in high school is important to college admissions officers. We will discuss several ways to do this and you will see that advance course planning, sometimes as early as the 8th grade, is critical.
 
The first step in the early grades (9th and 10th) is to sign up for Pre-AP® courses, also called as Advanced or Honors level classes. Pre-AP® courses are designed to give students the space and time they need to concentrate on essential topics and are dedicated to collaborative classroom experiences that allow students to engage, learn, and grow.

Another way to add difficult courses to the mix is to take AP courses which end in an AP exam. For a detailed look at why AP Courses are beneficial to students, see our post here. 
 
Working with your high school guidance counselor, you could stick to a district-recommended progression of courses as below. Look at Sequence 4.  In it, a student completes Geometry, Algebra and Pre-Calculus at the Pre-AP levels in the 9th, 10th and 11th grades respectively.  The student is now free to choose either AP Calculus or AP Statistics in the 12th grade.

Source: HEB ISD, Bedford, TX


There are two problems with this approach.  First, the College Board offers three AP Math courses but the above sequence leads to only one.  Second, the student will be taking the AP course in the 12th grade which is too late for the college application brag sheet.

To solve this problem, encourage your student to take one of the prerequisite courses, generally Geometry or Algebra-II, online, either during the 9th or 10th grade school year as an extra course or in the summer.  Or you could have your child self-study on Khan Academy and exempt out of the course by taking a CBE (Credit by Exam) during the last month of the year.  With either approach you won't get the Honors GPA bonus, so for students keen on keeping their weighted average GPAs high, this is a problem.  But if the child can take an extra AP course as a result of clearing up the schedule, this approach not only overcomes the loss of the GPA bonus but improves it.

In general, if you want to increase the number of AP courses, you should be prepared to take some AP courses on your own.  This is how you can optimize endorsements, AP courses and class selections related to your interests and careers in demand.

The following six AP courses are perfect for self-study.  They are more a test of memory and are narrowly focused, making them easier to self-study.  They build off of a student’s general knowledge and basic intellectual curiosity – so, they result in high return on investment.  And some (AP Environmental Science and AP Human Geography) have content which overlaps.

AP Environmental Science
AP European History
AP Human Geography
AP Psychology
AP US Government and Politics
AP Comparative Government and Politics

If you plan it right, you can take more than a dozen AP courses in your high school and join an elite group of students worldwide.  The percentage of students who took 10 AP exams or more doubled over the decade between 2005 and 2015, to 0.7 percent, or 16,580 students  [Source:  NY Times].




Source:  Rao Advisors


A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with as much high-quality, 100% ethical and free advice as is possible via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please  contact us for more information.










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All about grades and weighted grades






By Rajkamal Rao  




For admission to the top schools, the most important factor is a student's high school transcript. The transcript lists all the courses, their degree of difficulty (on-level, Honors, Pre-AP, Dual credit, AP, or IB), the unweighted grade, the class rank, and the number of students in the graduating class. 

Institutions are especially interested in a student's performance in the so-called college preparatory courses (four years of English, Science, Math and Social Studies; and 2-4 years of a language other than English) - because this performance is an excellent predictor of success in college. Grades in non core topics – PE, Music, Theater, Sports, Vocational Education, Health, Student Aide – do not count as much as the college preparatory courses, but still serve to provide an overall picture of the student. 

See what Jeff Brenzel, Yale's Director of Undergraduate Admissions, says on the topic of grades and the high school transcript.

 

 

 

 

 



US grades are generally given out on a 4.0 scale.  The College Board uses the above chart to convert raw scores to letter grades.

The problem with this scale is that the grades are not weighted for difficulty.  Most school districts offer three levels of classes for each grade.  For example, a student in the 11th grade could enroll in on-level Chemistry, or take above-level Pre-AP Chemistry (also called Honors), or take college-level AP Chemistry.  Considering students in all three classes for class rank computation uniformly, using the numeric grade obtained, but not the level of difficulty, is inherently unfair.  This would prompt students to take the easiest classes to get the best rank.

Colleges want to see that students take on the challenge of "above-level" classes and top universities want to see that students take the toughest courses offered by their high school.  To incentivize students to do this, school districts offer a grade point bonus for taking difficult courses.

Components of a World-Class WGPA System

There are three components in the perfect WGPA system that evaluates student merit based on courses selected and their performance in each.

A. Judicious course weights. In the ideal Weighted Average system, every course in the catalog is weighted and included for its academic strength or level of difficulty. Those that are built on talent and not academically oriented - such as athletics, music, choir, theater, band, orchestra - are treated as on-level, meaning no bonus points ensue. This list may also include general education courses meant for average high school academic standards, such as on-level Algebra and Career and Technology Education classes.

For classes weighted for more difficulty, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, where students are evaluated twice at the end of the year (once by school teachers and later in a separate evaluation nationally or internationally by educators who don't know the student) and earn transferable college credit as a result, merit the gold standard and are awarded the heaviest weights. Next down would be Dual Credit courses, which are not as difficult as AP or IB courses, but still earn college credit. The actual scale is of less importance - the relative scale is what matters.

B. Granularity. A student scoring 98-100 should be rewarded higher than someone in the 93-97 range. Some school districts (Frisco ISD, Round Rock ISD) take this to the extreme where the least count is down to 1, so that someone who scores 94 gets a slightly higher grade than someone with a 93. It is an outstanding system that, at least theoretically, fosters a highly competitive environment. 

C. Inclusion for Rank in Class. Every course that the student takes - without any prejudice - should be considered for computation of class rank - the so called Rank in Class. [Granting exceptions to promote participation in the arts and athletics, such as Frisco ISD does (see below) is however, acceptable].

HEB ISD's WGPA/RIC system is one of the best systems, scoring well across all three dimensions - distinctly assigned weights, granularity, and inclusion for rank in class (where every course taken counts towards class rank computation without exceptions or bias).

Source: HEB ISD, Bedford, TX

In this system, a student can earn grades on a 6.0 weighted scale for taking a difficult subject.  Called Tier III courses, these are taught at the AP/IB level in school and culminate in a national or international exam.  A 11th grader taking AP US History and scoring a 98+ consistently during the school year would earn 6.0 points whereas a student taking an on-level History class and scoring a 98+ would only earn 4.0.

Tier II courses are not as rigorous as the Tier III and include Pre- AP, Pre-IB, Dual Credit, and certain approved Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses. In the above table, these are awarded on a 5.0 scale.  Tier I courses are traditional on-level courses (including arts and sports) and no weighted GPA options exist.


Variations in the WGPA/RIC System

Unfortunately, school districts are not uniform in the way they assign the GPA bonus or compute class rank. In North Texas, different school districts have different GPA scales making it difficult to compare the performance of students across school districts. Even the designation of tiers is not uniform. Coppell ISD has four tiers (called levels), ranging from Level 1 to Level 4 (AP/IB/Other designated courses). 

At FISD and Carroll ISD, a student in athletics or band or orchestra, typically earning only on-level credit, is permitted to exclude the course from the weighted average GPA calculation in grades 11 and 12 - but this feature is not available in other school districts, forcing students in these latter schools to drop out of a fine arts course in upper high school classes to maintain a high weighted average GPA. Check out our proprietary tool to see how the opt-out strategy can affect GPAs (review all tabs). Existing clients can request a copy of this tool for free to run a simulation of their case. 
 
Weighted average GPA scales in North Texas. Image Courtesy: Rao Advisors


In some school districts, not all high school courses are ranked. At Coppell ISD, only a learner’s core classes (the so-called College Prep courses) generally count to RIC. Even this rule has exceptions. Math courses up to and including Algebra II count towards RIC, but Pre-Calculus, Calculus, and Statistics do not. If you took a dual-credit Career and Technical Education elective course in Robotics on the Honors scale, the grade would appear on your transcript, but would not be used to calculate class rank. Coppell students should look for this symbol § to see if a course is ranked.

In Lewisville, which has a much more expansive policy than Coppell ISD, all courses in the core subjects (English, Math, Science, Social Studies, Languages) plus all AP courses regardless of whether they are core, such as AP Music Theory, AP Art History, AP 3D Art (normally considered as electives) are ranked. But extracurricular classes like orchestra, choir, band, athletics do not count towards class rank. Debate 1 and 2 don't either, but mysteriously Debate 3 does. CTE courses like Business and Baking don't count towards class rank unless there's a STEM component in it (such as Business Calculus and Engineering Math). It is a head-scratching system of rules and exceptions.

Excluding courses from RIC computation is the school district's way of encouraging students to drive behavior that the district sees fit - such as balance schedules with easier and fun courses. But awarding class rank to some courses and not others is inherently problematic. Students are at the mercy of districts that are attempting to drive student behavior. In a free society, students should be rewarded for the choices they make and their performance, without prejudice and a Big Brother, controlling approach from the district.  


RIC Gaming

Class rank gaming routinely occurs in some school districts, again, the result of poor district policies.

At Katy ISD and Cypress Fairbanks ISD, where KAP courses (Honors) are placed in the same bucket as AP courses and the grade distribution is very coarse, on a 90-100 scale, a student earning a 90 in KAP Chemistry is academically the same as another who earns a 100 in AP Chemistry, a far more rigorous course. Many students game the system by taking easier KAP courses and still be in the Top 6% of their class, entitling them to automatic admission to the University of Texas at Austin. The same WGPA system exists at Round Rock ISD, although the grade distribution is more equitable. Rather than a single wide block of 90-100, RRISD awards GPA points based on a scale with a least count of 1, so, grade points are different for 91, 92, 93, 94, and so on.

To neutralize the impact of poor assignment of weights and coarse granularity, students are forced to take more courses in the summer to earn a better GPA. At Katy ISD, students routinely take more than 15 AP courses, some even approaching 20, many of them during the summer. The AP program was never intended for students to self-study in the summer and gang up on credits. Summers are meant for exciting opportunities - experiential learning, research, internships, jobs, volunteering - and regular fun!


Transfers to school districts

And there is the issue of transfers from other school districts. Would a student, who obtained a 96 in AP Environmental Science in the 9th grade from any school district around the country, have her score protected when she transfers to FISD for the 10th grade? Yes, provided the origin school's official AAR (the Academic Achievement Record) has recorded the course as "Advanced" AND a comparable course was offered in FISD during the same school year. Otherwise, even an AP-level course could be marked down as on-level, impacting class rank. This problem is common when students transfer to school districts from foreign countries where the titling of courses and the grading systems are not uniform.  


Conclusion

As long as America has a decentralized, local K-12 system, these problems cannot be overcome. From a practical point of view, no matter what the grade bonus policy is in a school district, it impacts students only in that district, and within it, the particular high school (exception: transfer students). Weighted average GPAs are largely used in the computation of the class rank, so it really doesn't matter what the grade bonus policy is. When every student is impacted in the same manner, no single student is at an advantage or disadvantage.

So, how important is class rank? In states such as Texas, a high-class rank is extremely beneficial. Read our post here about how different state colleges and universities use the class rank as a key factor in admissions. And even for states that do not use class rank for automatic admissions - and for private colleges - the class rank has consistently ranked among the top-10 selection factors. This is true although rank computation is not uniform across school districts.

All of this brings us to a basic truth about K-12 education. The class rank is only relevant to a high school graduating class - it's not even relevant across two high schools within the same school district. Two students with identical Weighted Average GPAs in Plano ISD would be ranked differently in Plano West HS and Plano Senior HS.

For college admissions and merit scholarship applications, at least as an initial screen, the non-weighted GPA therefore becomes somewhat important. This is the opposite of the weighted GPA, where the degree of difficulty of a course - the strength of curriculum - is of no numerical consequence. This would be the Tier-I table above. If you scored a 98, you would record a 4.0. When the College Board asks you on its college search page what your GPA is, you would type in the non-weighted GPA, not the weighted.

How do colleges take into account the strength of curriculum then? They do this by digging into your transcript, course by course, and verifying how many difficult courses you took. Schools report the weighted average GPAs to colleges (via Naviance or Parchment) anyway, so colleges know which courses got a grade bonus. The actual bonus value is less important, but the fact that the student took a course which earned a bonus clearly factors into college admissions decisions in a rather significant way.

Because getting good grades in tough high school courses is so important, high school students should plan on taking weighted credits to bump their averages up - and thereby improve their class rank. This is what successful students do when applying to top colleges and universities.

The cumulative weighted average GPA is simply the sum of all the weighted average grades for each course in a student's high school career divided by the number of courses needed to graduate.  The table below shows a student's weighted average GPA, the non-weighted GPA and the College Board GPA (which has a more generous percent grade to 4.0 GPA conversion).

 

Image Credit: Rao Advisors LLC

The New York Times reported on an extreme case when a high school senior in rural Alpine, Texas, took her school district to court over disagreements about her grades. If you want to track your student's GPA throughout his/her high school career, please take advantage of our High School GPA tracking service.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please contact us for more information.














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Our performance 2018-19


By Rajkamal Rao

It is that time of the year when a year's hard work is drawing to a close. We're so proud of our various student clients who have earned admission to some of the nation's best schools, many with impressive financial packages, including full tuition waivers. See list below.

This has been an especially tough year with a record number of students seeking admission to the top schools, a lot of media coverage about Harvard, and, of course, the infamous college admissions scandal. We've never seen so many students who are placed on waitlists because colleges simply don't have a good handle on who will accept offers of admission!

We are so motivated by the sheer ambition, hard work and dedication of this cohort of future leaders. You're the reason it makes it all so rewarding and fun! Thanks to you all (and parents, of course!) for trusting us with your most important life-choices to date. Please keep in touch!

The List

Undergraduate
Carnegie Mellon
Vanderbilt
UT Austin - McCombs
UT Austin
University of California, Davis
Southern Methodist University
Texas A&M
UT Dallas (80% of clients got a full ride plus a yearly stipend from $3,000 to $6,000)
UT Dallas - Davidson's Honors - full ride
Cornell (Waitlist)
University of Michigan (Waitlist)
Washington University (Waitlist)

Graduate 
Columbia
Georgia Tech
Carnegie Mellon
University of Southern California
University of Virginia
Rice
Northeastern
New York University
University of North Carolina


Our takeaway

Thank you!


A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please contact us for more information.

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