Your transcript
There are three parts to your high school transcript: the class listing, your grades (GPA), and class ranking.
Your class listing might be most important. Colleges stress that high school students should take challenging courses to prepare them for college. AP US History is more challenging than Honors US History, which is more challenging than just regular US History. If your school doesn’t provide many higher level offerings, the school profile your high school creates and you submit with your application will explain this. There’s nothing you can do about that, so no need to worry. Take the most challenging classes available to you.
As far as your grades (and your GPA) go, sadly, rampant grade inflation has given almost half of all high school college-bound students an A or A- average (see previous blog post about grade inflation). Your A-average doesn’t really set you apart anymore as 47% (before Covid and probably over 50% now) of college-bound high school seniors will graduate with at least an A-. So it’s ‘expected’ that you will have an A-average – half of the seniors in the country will. I wish I could offer some insight into what constitutes a ‘good’ GPA, but apparently and A or A- average does not set anyone apart anymore.
Finally, class rank. To some it seems like such a good thing, but does it really tell you anything? Class rank shows how you compare to your classmates at your school, but does it show how you stack up against your peers if there are multiple high schools in your immediate area? Or to high schools in other cities and states? The answer is a resounding no. True story. A public high student with all A’s freshman year was ranked 62nd out of about 500 in his/her class: that was outside of the top 10%, with straight A grades in standard and honors classes. After transferring to a neighboring public school at the end of freshman year, he/she continued to get A grades in regular, honors and AP classes (same trend as at prior school) and after sophomore year he/she was ranked in the top 10 – not in the top 10% but was in the top 10 overall (out of about 500) at the new school. Same student, same schedule, same effort, same grades (A’s and only one B). How can you compare across schools? You can’t. As it is, he/she could put top 10 of the class on his/her application to college, whereas peers at the original school can’t even say they were in the top 10% of their class.