Updated: Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Building an authentic and compelling profile throughout high school is key to college admissions success. Activities, interests, and academic pursuits all come together to bring the student to life to the admissions committee and tell their story.
By Alecia, IvyWise College Admissions Counselor
The college admissions process is now more competitive than ever before. Applicant numbers are consistently rising at colleges across the country, so it’s important to do everything you can to ensure your application is as competitive as possible. But to be competitive, you also need to understand how college applications are reviewed and what factors into admission decisions.
Every college has a unique review process that meets the needs of their institutions, but generally, most selective colleges utilize a holistic review that considers all aspects of the application when making an admissions decision. This review consists of the hard and soft factors of your profile:
These factors make up the college admissions rubric: the components by which the admissions committee evaluates you.
To stand out in this holistic review process, your application must be academically competitive. This means your academic profile must match the academic profile of the college’s student body. In reviewing an academic profile, colleges are working to determine if you can be academically successful at their institution. To review your academic profile, colleges review three different aspects of the application: curriculum, grades, and testing.
During the application review process, admissions officers typically review the transcript first. While they are reviewing the transcript, they will also review the school profile shared by your high school counselor that provides information about GPA, class rank, and course rigor. Essentially, an admissions officer wants to understand if you took advantage of the most demanding curriculum available at your secondary school.
Your grade trends and patterns are reviewed next, and the admissions officer may look at your performance cumulatively as well as in foundational courses. Your academic accomplishments may be compared to other students at your secondary school.
The admissions officer will also review your test scores, even if you submit your scores to a test-optional school. While there is no clearly defined “good” test score — the standard is different at each school — your scores will be compared to the test scores submitted by current students at the college.
After reviewing the transcript and test scores, the admissions officer can determine if you have the chops to be academically successful at their institution. But what if other applicants have comparable academic records? This is where the soft factors come in, which help the admissions committee make their final decision.
The admissions officer needs to review qualitative factors to determine how compelling an application is in a selective pool. The qualitative factors differentiate the application and help you stand out. These factors typically include extracurricular activities, letters of recommendation, and essays. Sometimes, interviews and demonstrated interest are also considered as part of this review. Each of these factors plays a role in helping the admissions officer to understand your unique narrative, or story, and the ways in which you can uniquely contribute to the university.
Sometimes, the most compelling aspects of your application shine in your recommendation letters; other times it’s your high-level impact in extracurricular activities that stands out. Admissions officers review applications through the lens of the institution’s values and qualities. They look for aspects of your application that align with these values and qualities, especially in the soft factors.
The application review process is further complicated because even if a student’s application is compelling, there might be many equally compelling applications in these large applicant pools. Colleges are having to make even finer distinctions among applications to determine who to admit.
As a counselor, I highly recommend that students attend in-person or virtual information sessions for the colleges that they are interested in applying to. During sessions, they can ask questions about the college’s specific review process, such as:
Asking these questions will allow you to better understand a college’s admissions rubric and the way they make decisions. Also, you can utilize the Common Data Set (CDS) to review the holistic review factors that are most important for every college on your list and use that data to ask even more specific and targeted questions during your admissions visits.
For example, if you look at Georgetown University’s 2024-25 CDS, you’ll see that they rate all academic factors of a student’s application as “Very Important.” The soft or “nonacademic” factors of the application have various rankings from “Very Important” (character/personal qualities) to “Not Considered” (level of applicant’s interest). Each school will weigh these factors differently.
Working with a college admissions counselor — like those at IvyWise — who has worked in a college admissions office and reviewed thousands of applications, is one of the best ways to ensure that you’ll receive accurate advice during your college admissions process. While it’s important to do your own research about the colleges you’re interested in, having a trusted counselor can make a significant impact in your understanding of the admissions process and provide you with the support you need to present your strongest college admissions application.
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