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Your School Profile

Guidance Counselor's Guide to Creating a School Profile

Your school profile helps colleges compare an applicant from your high school to their peers and to students at other high schools. Use this list as a guide when creating your profile to make sure you include all of the important facts. Remember to update your school profile on an annual basis. Emphasize key points and changes in bold or italics.

Contact Information

Include information that will help the college identify your school and contact you:

  • School name, address, phone number, FAX, email
  • Web address, if available
  • Principal name
  • List of guidance staff members with contact information
  • CEEB code

Demographics

Provide an overview of the community and the mix of students that attend your school. You may wish to include:

  • Community information
  • Ethnic distribution of students
  • Gender distribution 
  • Socioeconomic background 
  • Percent of students eligible for free or reduced lunch
  • Education level of parents

School facts

Include information about your school that makes it unique:

  • School type: public or private?
  • Grades offered (K-12, 9-12, etc.)
  • Enrollment
  • Schedule type (semesters, trimesters, quarters, block, etc.)
  • Admissions guidelines, if any
  • Student-to-teacher ratio
  • Accreditation
  • Memberships & awards
  • Graduation rate
  • Percent of students from previous graduating classes that attended college
  • List of higher education institutions students in recent years have attended/types of colleges students have attended (2-year, 4-year, etc.)

Curriculum

Helping admissions officers understand your school’s graduation requirements along with what courses are offered gives them a good picture of how much the student is challenging himself/herself. You should include:

  • School graduation requirements
  • List of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and honors courses.
    • What are the enrollment procedures for these courses? 
    • Are there limits to how many of these courses a student can take? 
    • What percent of students are enrolled in these courses?
    • Remember to indicate if any of these courses were not available during a particular school year.
  • Admissions officers will compare the courses available to what a student took. Many colleges want to see that the student is taking the most challenging curriculum possible.

Grades and class rank

Providing your grading procedures and methods for assessing class rank help admissions understand where the applicant falls among their peers. Consider answering: 

  • What is your grading scale and the highest possible grade a student can attain?
  • Are any of your classes weighted? What weight is given to which courses?
  • Are all courses or only required courses included in cumulative GPA?
  • Do you assess class rank? Is rank weighted or unweighted?
  • What is the GPA/grade distribution for this graduating class? 
  • What are the highest and lowest cumulative GPAs in this graduating class?

Test results

You may wish to provide:

  • Percentage of graduating class that took the SAT & ACT
  • Mean and median SAT & ACT scores
  • Distribution of scores for SATs and ACTs. 
  • Percentage of students who took AP tests for each course offered along with distribution of scores.

Extracurricular activities

  • Are extracurricular activities required?
  • What activities are available? Are they open to all or are there tryouts?