Admissions Insight: Academic Rigor, Transcripts, and Tests

About Devery Doran

Devery Doran worked as a Senior Admissions Officer at Harvard University for four years and has read application essays at UC-Berkeley in addition to her current role as a college admissions consultant. A graduate of Harvard with a master’s degree from the University of Texas, Devery has spent her career helping diverse groups of young people unlock their potential through educational and career opportunities.

About the class

On the surface it sounds simple: take hard classes, get straight A’s, ace your APs and SATs, and you’ll get in. Right? In reality, there are lots of decisions and tradeoffs: is it better to take a more challenging course load with a few B’s or a lighter load with straight A’s? How many AP classes are enough, and do you need 5s on all those exams? And in a test-optional world with superscore options, too, should you take the SATs or ACTs? How many times?

Join former Ivy League admissions officer Devery Doran for answers to these questions and more as she breaks down the admissions concepts of academic rigor and intellectual curiosity, and what those mean for your high school plans and college applications. Find out how to build an optimal schedule, how to budget your time, how to think about standardized tests, and what you can do outside the classroom to prove that you’re an intellectually curious academic superstar.