“Rigor” is the buzzword college coaches at Ivies use to describe what they’d like to see in a recruit’s transcript. It’s also the same word that anyone who's ever been in education has heard 1,000 times and wants to gag when they hear it.
What does rigor mean exactly?
It just means how hard the classes are that you are taking.
While you might need a 4.0 GPA to be considered a regular applicant to Yale, how does Yale tell the difference between what a 4.0 GPA is at one school versus another or even two different 4.0’s at the same school?
It’s kind of like how the college football playoff committee sometimes weighs strength of schedule - how hard the schedule of opponents a team faces - in deciding to put one team with a poorer record ahead of another team with a perfect record. In this world, a one-loss Alabama team coached by Nick Saban is still a stronger football team than an undefeated Liberty University team who plays a significantly weaker schedule.
In order of most rigorous to least, you’ve got:
- AP in all the core courses - History, Math, Science, Foreign Language, English.
- Honors courses.
- Standard/College Prep courses.
You don’t need to have an A in all these AP courses; a B is more than fine - remember, you have the strength of schedule working in your favor with these Ivies and Ivy-like schools.
A few years ago, I had a kicker who had a 3.4 GPA - not the GPA typically associated with Princeton. However, when you looked at his transcript, it was an incredibly challenging course load. There were multiple AP courses and Honors courses throughout his academic career. That 3.4 GPA beat out many a “lighter weight” 4.0 GPA.
Another thing players don’t realize they can do that they should take full advantage of is that they can drop classes in high school without being penalized on their final transcript. If you opt into a harder course - say an Honors or AP when you would’ve otherwise stuck with a college prep class - and the first few weeks are a flop, you can always drop down to Honors or CP.
Guidance offices hate this, but so what? They hate it when a student in a lower tier asks for consideration to move up to a higher tier even more. Usually, by the time this happens, the class they are trying to level up to has already blown through a mountain of material.
It’s OK to drop classes.
If Ivy is something in your future as a student-athlete, or Ivy-like schools, comb through your transcript to see where you might be light and try to level up when you can.
Coach Cahill
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