Every September the same question fills counselor offices and family group chats: what do colleges actually look for? The answer is usually a guess, a rumor, or a paid opinion. It turns out most colleges have already answered it in writing, on a form almost nobody reads.
The form
Section C7 of the Common Data Set asks each college to rate seventeen factors on a four-point scale: very important, important, considered, not considered. Rigor of the transcript. Class rank. GPA. Test scores. The essay. Recommendations. Interview. Extracurriculars. Talent. Character. First-generation status. Legacy. Geography. State residency. Volunteer work. Work experience. Demonstrated interest.
The school fills it in itself, every year, and posts it. We have read the filings of 73 schools for the 2024–25 and 2025–26 cycles. Here is what they say, in aggregate, and what that means for the application you are finishing this month.
What almost everyone agrees on
Two factors are near-unanimous. Sixty-six of 73 schools rate GPA very important. Sixty-two of 71 rate the rigor of your course load the same way. No school marks either as not considered.
That agreement is the point. When nine schools in ten give the same answer, the answer tells you nothing about any one of them. Grades and rigor are the price of entry. They decide whether your file gets a serious read, not what happens once it does.
Where the answers split
Everything else is where a school's individual character shows up. Four factors are split almost evenly across the four ratings — which means the school you are applying to could sit anywhere.
Class rank: 23 schools very important, 17 important, 17 considered, 16 not considered. Harvard marks it not considered. So do six of the seven University of California campuses we read, along with Michigan, USC, and Georgia Tech. Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and Notre Dame mark it very important.
Recommendations: 27 very important, 22 important, 13 considered, 11 not considered. Six UC campuses do not read them at all. Cornell, Stanford, and Georgetown put them at the top.
Test scores: 16 very important, 9 important, 40 considered, 8 not considered. The eight that do not consider them are the test-blind schools — six UC campuses, Cal Poly, and the University of Washington. The sixteen at the top include Princeton, Stanford, Dartmouth, Brown, Rice, Georgetown, and Johns Hopkins.
Character and personal qualities: 31 very important, 22 important, 16 considered, 3 not considered.
Read those four rows for the schools on your list and you will know more about how each one reads a file than most of the advice on the internet can tell you.
Where nobody claims to care much
At the other end, some factors are almost universally rated low. Interview: zero schools very important, 42 of 70 not considered. Demonstrated interest: zero very important, 42 of 69 not considered. Legacy: zero schools rate alumni relation very important or even important — 36 considered, 37 not considered.
If you have been told that a campus visit or an alumni interview will make or break your application, the schools themselves mostly say otherwise. A few do weigh them; the rest have written down that they do not.
The one school that rates nothing
Harvard's 2025–26 filing rates none of the seventeen factors very important. Fourteen are considered, three not considered. It is the only filing of the 73 with no top rating anywhere.
Rice, on the same form for the same year, rates nine factors very important. Both are honest. One is telling you the read is holistic and nothing dominates; the other is telling you exactly which nine things to get right. Neither ranking site captures that difference, and both filings are public.
A note on what the table cannot say
A rating is a school's description of its own process, not a formula. "Very important" does not tell you how much, and two schools that both mark the essay very important can read essays completely differently. What the table does reliably show is the shape of the read — which inputs a school has chosen to say it weighs, and which it has chosen to say it does not. That is more than most applicants know about most of their schools, and it is free.
How to use this
Pull the C7 table for each school on your list — most schools post their Common Data Set under institutional research, and every school page on PrepToDone now shows the six factors that vary most, with the filing year and a link to the source. Then spend your remaining weeks on the factors your schools actually rate high, not on the ones a general guide told you to worry about.
For a student choosing where to spend one Early Decision application, this table is half the decision. A school that rates the essay very important is a different bet from one that rates it merely considered, if the essay is your strongest piece.
Where the numbers come from
Every rating above is from section C7 of the named school's Common Data Set for the 2024–25 or 2025–26 cycle, read from the school's own published filing. Counts are over the 73 filings we have read on those two cycles. Nothing is estimated.
Put your list into PrepToDone and see what each school published about its early round and what it says it weighs — free, without an account. The call on where the binding application belongs is $9.99 through Nov 15 (regular $49), once. Run your list.
Results are data-based estimates and do not guarantee admission. This article is for informational purposes only and does not guarantee admission outcomes. All data is based on publicly available information and may not reflect current admissions standards.
Written by PrepToDone Team — data analysis on U.S. federal education datasets (IPEDS · College Scorecard).