What do colleges look for? Your school published what it weighs

Your teen's top school has already told you what it looks for. It filed the answer, in writing, and almost nobody reads it.

Every year, colleges publish a standard report called the Common Data Set. It is long, plain, and built for researchers, which is why families never find it. One section of it matters more to an applicant than the rest combined: section C7, where the school rates how much weight it gives each part of the application. Not in marketing language. In a four-step scale, factor by factor, signed off by the school itself.

If you have ever asked "what do colleges look for," this page is the closest thing to an official answer that exists.

The page almost nobody reads

Section C7 lists the factors in an application, from grades and test scores to the essay, recommendations, activities, talent, and character, and marks each one at one of four levels of importance. The school fills it in itself. It is the same filing the school gives to the federal surveys and the big college guides, so it is as close to a sworn statement as admissions produces.

One warning before the examples: read the school's own filing, not a summary of it. We check these tables against the official filings as part of our work, and summaries online get them wrong, sometimes on the exact rows that matter most. The two minutes below takes you to the source.

The four tiers, in plain English

Very Important is the top rung. These are the factors the school says carry the most weight in its decisions.

Important is one rung down. Real weight, not decisive on its own.

Considered is two rungs below Very Important. The factor is looked at, and it can help at the margins, but the school is telling you plainly that it does not drive the decision.

Not Considered is exactly what it says. The factor counts for nothing at that school, however much effort a family puts into it.

That is the whole scale. The insight is not in the scale, though. It is in how differently schools fill it in.

Three schools, three very different answers

Princeton (2024-25 filing) fills the top rung almost completely. Nine factors are Very Important: the rigor of the school record, class rank, grades, test scores, the essay, recommendations, activities, talent, and character. Nothing at all sits in Important. The message is demanding but clear: at Princeton, nearly everything counts heavily, and the essay is in the top group.

Harvard (2025-26 filing) does the opposite. Its Very Important list is empty. So is its Important list. Every factor, the essay, grades, test scores, activities, all of it, sits in Considered, and a few things, class rank and level of applicant's interest among them, are Not Considered at all. Harvard ranks nothing above anything else. A family guessing at "what Harvard wants most" is guessing; the filing refuses to say.

Northwestern (2024-25 filing) lands between the two, with a surprise. The essay, activities, talent, and character are all Very Important. Test scores are only Considered, two rungs down, and the interview is only Considered too. State residency and religious affiliation are not considered at all. A student polishing test prep for Northwestern while rushing the essay has the school's own priorities backwards.

Same league of schools. Three different filings. That is why general advice about "what colleges want" misleads: there is no single answer, there is a filing per school.

How to read your school's C7 in 2 minutes

1. Find the filing. Search the school's name plus "Common Data Set." The school's own site hosts it, usually as a PDF. Open the most recent year.

2. Go to section C7. It is in the first-year admissions section, a single table titled "Relative importance of each of the following academic and nonacademic factors."

3. Read the top rung first. List what your school calls Very Important. That short list is where effort pays. Then check the surprises: anything your family is working hard on that sits in Considered, or worse, in Not Considered.

4. Check the essay's rung. At most of the schools we verify, the essay sits in the top group. If it does at your school too, the essay is not a formality. It is one of the few top-weighted things your teen still controls this late in the process.

What C7 cannot tell you

Honesty matters here, so: C7 is what a school says it weighs. It is the starting point, not the whole read. It will not tell you how a given reader reacts to a given essay, and schools weigh factors inside a whole file, not as separate scores. A factor marked Considered can still matter in a close call.

What C7 does is end the guessing about priorities. Families spend the fall polishing whatever feels weakest. The filing tells you what the school itself says is heavy and what it says is light. Work in that order.

Start with the free check

The nine-school version of these tables is in our free C7 cheat sheet (PDF), built from the same official filings.

Our free essay scorecard scores an essay on six dimensions and adds one line most families never get: how the essay fits what the named school says it weighs, read from that school's own C7 filing. Send the essay, name the school, and the scores and the fit line come back by email.

Applying early? The early decision checklist covers the whole file in the last days before November 1.