School Profile
A School Profile is a standardized one-to-two-page document that a high school submits alongside each student's application, describing the school itself — its curriculum, grading scale, course offerings, student demographics, and how its graduates typically perform in college admissions.
Key Facts
- • Written by the school (usually the counselor), not the student.
- • Submitted through the Common App automatically by the counselor — the student doesn't upload it.
- • Tells admissions readers how to interpret your transcript in context.
- • Critical for Korean general high schools, where US readers have little prior context about your school.
- • If your high school doesn't have a school profile, ask your counselor to create one before application season.
What it contains
A typical school profile is 1–2 pages and includes:
- School identity: name, location, public/private, number of students, whether it's an international school, IB/AP/honors offerings
- Grading scale: is the transcript on 4.0 GPA, 100-point, 1–9 IB, Korean 1–9 등급? How are grades weighted?
- Class rank policy: does the school calculate class rank? If not, why?
- Course offerings: which AP, IB, honors, or advanced courses are available? How many students typically take each?
- College matriculation list: where did last year's graduates enroll? This is the single most important line on the profile for US admissions readers evaluating an unfamiliar school.
- Curricular context: is the school on a block schedule, a standard 7-period day, a tutorial system? How long is a "semester"?
Why it exists
US admissions readers see thousands of transcripts every year from every kind of high school in every country. They need a way to interpret a single transcript in context. An A- at a school with 20 AP offerings where 80% of students take AP classes is different from an A- at a school with 3 AP offerings where only the valedictorian takes them. The school profile provides that context.
For US high schools this is a standard document that's been around for decades. For Korean international schools it's also standard — any competent international school has a school profile and the counselor knows how to update it. The profile usually goes out with every student's transcript automatically.
Why this matters most for Korean general high school students
A Korean international school student (e.g. at SFS, KIS, SIS, Chadwick) has a well-understood school profile that US readers have seen many times. Admissions committees already know what a rigorous course at SFS looks like.
A Korean general high school student (일반고) often has no school profile at all, or one that has never been translated to English. This is a real gap. Without a profile:
- US readers have no idea how your grades compare to your class (many Korean high schools don't publish class rank, but readers don't know that unless you tell them)
- They can't calibrate your course difficulty (is 물리 I a standard Korean physics class, or is it actually equivalent to AP Physics 1?)
- They have no idea whether other students from your school have applied to US universities before
The best you can do if your school has no profile: ask your counselor or 진학 지도 담당 to create a 1-page English summary that covers the standard items above, even if it's informal. Your counselor will submit it through the Common App along with the transcript.
What a student can do
Technically, the student does not write or upload the school profile. But the student can:
- Check whether your school already has one (ask your counselor)
- Request a new one if none exists, providing a template
- Review the existing profile for accuracy and make sure class rank policy and AP availability are correctly stated
- Confirm that the counselor uploads it through the Common App, not separately by email
Reviewed by Sprint Admissions Team · Updated April 2026
Related terms
Letter of Recommendation
A Letter of Recommendation is a formal letter written by a high school teacher, counselor, or (occasionally) a mentor, describing an applicant's intellectual strengths, character, and potential — one of the most heavily weighted non-academic pieces of a US college application.
GPA (Unweighted / Weighted)
GPA (Grade Point Average) is a summary of a student's overall academic performance, typically on a 4.0 scale in the US system — with 'unweighted' counting all courses equally and 'weighted' adding bonus points for Honors, AP, or IB courses.
Academic Transcript
An academic transcript is an official record from a high school listing every course a student has taken, the grade earned in each, and the overall GPA or class rank — submitted to US colleges through the Common App as the foundational document of an application.