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College Glossary

You will meet these words in applications, award letters, and counselor meetings throughout junior and senior year.

Admissions terms

Accreditation. Official recognition that a college meets the standards of a regional review agency. Without it, your credits may not transfer and the degree may carry little weight, so check a school’s accreditation before you pay a deposit.
Common Application. A single online application that more than a thousand colleges accept. Many of them tack on supplemental essays, so one application seldom means one piece of writing.
Early Action. A nonbinding application you send before the regular deadline arrives. The college answers early, and you keep the freedom to apply elsewhere and decide in spring.
Early Decision. A binding early application. Admission commits you to enroll and to drop your other applications, which means you cannot weigh spring aid offers against one another. Reserve it for a first choice your family can already afford.
Regular Decision. The standard track. Winter deadlines, spring answers.
Rolling Admission. An admissions process with no fixed deadline. The college decides as applications reach it, so applying early puts you in front of a fuller set of open seats.
Deferral. A college’s choice to push an early application into the regular pool for a second look, rather than accept or reject it now. You can usually send a fall grade report alongside it.
Wait list. A reserve of qualified applicants admitted only if seats open after others decide. Ask the college how its wait list has moved in recent years before you count on it.
Demonstrated interest. How much attention an applicant pays a college, through visits, emails, and turning up to its events. A few schools weigh it. Most do not, so learn which kind you are dealing with before you give up a Saturday for a tour.
Transcript. Your official record of courses, grades, and credits, which the high school sends straight to each college. Grades you report yourself do not stand in for it.
Letter of recommendation. A teacher’s or counselor’s written take on how a student works and thinks. The best ones come from someone who taught you lately and knows you well, not whoever handed out your highest grade.
Personal statement. The main application essay, where a student writes about background, goals, or experience in his or her own voice.

Academic terms

Advanced Placement. College-level courses taught in high school, capped by a national exam in May. A qualifying score can earn college credit, though each university draws its own passing line.
Dual enrollment. A single course that earns high school and college credit together, taught through a partner college. The grade reaches a college transcript years before you enroll there.
Carnegie unit. The credit a high school grants for a year-long course. Graduation and TOPS requirements in Louisiana are counted in them.
Credit hour. The measure colleges use for coursework. A typical class is worth three, and a bachelor’s degree takes roughly 120.
Core curriculum. The required courses every student finishes no matter their major. For TOPS, the core is a fixed list, and only the courses on it count toward the award.
GPA. Grade point average, your grades averaged on a four-point scale. Colleges often redo the figure using academic courses alone, so what they read may not match your report card.
Weighted GPA. A grade point average that adds value for Advanced Placement, Honors, and dual enrollment courses. Because of it, two students with the same report card can rank apart.
Prerequisite. A course a student finishes before a more advanced one will let them in.
Major and minor. Your major is the field you study in depth for a degree. A minor is a smaller, second focus. Most colleges let you start without declaring either.
Associate degree. A two-year degree from a community or technical college, often designed to transfer toward a bachelor’s.
Bachelor’s degree. A four-year undergraduate degree, the standard university credential and the way into most graduate study.
Liberal arts. A wide course of study spanning the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, set against a single vocational track.
Registrar. The college office that keeps academic records, transcripts, and registration. You will turn to it for enrollment verification and any dispute over a grade or credit.
Syllabus. The handout a professor gives on the first day, setting out the schedule, the grading breakdown, and the deadlines. In college it serves as the course’s contract.

Financial aid terms

FAFSA. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, filed each year for federal grants, work-study, and loans. In Louisiana it doubles as the TOPS application, so skip it and the state award goes too.
Student Aid Index. A figure the FAFSA produces that colleges use to size a family’s aid. It took over from the older Expected Family Contribution, which, despite the name, was never a bill.
Cost of attendance. A college’s full price for a year, counting housing and food, books, tuition, and fees together. Hardly anyone pays the whole figure.
Net price. What a family pays once grants and scholarships come off the cost of attendance. A pricey private college can finish below a state school after its aid is counted.
Grant. Aid given for financial need and never paid back.
Pell Grant. A federal grant for undergraduates from lower-income families, decided by the FAFSA and never repaid.
Scholarship. Aid given for grades, talent, or another quality, and never repaid. Smaller outside scholarships attract less competition than the well-known national ones.
Subsidized loan. A federal student loan whose interest the government pays while the student stays enrolled. Accept this one first.
Unsubsidized loan. A federal student loan that builds interest from the day it pays out. Cover that interest during school and the balance won’t compound on you.
Federal Work-Study. Funding for a part-time campus job for students with financial need, paid out as wages rather than taken off tuition. Those wages stay off next year’s FAFSA, unlike the pay from an ordinary job.
Award letter. A college’s notice of every grant, scholarship, loan, and work-study offer for the year. Schools seldom split the gift aid from the loans, so weigh each entry before you set two colleges side by side.
In-state tuition. The lower rate a public college charges its own state’s residents. TOPS will not cross the state line with you.

Louisiana programs and terms

TOPS. The Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, a state scholarship covering tuition at Louisiana public colleges for students who finish the core curriculum and meet the grade and ACT marks. The award rises with your ACT score.
TOPS University diploma. The college-preparatory diploma, set on 24 Carnegie units, that qualifies a student for the TOPS award and four-year admission.
Jump Start. Louisiana’s career and technical diploma, which leads to the TOPS Tech award and an industry credential. It suits a student bound for a trade or a two-year program.
LOSFA. The Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance, the state agency behind TOPS and your student aid.
LEAP 2025. Louisiana’s testing program. The high school exams arrive when core courses close and count toward both the course grade and graduation.
End-of-course test. A LEAP 2025 exam a student sits when a core course finishes, in English, Algebra I, Geometry, Biology, or US History.
Bossier Parish Community College. The local two-year college, a frequent stop for associate degrees, dual enrollment, and credits bound for a four-year school.

Articulation agreement. A formal deal between a two-year and a four-year college promising that specific credits will transfer. Make sure one exists before you assume a community college course will count toward a bachelor’s