The B+ Rule is a framework that removes the guesswork from high school class selection. After interviewing admissions reps and analyzing hundreds of transcripts, I developed this guideline: getting a B+ in a harder class is roughly equivalent to getting an A in the class one level below. If you can’t realistically get an A-minus in a class with proper study habits, you should drop down a level. This simple rule helps students optimize their schedules while protecting their grades, sleep, and sanity.
At every college information session across the country, admissions reps say the same thing: “We’re looking for students who take the most rigorous classes and get the top grades.” Then they go to the next school. Same message. Take the hardest classes and get the best grades. But here’s the problem: what happens when you have to choose between the two?
That’s the question I never had answered as a high school student, and it cost me. Today I’m going to share the B+ Rule, a framework that takes a subjective, anxiety-inducing decision and makes it just about as objective as it can be.
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What every college tells you, and why it doesn’t help
Flashback to 2008. I was going on college tours with my parents all over the country. At every single information session, they would say the same thing: “We are looking for students who in high school have the highest rigor classes and get the top grades.”
The question no one answers
As a sophomore in high school, I always had this thought: okay, but that sounds great. What if you have to choose between the two? Which do you prefer? I wasn’t confident enough to ask that question publicly in an information session. Looking back, I should have.
And I can tell you this: even if you asked that question now in an information session, you would not get a straight answer. They’ll beat around the bush and say, “Well, you know, really, we just want the highest grades in the hardest classes, and that’s the strongest academic profile to stand out.” So do both.
Okay, that still doesn’t answer my question. What if I can only choose one?
The extremes are obvious
Everyone watching this would agree: if you’re going to get an F in BC Calculus, you should probably not take it. Getting an F will hurt your college-ready profile. On the flip side, if you can get an A in BC Calc, congrats. You’ve hit exactly what every information session says to do.
But what if you’re not positive you can get an A? Then what?
The C+ that changed everything
Let me tell you my story. It’s 2008. I’m a sophomore at a competitive New England public school. Junior year class selection is coming up. I had been an honors and AP type student, but it was generally known at my high school that junior year honors pre-calculus was a step up. In fact, it was two steps up.
I knew it would be a grind
I knew it was going to be an absolute grind. Miss Patton, if you’re watching this, you were a fantastic teacher and you taught a hard class. Keep in mind, this was before I had elite level study habits and tactics. That came later.
I grinded through pre-calc the entire year. That was the classic 2 a.m. sleepless night, studying, studying, studying. Long story short, I’ll never forget it. I ended with a 79.7 in the class for the year.
How do I remember that exact number? Because Miss Patton doesn’t round up.
The negotiation that failed
I went in during July to try to see if I could negotiate eight points on my final, which would have brought my overall grade from a 79.7 to an 80. Miss Patton, I still remember sitting in your classroom in the middle of summer negotiating with you on why I should get partial credit on some of those questions.
You gave me four points, but you didn’t give me eight. I ended up with a 79.8. That was a C+ for the year.
So if anyone asks, and people ask all the time, “Oh, you got into Vanderbilt. What was your lowest grade in high school?” I tell them: a C+. I got one of them. I’ll never forget it to this day.
The trap I fell into
Posting that C+ and applying to colleges with it absolutely hurt my college-ready profile. It did. And I always kicked myself because it was a really taxing year in that class for me. I tried really hard. I stressed. I struggled. And after all of that, I actually hurt my profile.
That’s the hardest part. I hurt my profile doing that because I was just following what they said. They told me to take the hardest classes and get the best grades. So I took step one, but I just couldn’t get step two.
The B+ rule explained
This sent me down a rabbit hole. Throughout college and after, I met with multiple admissions reps. I interviewed people. I looked at different transcripts of students who got accepted and rejected. And basically with all these data points, I came up with a rule for my students.
The core principle
After all of my research and interviewing top admissions reps and assessing transcripts, I came to the following realization: getting a B+ in a higher level class is equivalent, or about equivalent, in the eyes of a top college admissions rep to getting an A in whatever class is lower tiered in terms of rigor.
Every school is different. Some schools the highest possible level is honors, which would mean that getting an A in the class below, which some schools call CP or enriched, is equivalent to getting a B+ in an honors class. Some schools have AP classes. You can go AP to honors, honors to CP, and so on.
The real question to ask yourself
Here’s the kicker. B+ is about equivalent. So really, unless you have this deep desire to struggle and fight and claw for that B+, which is equivalent to getting an A in a lower level class, you should be asking yourself: can I get an A-minus in that class?
If you had asked me in 2008 whether I could get an A-minus in pre-calculus with Miss Patton, my honest answer would have been no. But I didn’t think like that in 2008. I just blindly followed what admissions reps said.
Make it objective
Do you see how powerful this is? You can run every single one of your classes through this frame, through this mental construct, and optimize your class schedule instead of having this constant gray area of “most rigorous classes and the best grades.”
I know what that means now. But I got a C+ when I applied that framework, and it did not help my college-ready profile.
Hope’s story: proof the B+ rule works
I know some of you watching this are thinking, is this real? Does this random guy on YouTube saying this actually know what he’s talking about? Let me introduce you to Hope.
A different approach to high school
Hope was a standout student who fully and completely embraced this rule. She came from a very competitive New England public school. She only took four APs throughout high school, with about two honors classes each year. And she prioritized having balance and doing well in the classes she was taking rather than overwhelming her plate.
Her transcript? Not a single B anywhere. One A-minus ever.
Hope did not take a rigorous class schedule because she applied this framework to her class selection. A lot of times she said, “I don’t think I can get an A-minus in that class. I’m going to drop down.”
The payoff
Guess what? Once you drop down and you take a slightly easier class and you know you’re going to work hard and you’ll probably lock in that A, you have mental freedom. The college planning journey becomes more fun. You have more time. You can sleep 8 hours a night.
And then I know what you’re saying. Yeah, but you’ve just drastically hurt your chance of getting into your top school.
Go watch my full interview with Hope. Her top school was Vanderbilt. She’s now a student at Vanderbilt University.
How she got into a 6% acceptance rate school
Here’s what happened with that increased time. Hope was able to allocate time to other aspects of her profile and help optimize them. When her competitors, and yes, when applying to the top schools in the country your peers are your competitors, were working until 2 a.m. grinding out all of their AP classes and taking that ninth AP class, Hope was working on her authentic standout profile and telling an adequate story.
A story that made admissions go, “This student is just really authentic. They mean what they say.” Her essay called out the fact that her rigor wasn’t as high as other applicants. She put her hand up and owned it. She explained why she chose to go through high school this way.
That’s a really hard student to reject versus the student that’s got it all on paper but doesn’t make the end goal of their story clear.
How to apply the B+ rule this semester
Whether your student is in eighth grade going into 9th grade, 9th grade going into 10th, 10th into 11th, or 11th into 12th, here’s what I implore you to do.
The first few weeks are your window
When they go back to school in August or September, have them look at their transcript. Have them look at their class schedule. You are going to have a 2 to 3 week buffer where basically you can move classes on a whim.
Please ask your child: do you think you can get an A-minus with proper study habits?
The proper study habits caveat
That’s a big caveat. If your student doesn’t have proper study habits, please go watch my video on how to get straight A’s and sleep eight hours a night. It’s going to change their life.
But let’s assume they’ve watched that video and they apply those tactics day after day. Then they should ask themselves: can I get an A-minus and be able to sleep 8 hours every night in this class?
What if the answer is no?
If the answer is no, they should deeply assess: why am I doing this?
Occasionally, I could see a scenario where a family is actually valuing character building over optimizing their profile for dream school acceptance. Maybe. But that’s not my job. I’m not a parent trying to character build. I’m trying to help every high performing student across the country get into their dream college. And this framework is unequivocally the way to do it.
If your student is feeling overwhelmed by their current schedule, start with my free High School Time Audit. Most students find 5+ hours per week they didn’t know they had.
The trade-off that isn’t really a trade-off
Let’s stop acting like every student can just get perfect grades in the hardest classes. Students have extracurriculars. They have sports. They have family life. And by the way, they want to enjoy all of those things.
What you gain by dropping down
Once you drop down and take a slightly easier class, and you know you’re going to work hard and you’ll probably lock in that A, you have mental freedom. You have more time. You can sleep 8 hours a night.
And with that time? You can allocate it to other aspects of your profile and help optimize them. Category 4 of admissions, what I call your story, is becoming more and more important these days.
Different is greater than difficult
We have dozens and dozens of examples beyond Hope. Students who embraced this framework, who said, “I’m going to get good grades. I might not take the highest rigor. I’m going to make sure I get A’s. I’m going to make sure I sleep eight hours a night. And then I’m going to have time to focus on my Common App, my essays, my story.”
Different is greater than difficult. And you can only be different if you have the time and mental bandwidth to actually explore what makes you unique.
If your student is struggling to identify what makes them unique, I created a free exercise called The Saturday Morning Test that helps. It’s the same one I use with every new family in our program.
Stop grinding your way to a weaker application
Here’s what I want every parent and student to understand: I hurt my profile by taking that honors pre-calc class. All those late nights, all that stress, all that sacrifice, and I came out worse than if I had just dropped down a level and gotten an A.
If this video helps one single student across the country avoid the trap I went into in 2008, I’ve done my job. If I can help one more student embrace Hope’s style of effectiveness, her approach of saying, “I’m not going to grind myself to a pulp. I’m going to enjoy high school and I’m going to get into my dream school,” then it is all possible.
Have your child watch this post. Sit down at the kitchen table and just have a brainstorm. Run each class through the B+ Rule framework. Ask the simple question: can they realistically get an A-minus in this class with proper study habits?
If the answer is no, you know what to do.
Ready to take the next step?
This is obviously general advice I send out to the masses. If you want to talk about your own personalized situation, we help high performing high school students, 3.7 GPA or higher, achieve dream school admission and their wildest goals. But we do so in a foundational manner.
We’re not a last-second “we’ll tweak your essay” approach. We’re a multi-year program for a reason. 9th grade is the optimal time to start working with us because we can work with you for four years to help apply lessons like this and hundreds of others.
If you have any interest in learning more, book a free college planning strategy session with you, your high schooler, and our director of admissions. We’ll talk through your student’s situation and map out what makes sense.
And if you’re not ready for a call yet, start with my free College Story Audit. It’s a 15-minute assessment that shows you whether your student’s current profile tells a compelling story or blends in with everyone else’s.
Frequently asked questions about the B+ rule
Does this rule apply to all schools or just the top 50? If you’re like, “Well, this only applies if you’re applying to a school outside of the top 50,” I beg to differ. Hope got into Vanderbilt with a 6% acceptance rate. This framework works precisely because it helps you stand out at the most competitive schools.
What if my student really wants to challenge themselves? There’s a difference between healthy challenge and grinding yourself to a pulp. Maybe you justify it with “I think I can scrape out a B+ and I really just want to be in the top class for my confidence.” Okay, maybe. But really the question is A-minus. Be honest with yourself.
Should we apply this rule to every single class? Yes. You can run every single one of your classes through this frame and optimize your class schedule. It removes the constant gray area and gives you an objective approach instead of saying “yeah that class is going to be hard.”
What about when choosing classes in the spring for next year? This will apply in the summer as you’re going back to school in those first few weeks, but this will also apply in springtime when you choose next year’s classes. Round and round we go.
Won’t colleges see that my student didn’t take the hardest classes? They will. And that’s why you call it out. Hope acknowledged in her essay that her rigor wasn’t as high. She owned it, explained her reasoning, and still got into Vanderbilt. Authenticity matters more than a packed AP schedule.
What if my student already has a B or C in a hard class? If you have a dip in your profile, call it out. Wave your hand. Don’t hide from it. Explain the circumstances. Admissions officers are humans, and they respect authenticity and self-awareness.
