<p>Because there are some schools in this country where the “dumbest” kid is still smarter than the valedictorian at others. Class rank is only important because all those other things are more important and they contribute to class rank. I don’t think anyone is trying to imply that they literally ignore 9th grade, but if 9th grade tells a different story than 10-12th grades I do believe many schools tend to play that down.</p>
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<p>In DS’s class year, xx was 5. Even within that group of top kids, only 60 percents got into a very top (say, top 5) national research university; the other 40 percents had to go to a top LAC or a top 10 national research university, which is slightly less competitive than the top 5 research university.</p>
<p>From what I see it, a very top rank from a competitive public high school carries the same weight as that of a state-level EC. I suspect it is more important than SAT scores (as there are too many students at a competitive public high school who have high SAT scores (e.g., > 2250).</p>
<p>THe competition game in a high power prep school is completely different. I heard a prep school sent about 9 kids to a single top Ivy in one year. The students there are much more competitive as far as the college admission is concerned. (Their parents also tend to be more competitive. LOL.)</p>
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<p>Actually, yes they are. Princeton and Stanford used to ‘advertise’ that on their websites. (Don’t know if they still do.)</p>
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<p>Only the less selective ones. Even the UC’s, which used to totally exclude Frosh grades (they weren’t even reported), now use them in the admission criteria.</p>
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<p>Indeed, but even at the nationally-ranked high schools, S & P just aren’t gonna pick from the bottom half those classes. They will just not pick anyone from lower Podunk HS. </p>
<p>For example last year at TJ, arguably one of the most rigorous public high schools in the nation (mean SAT of 2200), had 25 (6%) accepted to Princeton, 19 to Brown, 15 to Yale, and 10 to Stanford (no doubt geography comes into play) out of a class of ~430.</p>
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The astonishing statistics at TJ high school makes me feel that my kid went to a “dumb” high school. What can you expect those adcoms in the NE think of a high school down in the south! Seriously, sometimes I feel that those elite NE colleges come to the south mostly for recruiting URMs or athletes, at least this is one of their main purposes. Some more “capable” families send their kids to some elite prep school in NE, or some elite private high school near some major cities in the south. During one of the college application interbiew, the interviewers even asked what the parents (not the students!) do during the weekends in order to find out how “nourishing” the family’s (not the school’s) education environment may be. My kid was kind of ****ed off by this kind of “question.”</p>
<p>But in the end, my kid still competed (with some extra efforts in college though) well enough against those science kids from a school like TJ. But I think it is very likely their high school teacher and/or their recruited professors who mentor these high school kids into Intel Science Competition winners are better than the science teacher at my kid’s high school, who was remored to assign a grand total of a dozen or so problems as their homework in a semeter. And their middle school math teacher rarely taught (She was actually good at teaching but she would rather talk about anything else but math.)</p>
<p>“What can you expect those adcoms in the NE think highly of a high school down in the south!”</p>
<p>LOL, yea, metro D.C. is “the south”? :)</p>