my district just voted to do away with class rank. Im currently number 4 in my class of 170 and they are now going to only announce top 10% and val and sal.
im applying early decision to cornell in the fall, am i screwed over, or will it not affect my chances that much?
<p>Colleges are not going to punish you for something your high school does that's totally out of your control. In this case, just get your guidance counselor or one of your teachers to mention your #4 rank in their recommendation.</p>
<p>If the school district is going to eliminate rank, they probably have a guideline that school employees can not mention rank in any form. I would talk to the guidance counselor.</p>
<p>yeah, my school did that too.
It sucks cause I'm #23 out of 900 students and they will now only list the top 10 students.
So instead of being in the top 98%, I'm just someone with a 3.98 unweighted.</p>
<p>yeah i think the rank elimination hurts more than it helps</p>
<p>I wouldn't worry. In that great tome of college wisdom, Maria Hernandez said that for their AI or whatever, they take the rank given in a reccomendation, so if your GC just mentions, "Though the school board officially did away with rank last spring, James17 was then and is now fourth in his class. What a great guy," or something like that, it'll all be fine.</p>
<p>Our school doesn't rank. That's good. I'd look terrible, and it wouldn't really show who I was (or that I am probably one of the smartest kids in our grade).</p>
<p>"im applying early decision to cornell in the fall, am i screwed over, or will it not affect my chances that much?"</p>
<p>you do know that many of the top high schools and prep schools in the nation that annually send multiple kids to the ivies don't have class ranking because they have way too many good students. that is to say, their rank #20 is probably more qualified for admissions than maybe even a valedictorian at an average high school. but anyway, my point is, it's okay if your school doesn't rank. your actual GPA is more important.</p>
<p>James- if I am reading your post correctly. My kids HS does exactly the same. They rank top 10% only. They made this change about 3 years ago. For kids "already in the system"- 10th grade or higher , they continued full ranking. Those in 9th grade understood that only top 10% would rank. I actually went to the school board meeting that discussed the matter though my d was only in 8th grade at the time. She just completed her freshmen year at Cornell. Anyway, I LOVE THE SYSTEM. Coincidence or not, more of our kids are getting into the "best" schools including H-Y-P. We got our first H-P last year and our first Y kid this year. There has been no major change in the school population. Ad Coms have to deal with such convuluted ranking systems--30 val.'s from a school. (Could someone please explain that process. We have 1 Val. and 1 Sal. and occassionally a kid may tie with one another but as we use weighted average system ( i.e 99.356 vs 99.291) it is very clear how a kid is ranked. My hunch is that the Ad Com's are so greatful that they can differentiate one kid from another that our kids have been accepted at much higher rates than before to the Ivy's.. I believe the majority of schools on LI do not rank anymore (though I may be wrong on that). Our school boards attitude was if you were in the top 10 %, the info was extremely helpful- and if you were not, it didn't matter. I believe that if you just missed the cutoff, the GC would add that info on the application. Probably the kids hurting from this policy may be the top 11-15%. But that info is added by the GC if requested. My younger d is not top 10%. (probably top 33%). For her, it is quite ok that she is not ranked. As I said, I really like this system. And it got my older d into Cornell.</p>
<p>I am going to add some thoughts to my above post. I think the top 10 % ranking system works best for the "Normal"-- Regular" school. The kids that come out of Stuy or Bronx Science or Andover may not need the ranking because the school reputation speaks for itself. But the kid who goes to a public school that is not well known can get hurt in the admission process. A true ranking of top 3 % from even Podunk HS may help that kid get into a top school.</p>
<p>I don't even have rank at my HS, because a kid with a 4.0 weighted would be like #70-80 in the classs.</p>
<p>Rank elimination is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard ever. This coming from a school that has the top 5% be validictorian, not the top student(s).</p>
<p>The reason for eliminating rank from public schools is normally given as follows: Rank is unfair since it penalizes the students taking the AP and Honors courses. The school doesn't want to discourage people from taking AP/Honors courses because the grading is harder and their rank would suffer. To further compensate for this, weighted gpa was also invented so that the students taking AP/Honors would get some kind of extra credit for it.</p>
<p>The reason for eliminating rank from the top private/public high schools where 20-30 people apply to each of the Ivy Leagues each year is as follows: Adcoms review applications in order sorted by state and high school. If 20 students apply to Harvard that year, they see them ranked in order. The adcom at Harvard don't want to accept position 15 on the list without taking most of the people above guy #15 and they can't do that.</p>
<p>Some schools rank by gpa, some rank by weighted gpa, some rank by both in two different categories, and some don't rank at all. To me, the idea of only ranking the top 10% seems to be primarily oriented towards not making the guys at the bottom feel bad. It eliminates the guy who graduated last in his class. (Like U. S. Grant did at West Point.)</p>
<p>In actual practice, the extremely selective schools recalculate your gpa only including core courses (Eng/Math/Science/Social Studies/Foreign Lang). If your high school doesn't rank, they will attempt to rank you anyway by referring back to the high school's profile. Each high school sends a profile along with your transcript. The profile gives a statistical breakdown of gpa in the school.</p>
<p>Back to the OP. Being 3rd or 4th in you class when the school doesn't rank is about the worse case. You are not val and you are not sal and you can't say that you are 4/170. On the other hand, I'm sure the OP has a very high gpa and that this won't be a critical issue for him/her.</p>
<p>For the bulk of applicants, the rank is just used to get a general idea of how hard the grading policy is at the high school. If a student has a 3.5 and is in the top 10%, then the school grades hard. If a student has a 3.9 and is not in the top 10%, then the school grades easy. If the school doesn't rank, the adcoms use the statistical profile that the high school provides (see above).</p>