<p>My high school is ranked in the top 50 in the country. If I have a low GPA, will colleges take into consideration that I came from a tough school? Thanks.</p>
<p>You schools rank in part means that it consistently produces high achieving students. Your correlation would be true if you were asking about your class rank (ie there are so many high achieving students that even a 3.9GPA doesn’t crack the top 10%).
What do you consider to be a ‘low GPA’?</p>
<p>3.5, and our county does not rank.</p>
<p>Perhaps a better indicator might be the history of the caliber of universities students from your school have been admitted to with similar GPA & SAT/ACT scores. Understand that this is simply part of the applications process, but it would give you a comparison you are looking for from your specific school. Does your school use Naviance?</p>
<p>I think you are going to have to ask each college. Our DD applied from TJ with a 3.7 weighted, and was accepted at three “new ivies” and was wait listed at WUSTL. OTOH my impression is that some schools do not adjust adequately - I will not say which here, as some folk get touchy about the issue - private message me for details. </p>
<p>Most colleges have regionally specially admissions folk, and in theory they should know the high schools in their area pretty well.</p>
<p>@blueiguana yes, our school does use Naviance</p>
<p>@brooklynborndad well TJ is ranked the number one in the country so that might be different. My school is ranked something like 53.</p>
<p>Agree with Blue.</p>
<p>OP- this may sound EXTREMELY cliche (but it’s true) that colleges look at a lot more than just your rank. I can use Duke as an example, where our Dean of Admissions told us that this year Duke rejected 1300 valedictorians (I’m assuming they all had 4.0s UW), while many people got accepted, I know of some with 3.6s and 3.7 as their UW GPA. So I think that everything is sensitive and relative and that depending how strong the rest of your application is, your rank might help you or it might not.</p>
<p>Duke rejects many vals, but also look at how few they take not in the top 10% of their class who are not athletes (very few).</p>
<p>Schools that don’t rank give enough info to colleges to let them know exactly where you rank. As noted above, the best info will come from your school’s Naviance as long as you account for hooked candidates.</p>
<p>As far as I now, the only information I can get from Naviance is information about colleges (average GPA, ACT, etc.) Is there anything else I can get from it? Thanks</p>
<p>Look at the scattergrams (sp?). It will plot each applicant for your school (that reported, some students withhold this information) and indicate GPA & SAT/ACT. Each one will be shown as an ‘accepted’, ‘denied’, ‘wait-accepted’, or ‘wait-denied’. You will see a trend of what you can expect in admissions from your school at each university. Keep in mind the caveat that many schools are using a very holistic admissions process and stats are only part of the picture. These charts do not show who had a killer essay, recommendation, EC, or even a hook.
I hope this helps.</p>