<p>I have posted this in College Admissions forum but think I will get better answers here.</p>
<p>I am a current mother of a daughter who attends a large public school (around 600 students per class). Her rank is not very outstanding for top-tier schools, as she is ranked 54~55 and is very barely in the top 10%.</p>
<p>Recently I stumbled across this Academic Index calculator: Academic Index3 - College Confidential</p>
<p>In the last part, it asks you to choose an option: Exact Ranking, Decile, Quarter, or GPA only. I calculated this for my daughter and she came out around a 210/240 and 4/9. However, if I switch to GPA only, her index shot way up and came out as a 8/9.</p>
<p>I am wondering if class ranking will negatively impact her chances at HYPMS. She has solid ECs and a 2340 on the SAT. I know that many schools these days do not rank their students. Therefore, will a college pre-screen its applicants using the Academic Index and basically toss her out because her AI is only a 4, as compared to some students who have a 8 or 9 simply because their school does not rank? Admissions officers are aware of these discrepancies, are they not? I feel that class rank always hurts you unless you're in the top 5%, and even then it is not as advantageous as schools who do not rank.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about the AI. It’s an algorithm the Ivies use to evaluate the academic credentials of recruited athletes. It’s not used to assess other applicants. </p>
<p>That said, your daughter’s credentials are going to be evaluated in the context of those of her classmates. Typically, a unless a student is at a school with an exceptionally strong student body, a class rank barely in the tenth percentile will be low for Yale.</p>
<p>Is she in more rigorous classes than those students ranked above her? Our school ranks students but does not weight classes. My son is one of the handful of kids who have an extremely rigorous schedule. His GC says she points this out in her rec letter. I think teacher recs can be helpful too.</p>
<p>As everyone stated before, as long as she has taken on a very rigorous course that caused her to be behind the rankings, then it shouldn’t be too much of a concern</p>
<p>the reason why private schools do not have any ranking system is due to a court case (if i remember correctly, a parent sued a private school due to injustice of students in sports that could not take AP’s, thus fall behind in ranking). Unfortunately, public schools do not really have any parent/parents of large # that would support such a thing, thus ranking still exists.</p>
<p>and colleges do take into account of everything.</p>
<p>The questions is not whether “she has taken on a very rigorous course” but whether the school calculates rank using a weighted GPA (adjusted upward for challenging classes) or an unweighted GPA (in which an A in a regular class is equivalent to an A in an AP class in terms of value).</p>