<p>Hi. I've been looking around this site for a couple of weeks, but this is my first post. I have a question and was wondering if anyone here could offer some insight to what I'm going through.</p>
<p>I'm a rising senior and I'll be applying to a couple of schools this fall. I've done my research, and I know that colleges take into account your GPA, SATs, essay, extracurriculars, etc etc. I'm not as concerned with those because my stats are pretty on par with the schools I'm planning to apply to, but I am worried about my class rank. </p>
<p>Before I left school for the summer I questioned my counselor about my class rank. My (unweighted) GPA is somewhere around a 3.45, and I expected to at least be in the top 25%. I go to a small school in a very, very rural area where a large amount of the students do not plan to go to college, and make their livelihood by farming. There's a little more than 150 students in our senior class, and so I was pretty shocked/surprised when my counselor told me that I was barely making the top 50%.</p>
<p>I don't want to belittle everyone in the top 25%; there are some really intelligent people in my school who work really hard. But there's an overwhelming majority of people who don't. A friend and I did a bit of investigation (more like just talking around), and realized that most of the people in the top 50% are taking the easiest classes offered i.e. weight training, hordiculture, journalism (our journalism classes consist of reading newspapers and writing a one paragraph review. And it can be used as an english credit rather than an elective!) etc. </p>
<p>Our school is far from competitive. Kids here generally don't care at all about their education, and in turn the faculty doesn't bother pushing kids to succeed or take classes that might actually challenge them. Every year at least two AP classes are cancelled because not enough people signed up for them; in the ones I've taken so far, we're lucky if we get at least 5-10 students. And it doesn't help that our school gets virtually no funding (the lowest in our county). </p>
<p>My guidance counselor and I are very close, and she is constantly commenting about the fact that I'm one of the few students she sees more than 3x a year (I'm always trying to stay in contact with her). She understands my frustration, but she doesn't seem to know what to say/do.</p>
<p>I'm no genius or anything, but I work hard for my grades, though they hardly stack up to the ones I've seen on here. And I definitely don't think I deserve to be valedictorian or anything, not even close. I guess I'm just upset that I've only taken honors, advanced, and AP courses since 9th grade, and I'm "barely" making the top 50%. </p>
<p>The college I'm most interested in ranks class rank as "very important" on collegeboard. Is there anyway I or my counselor can alert them to this situation, without seeming like I'm just complaining or whining? Should I just ignore it and hope they will too? Has anyone else experienced this at all? I don't want it to hurt my chances of getting admitted to my first-choice school.</p>
<p>(And it might seem as though I'm exaggerating or something, but I can assure that I'm not. Our administration/students are wholly aware of the apathy on campus, and it's often the butt of many jokes.)</p>
<p>Thanks for reading this long-winded question/rant, and thanks even more if you reply! And please, ignore the screenname..</p>