<p>I attended the Harvard info session in Arlington, VA couple of days ago with my S who is applying to H and Y. The adcom for this region was present with couple of alums and gave a beautiful presentation on amission, aid, housing and life in Harvard in general. A small movie was shown too. </p>
<p>In the brochure that was handed out and the adcom herself mentioned how most incoming students are in the top 10-15% of their respective classes. My S brought home his class rank and it is not good (~ 22%). Upon further investigation it came out that strength of schedule is not considered when class ranking is done. Is this the norm in most schools? My son goes to a magnet school for science and math every alternate day and does the liberal arts courses in his home school. he has taken the toughest courses available and has some B+ grades. I asked him to talk to his counsellor and explain but apparently "that is not a cool thing to do". </p>
<p>His SAT-I is 2280. SAT-2 US Hist - 760, SAT-2 MATH-2 - 750 plus taking 2 more SAT-2s soon. Grade point is 3.8 and reasonable amount and quality of ECs and recos. </p>
<p>Thanks for any info on the Class rank claulation method.</p>
<p>Seems silly to me. SAT scores indicate that he isn't just slacking off, so I would definitely have counselor say something about him taking a tough course-load.</p>
<p>Nothing is standardized about how high schools grade students or rank students. These days more and more high schools don't have explicit class ranks for their students. I don't envy the admission officers who have to figure out how to compare students who come from so many high schools, but that is part of their job.</p>
<p>^ Which is where the SAT comes into play. Also, I do believe that elite schools should place AP scores more into context. Idk if they do or not, but it should play a bigger factor than it seems to, or at least a bigger factor than everyone seems to say.</p>
<p>
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no, it isn't. Most HS take rigor of schedules into account.
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Our local high school doesn't consider rigor of schedules either. We had 13 Validictorians last year and they went to schools ranging from Ivies to local community college. Maybe we can do a informal survey on this thread to see what percent of the schools consider rigor in their ranking.</p>
<p>Some do, and some don't. Our high school did not weigh. An A in carpentry was the same as an A in AP-Calc BC. Conversely, a B+ in a college-level math course was the same as a B+ in second year of a foreign language. We were told that the school does not weigh because colleges recalculate GPAs (excluding classes such as carpentry, for instance)</p>
<p>Your son should really talk to the GC. Colleges do ask about toughness of curriculum.</p>
<p>Actually, a lot of schools will ask for a weighted GPA to determine your standings etc. A weighted GPA indicates that you took hard classes. If he has a 3.8 unweighted (meaning each class was out of 4 points and then averaged) and he is taking all honors or AP classes, his weighted should be much higher than most other students who only take the easy classes and score well . Here's a site that explains the conversion : Online</a> Conversion - weighted GPA</p>
<p>But don't worry, most colleges know how ranking at certain schools work if students from your son's school have applied to Harvard in the past. They won't put much emphasis on the class rank as they will be more focused on his weighted GPA and overall schedule.</p>
<p>The college should absolutely be notified about this ranking policy, because people who are ranked below top 10% are much less frequently admitted, especially when you get to sub-20%s. </p>
<p>I don't know if Harvard still calculates the CRS and uses it for admission, but the difference between 22% and a 3.8 GPA might very well be the decisive factor. A 3.8 would yield about a 75 CRS (80 is max), while his rank might bring it all the way down to sub-60.</p>
<p>Thanks to all of you. I think I am going to create a little noise in the guidance office about this. We are in the outskirts of Wash DC (Loudoun county) and I dont think many students apply to HYP and the likes from my son's high school.</p>
<p>It's not unusual for school not to weigh honors and APs, but it does affect the class rank adversely of top students. I'd make sure the GC indicates that the ranking is unweighted and include some sort of wording that indicates how your son's schedule and grades compares to others. i.e. something like "School x doesn't weight grades. Sinusrhythm's son's grades are among the top 5% of students taking courses of similar difficulty."</p>
<p>Our kid's school -- a relatively small public hs that had never sent a student to HYP -- did not weight anything when ranking. Our son took the hardest classes available and was ranked in the top 5% but not anyhere close to #1. (His SAT scores were excellent.)</p>
<p>He is currently a freshman at Harvard, and is absolutely loving it.</p>
<p>Sinus - My impression of the Harvard admissions process (two kids there) is that they can be taken at their word when they say that they'll look holistically at everything an applicant submits or presents. The challenge of his HS curriculum will be a big plus. There is a place on the Harvard supplement to the Common Application on which they ask if there's anything they haven't asked that you'd like to committee to know. That would be the place to indicate that the HS class rank is not weighted for difficulty. It might be good as well to indicate that this may be because the HS doesn't send many grads to top colleges - coming out of such settings with strong credentials is another big plus at H.</p>
<p>My high school does not take challenge of courses into consideration when determining class rank. There are so many students in my school who take such an easy course load (very little, if any, AP courses), just so they can have a high GPA and therefore, rank.</p>
<p>That is most probably true but I dont know why they would say top 10-15% of the class in so many brochures. </p>
<p>So we met the guidance people and they explained that rigor of the classes are indeed not considered in the ranking - a little arbitrary but we have to deal with it. My son getting B and B+ in Spanish in 4 years did not help I guess !! I was just short of saying that the rank-wise top 5% of the class is not going to get into HYP because they have taken easy courses and the ones who have taken the hardest courses will probably get rejected due to low ranks. And thus the school ends up sending nobody to the top colleges. </p>
<p>Thanks to you guys for giving ideas about how to make it clear in the application. We will do that and hope for the best. Thanks again.</p>
<p>Are the high school courses weighted? For example: +.5 for honors courses and +1 for AP/IB courses. If they are then course rigor is taken into account when computing GPA and thus in ranking. A kid taking basket weaving will have a lower gpa than the kid taking AP Calc. But, of course, AP Human Geography is weighted the same as AP Calc BC. Just wondering if OP's high school weights classes.</p>
<p>Sinusrhythm, there is one junior at my son's school (he is a senior) who has a 4.0 GPA, she has never taken a weighted or AP class. Her ranking will be higher than those who did take a more difficult schedule. Our guidance counselor knows that, and when he writes his recommendation, he will check off that this young lady took a regular schedule, while those with weighted classes will receive more or most rigorous ratings. Will it hurt her when she applies? Sure, and those people who took the harder classes, well, they do stand a better chance of admission. My son's friend ranked in the top 20 percent of his class, but his SAT was so high (compared to his GPA) and his ECs were so impressive that he landed a spot at one of the top-flight schools. So do not dismay.</p>