<p>how does every UC school have such ridiculous high class rankings</p>
<p>riverside has over like 90+ % in the top 10% of the class, thats comparable with all the ivy leagues</p>
<p>This could be because the people that are eligible for UC's are usually within the top 10% and those in the top 10% are more likely to consider applying to UCs in general.</p>
<p>well i mean come on, there has to be something else too.... i mean MIT has lower top 10% in the class than UC-Riverside.....</p>
<p>I don't think you have to give your class rank when you apply, so whatever class rank you're quoting might be an estimate or old value from when they did take it into account.</p>
<p>UC has a process for identifying the top 12.5% of the students at virtually all the California high schools, even those which don't rank. (It's in connection with the ELC program, which technically only affects the top 4%. But they get the names and transcripts of the top 12.5% at the end of their junior year.) Then they contact all those students in the summer before their senior year. So they have a pretty good idea of the rank of those students, and they also recruit them to a certain extent. Also, the UC applications process favors students with good grades over those with good test scores (relatively speaking) That will result in a higher percentage of "top 10%" students.</p>
<p>I think that statistic refers to the actual class that enrolls. If that's the case, they'll have class rank data when students submit transcripts.</p>
<p>It's very much possible that there are that many people in the top 10%. Think of how many high schools there are in California. Student that are in the top 10% of the class aren't necessarily the best students; they're just better than others at their school.</p>
<p>Besides, not everyone wants to go to an IVY.</p>
<p>Actually, some schools don't officially rank their students, so you can't tell from the transcripts. The ELC program, however, does require the schools to send the top 12.5% of their student's transcripts to UC (which then recomputes the GPA's according to a formula which is different from the formula UC uses to calculate GPA for admissions purposes - confusing enough yet?) So even if your school doesn't rank, UC will rank the top 12.5% itself at the end of the junior year.</p>