Hi guys. So this year(junior year), I transferred from a charter school to a public school due to my family moving. In this public school, a ranking system is used while in the charter school, there was no ranking system due to the small size of each grade. However, my old school offered Mandarin and math classes at the honors level but without the designation ‘honors’ because students of all grades(not including high school) can take them. Since I took Mandarin and math at my old school for 2 years, my transcript currently says that I have taken 4 ‘regular’ classes. Because these classes didn’t say ‘honors’ on my student transcript, these classes were put in as ‘regular’ classes in my new school. Most of the top ranking kids at my new school have mostly/all honors classes on their transcripts due to them starting at the school since freshman year. If my class rank isn’t one desirable due to those ‘regular’ classes, should I write about this when I apply to colleges next year?
Thanks
Could you provide some evidence that the Mandarin/math classes were at the honors level in order for your new school to recognize them as such? It seems a bit surprising that they wouldn’t consider this more carefully.
Ask your guidance counselor to explain the situation in his/her letter of recommendation.
relax. …
50% of all college applicants come from HS’s that DONT rank.
As far as colleges are concerned, rank is FAR less important than GPA , Standardized test scores, LOR’s, EC’s, and the rigor of the classes taken- in other words, its nothing to worry about since you have no control over if/ how a school ranks.
Colleges admissions officers use their own formulas to recalculate GPAs.
No. There is absolutely no way that you can write about this that will not come off as whiny. Your GC can talk about the different grading standards in his/her report.
ok. thanks guys
Are you in Texas, where class rank is the biggest factor in admission to the public universities?
I’m in Arizona. Class sizes are quite large in the high schools here so many of the public schools use class rank.
@menloparkmom do you have a cite for the >50% of college applicants come from HSs that don’t rank? Almost all the HSs in our local area do, and HSs in the previous 8 states in which I’ve lived did (though I know it’s changed over time). Just trying to see where data is available.
Yes, public universities in Arizona use class rank, but it is one of several options to earn automatic admission. For example, Arizona State admits frosh who complete the specified curriculum and have one of the following:
- Top 25% class rank.
- 3.00 GPA
- 22 ACT
- 1040 SAT CR+M
The 50% figure takes into account the college applicants from private schools- the vast majority of whom do apply to colleges.
That is not the case for public HS’s.
here are some recent articles that talk about the deep drop off in ranking
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/07/13/high-schools-are-doing-away-with-class-rank-what-does-that-mean-for-college-admissions/
- Does your high school report class rank to colleges? Many schools, particularly private and highly competitive ones, don’t calculate class rank - or calculate it but don’t report it. To get a rough estimate of the percentage of students whose high schools report class rank information, I consulted online 2013-14 Common Data Sets (a uniform collection of data) from a number of top colleges that I chose randomly. At Stanford, The University of Virginia, Duke, Yale, MIT, and Cornell, the percentage of freshmen who submitted a high school rank ranged from a low of 28% (Yale) to a high of 46% (University of Virginia). Put simply, the majority of applicants at all these top colleges came from high schools that did not provide class rank information
http://sidelinesguide.com/roadmap/prepare/grades-gpa-and-class-rank
google for a link to this PDF
[PDF]Class Rank - Nacac
which is from the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
It also discusses the decline in class ranking.
The practice of"ranking" I am talking about refers to the practice of naming Vals, Sals, etc or numerically ranking individual students in any way.
Thanks for that info.
I would argue with your >50% number. Here is one quote from that PDF you described:
That was back in 2006 so no doubt the numbers have gone down but I don’t see by half. And saying the results of a class rank survey of the top 20 schools which pull from elite HSs and Prep Schools is representative of all HSs is a bridge too far for me.
That PDF is 10 years old and since then many HS have dropped ranking, often as a result of pressure from parents.
The top 20 show where the trend is going nationwide in the years since 2006.
Absolutely, there’s been a huge shift in the last ten years. Also, grade distribution is very different from class rank. My S17’s school does not rank, but the school profile does list grade distributions with a huge disclaimer that the grades are unweighted and should not be used to determine rank. Unless a kid is near the very top (i.e., this year, two kids above a 95, three more between 94-95, etc.), you can only get a very rough idea about what a kid’s rank might be (particularly true in the top half of the distribution, which has many kids with rigorous schedules and many who never took an honors or AP class). The school does it mostly to make clear that there aren’t any kids with 97 averages, so a 93 is actually very good as opposed to the top 25% it would be at many schools.
But to the OP, just have your GC explain that your previous charter school did not have honors designations and this had an effect on your ranking. Truly, other than the state auto-admit schools, rankings have become far less important, at least at the USNews top 50 schools, and particularly in cases like yours where you are changing schools and can’t really be compared to your peers.
It would be awesome if I could get into Dartmouth. Do you guys know how much class rank is worth with Ivies in general? I am planning on having my GC explain my situation but my school does have a large number of kids so I hope she won’t forget to put that in her rec.
Thanks for the responses
Look at the Common Data set information for the colleges you are interested in.
here is a link to Dartmouth’s;
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~oir/data-reporting/cds/index.html
In section C you will see what the profile of ENROLLED freshman this year is and what % achieved top ranking for that class. You will ALSO see that only 37% of those enrolled students were ranked.
All colleges are required to fill out Common Data set information- it isusually found under Institutional Research, [-like Dartmouth’s ] and provides a wealth of information.
In addition, Dartmouth also provides information about other Ivys’ here:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~oir/otherivys.html
@“Erin’s Dad” I do not believe that the two statements are contradictory; the ~50% that do not rank mean that they do not assign a numerical rank based on class size (e.g. 1/495). That said, many will still give some type of GPA distribution, decile breakdown, etc. as in [url=http://www.newton.k12.ma.us/cms/lib8/ma01907692/centricity/domain/28/counseling/nnhsprofile2014-2015.pdf]this[/url] profile.
“the ~50% that do not rank mean that they do not assign a numerical rank based on class size (e.g. 1/495).”
Exactly.
that is what I said in post #12.