We know that overall most students benefit from ending ranking race. However, is it going to change anything for top few kids in top 1% applying to top 20 colleges if their highly competitive huge highschool ends ranking system?
Are there any programs that require top 1%?
It won’t hurt. Admissions officers will see your full transcript, the guidance counselor and teachers can note if a student stood out from the crowd etc. Our HS has never ranked as far as I can remember and the top students get into the top colleges. I don’t know of any school or program that require top 1%.
Does it help top students in any way?
No, for the simple reason that the majority of US HS’s do not provide an ordinal rank. At best, these HS’s will break down GPA into deciles. For a top 20 school that gets multiple applications from the same HS, they can (and do) sort applications by GPA.
Having said that, all top 20 schools evaluate holistically, and every year, every single one of them will reject applicants with a 4.0 GPA and perfect SAT/ACT scores and accept students with lower stats.
Thank you @skieurope
I followed my kids’ HS’s college admissions for a few years. This HS reported exact unweighted and weighted ordinal rank. Acceptances correlated very closely with rank. HYPS, MIT, and Columbia admissions went only to the top 1%, Brown, UPenn, and Duke to the top 1-2%, and similarly down the rankings.
Based on this experience I consider the “top 10% is good enough for anywhere” talk to be a complete myth.
I agree, it’s a myth. Without solid hooks, statistically impossible.
10% doesn’t even make it into some state flagships with auto admit.
Some colleges are more about rank than others. While top rank may correlate with top college admissions, top rank kids probably also have top scores, top recs, etc.
If a given college has enough applications, it can infer the rank from current year and prior applications. Private schools stopped ranking long ago.
No. The majority of US high schools no longer rank. Texas is the exception.
My D’s HS ranks in California - the UC’s guarantee admission to “a” campus for top 9% - usually UC Merced. BTW - her HS just provides decile rank. Anyways, maybe the reason for the ranking but the benefit is nothing like TX. Also, I do see HS rank as a factor for many merit awards but looks like it is just inferred if a HS does not rank.
I’d like to see a study on that. All the schools in my area of OH rank. Probably due, in part, to specific Val/Sal/rank based scholarships offered by state schools.
Here is one article, @“Erin’s Dad” . 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/?utm_term=.88276be2eeb7
Many schools provide a percentile rank rather than a strict numerical ranking. I will defer to you though, because you are much more knowledgable than I. My understanding though is that Texas is the only state that factors ranking into admission for its state colleges. As in, it is an essential part of the application.
I recall someone posting a link about what class percentile were Ivy admits. I didn’t read but I’m assuming most were 1%er unles they were hooked or had a unique EC spike?