The top schools won’t care that much, as they will have done the research about your school’s profile, and to them, there isn’t a big difference between 1 and 3%. What is more important to them is the fact that you have taken the most challenging courses available to you, and done well in them.
The only really meaningful comparison is if you and those other few kids all applied to the same college/university, and even then the college would probably look more favorably at you because you took the more challenging courses.
But think about it - what about the kid who aces every class, but also takes music or band class because she is extremely talented with an instrument - it is not weighted as honors, so her class rank suffers compared to someone who did not take the music course.
in this respect, class rank is therefore overrated, and the top schools know this, so they don’t put too much emphasis on it.
There is no perfect approach to ranking students, as many schools do things differently. What is important is that you show you challenge yourself, and you do well with the options you have.
I meant to add, clearly the fact that you are in the top 3% is of course better than being in the bottom quartile, as far as the admissions folks would indicate. But since so much depends on your school, the differences really depend. At some schools, the difference between 19th and 85th is mere hundredths of a point on GPA. Several schools don’t weight GPA at all, so they may have a dozen kids all with perfect 4.0 scores, and they have a 12-way tie for first. The top colleges review the course descriptions, and do their own weighting of your grades in them, often eliminating all electives. But since they realize that an A in one Calculus class in one school is not the same as an A in another school with another teacher, etc, they will find that most of their applicants are qualified, so they rely more on the essays, teacher recs, ECs, etc…
Class rank is only good as a reference. Itself does not tell you a whole lot about the student. GPA, course rigor, and test scores are more important. Many schools do not even rank their students as there is no fair way unless all students take compulsory classes.
I was doing some research and came across an article on class rank. Today only about 60 percent of high schools provide class rank and when they do it’s often in the form of brackets rather than an actual numerical rank. In particular, private high schools very seldom report class rank. So, if you are an admissions officer with a stack of application only maybe half of them will have useful class rank information. The difference between the top few percentiles is essentially meaningless don’t worry.
As long as you’re within the top 10%, you’re good - unless you attend a lower-performing school where the average SAT is in the 1100s (/2400) and where being top 10% wouldn’t represent as much of an achievement, in that case being in the top 10 in your class would matter more.
Top 1% vs. 3% isn’t even factored in by the top selective schools. Can you do the work? Clearly. So they move to the rest of your application: do you challenge yourself? Do you do well in challenging classes? Do you sound like a robot?
I agree…as long as you are in the top 10%, you are good. I personally think it is better to have some electives…you are doing something you find interesting, you are probably taking the class with different people than are in your AP classes, and you are giving yourself a chance to mentally rest during the day. When you look back in the future, you will remember orchestra and how much you enjoyed it.
