<p>My school doesn't rank students, so counselors are supposed to provide a decile rank (e.g. 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, 15%, etc). When i asked my counselor for my rank, he said 15%. I truly believe that I should be in the top 10%, if not top 5%. I have a 3.94 unweighted GPA, i got a 34 on the ACT and and 2200 on the SAT, I've taken 10 AP classes and 6 honors classes, and I'm a national AP scholar. The reason that my ranking is so low is because my school doesn't weigh grades, so someone who has all A's but had three study halls and took Foods or Stained Glass would be ranked higher.</p>
<p>If your school doesn’t do rankings, and many schools DON’T, then it won’t show up in what they send to the colleges anyway. That’s what they mean when they say they don’t rank
Even if it did, colleges know how to read and interpret transcripts and your high school profile, so they will see your GPA, and all your individual grades AND will look to see if you took the hardest classes. Some colleges do not consider class rank at all, and many others consider it but it is less important than Grades, difficulty of classes taken, and test scores. You are fine!</p>
<p>A few things are confusing in your post. First, you misuse the term “decile” which refers specifically to percentiles in 10% increments. It appears you meant to use the more generic “percentile”. Secondly, an unweighted GPA of 3.94 only puts you in the top 15%? This would mean that for about 1/6 of the students at your school, they receive 19 A’s for each B.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter what you “truly believe”. Your GC is looking at hard data and is bound by rules that were likely published before your freshman year. The GC can mention that you have taken a most rigorous course load. If you haven’t already gotten on his bad side, you might also be able to have him include a statement in his LOR that your rank would be significantly higher using a weighted scale.</p>
<p>You have good statistics - being a National AP Scholar after junior year is especially impressive. At this point, I would encourage you to focus on what you can control over the next few months (applications, essays, LORs) and ignore what you cannot (ranking). As BTG noted, fewer than half of high schools report rankings, so this is generally not considered as important by many colleges.</p>
<p>Your HS profile will state that class deciles are determined by UW GPA. Your GC will indicate you took the hardest classes. You’re fine. Calm down.</p>
<p>@beantowngirl: i understand that colleges will still have my transcript and gpa; what i’m worried about is that some scholarships i’m looking into have a requirement that applicants must be ranked in the top 10%. do you think i can ask my counselor to fudge my rank a bit just to be eligible for the scholarships?</p>
<p>@rmldad: i was surprised to find out that my 3.94 puts me in the top 15%, too. there are around 450 people in my senior class, and i would think that i would at least be in the top 45 people (10%). my guidance counselor just told me that my school figures out the rankings by unweighed gpa alone, and 15% is what the computer spit out.</p>
<p>icwest…I believe that schools that do not weight should not provide rank either. And they should not have Val/Sal because of that. </p>
<p>If you are taking the hardest courses, and you have a 3.94, but 45 other students taking the “easiest” courses have a 4.0, then yes, you will “rank” behind them if you school does not weigh grades.</p>
<p>This is exactly why schools don’t rank - the weighted vs. unweighted gets too complicated. Sounds like your school is doing the right thing by not weighting so don’t get hung up on a number generated by a computer program. Your GC knows you, knows your academic record, and will be able to check the ‘most rigorous’ box on the recommendation form so you are fine.</p>
<p>Well, your school has a stupid method for creating ranks for the purposes of applying for scholarships! That’s a demotivator for ambitious students.
It is not rocket science to come up with the math to give more weight to honors and AP level courses.</p>
