Class rank or GPA more important at a non-feeder/average school?

I attend an average school that sends only a handful of kids to ivies each year. For a school such as mine would class rank or GPA be weighted more importantly?

If your school sends a handful of kids to ivies it isnt average. Ivy admits are less than a tenth of one perecnet of total admits, so most schools are lucky to send 1 or 2.

All high schools maintain a school profile, maintained by your counselors. Adcoms may look at that to gleen what kind of competition there is and if the school is more prep oriented. They use those numbers, as well as subject measurements like ACT, to guage relative performance. Ask for a copy of it and compare to other schools to see how competitive your school is.

@mitchklong I understand what you’re saying. Im just curious which factor would be more important, disregarding standardized tests, etc.

For Ivies I would think class rank is more important. They don’t look at GPA in a vacuum. For other schools it depends (class rank is king at UT). And I agree with @mitchklong that any school that “sends Only a handful of kids to Ivies” is not an average school.

Im reading here that your GPA is high but class rank not so much ? I wouldnt worry if you are in the top 10%. If not, that may be an issue if you are pursuing a most selective admission.

Not really much you can do about it though if you have a lot of cohorts at 4.0.

@mitchklong opposite actually. I have a ~98 GPA on my transcript but with 2 92s freshmen year, which I don’t know how colleges will interpret. But my class rank is 1/200

So you have a 4.0 GPA and number 1 in your class and you are worried? About what?

Item C7 of a college’s Common Data Set gives the relative importance of many factors including GPA and rank. I would not get too hung up with adjacent categories, e.g., Important vs. Very Important.

GPA and rank are just 2 pieces of a large puzzle.

@vickisocal @alooknac Ok thanks guys! Thats relieving to hear!