<p>Which matters more? Will being in the top 5-10% save a sinking GPA? i.e. mostly A's with a few B's and a C?</p>
<p>I'd say class rank gives context for your GPA. If you have a lower GPA, but are still in the top 5% of the class, it could show that your school has a tough grading scheme and is very rigorous. On the other hand, if you have a very high GPA but don't even break the top 10%, then the GPA doesn't seem quite as impressive (and grade inflation is probably at work)</p>
<p>I would say it's the other way around, no?</p>
<p>bump? any ideas?</p>
<p>princess: I posted this on another thread, but it really depends on how well-known your school is and whether there is rampant grade inflation or deflation...</p>
<p>In my experience, for the past few years, GPA has trumped class rank in admissions.....and I can only speak for what I have seen locally, but, we have uninflated GPA's....and traditional class rank.....From the results threads from many colleges our kids have applied to, students with much lower class ranks were accepted with higher UW GPA's.....</p>
<p>If a college thinks/knows that your school is competitive and rigorous, that could change the hypothesis.....In our case, there are a few top 30's who do know this; but many more who do not; yes, the responsibility of the guidance dept, but it doesn't always happen......</p>
<p>like someone said before your GPA in context is the most important thing. therefore both are critical. if you have an unweighted gpa of 3.75, but you're in the top 5 percent of your school that will look better than someone who perhaps has a 4.0 but isnt even in the top 10 percent at their school.</p>
<p>But when a HS does not weight classes, a student taking the most rigorous classes could very well be ranked below the top 10% -- and would have no way to document to colleges what the rigor of the courseload was of the students ranked ahead.</p>
<p>GPA and class rank are both important - the problem with GPA's is that you can't compare two students from two different schools. Schools have a wide variance in how they calculate GPA's.
Each school has a different policy in whether or not they weight and how they weight grades. Not only that it doesn't tell you anything about the rigor of the schedule.
Class rank is a comparison of how well you are doing against your peers. Class rank can be skewed in a really small school or in a prep school where the population is already selective.</p>
<p>High/low GPA vs class rank comparisons only serve to attempt to compare students from two different population.
If your class rank is higher that what one would expect from looking at your GPA then either your class is not academically strong or your high school is pretty strict with weighting.</p>
<p>I would expect that if you are in the top 5-10% and your GPA is sinking - your class rank won't stay high for very long. It will sink as well.</p>
<p>Well, sometimes GPA doesn't make sense without rank. My school doesn't really understand how to calculate GPA - I had a 5.0 on a 4.0 scale, according to what my guidance counselor put on college apps :-). Seeing as the number "GPA" probably didn't make a lot of sense, my grades and rank were more important, I expect. However it really depends on how these are calculated. If rank, for example, is not based on a weighted GPA, then GPA might be more important.</p>
<p>I am not sure what the point would be to weight a GPA and NOT use it in class rank.<br>
What many colleges do is try to equalize applicants. They literally take apart your transcript, count only "core" and consider the level of the class, i.e. college prep, honors, AP.
They actually come up with their own GPA. My d applied to a University that did this and her GPA went from a 3.2 to a 3.8.<br>
When they do this and look at your class rank they can get a very general idea of how "academic" your high school is.</p>
<p>Sorry to re-ask this:
but for small schools (less than 50 kids in each grade), does percentile ranking--top 10%, 5%, etc., really matter, since the class is so small. I know that it matters if your in the top half or the lower half, but since the class is small, do ranks really matter for small schools?</p>
<p>It's the opposite with the ranking vs GPA. Everyone's said high GPA with a low ranking is bad, and low GPA with a high ranking is good.</p>
<p>Think of it in this context. If you go to a really competitive high school with many smart students then they will achieve a higher GPA, on average. So students could have a 3.8 but still only be in the top 25%. On the other hand if you attend a high school were many of the students lack ambition and skill, the average GPA would be lower. So you could have a 3.8 and be in the top 1%.</p>
<p>I'm sure colleges also take into conisderation the graduation rates when this is in question.</p>
<p>spiralcloud - this is why I said class rank can be skewed in a really small school. the talent of the class can vary widely from year to year and a small change in GPA can produce a big change in class rank.<br>
Nevertheless it always looks good to have a high class rank.</p>
<p>Point in case - two kids graduate one year apart, same high school. Kid #1 - gpa=3.25 class rank 34/154 which is top 25%. Kid #2 gpa = 3.4 class rank 65/174 which is top 40%. Kid #1 was in an "underachieving" class while kid #2 was in a "overachieving" class.</p>
<p>What colleges are looking for is simple - they want to know the classes you took, the difficulty of those classes and how you perform overall compared to your peers. By peers they mean all kids your age and grade.
This is not so easy when trying to compare kids from different educational opportunities where the criteria for course evaluation varies widely.</p>
<p>It's definitely not easy. But a good (well written) school profile plus a good (thoughtful, knowledgable) GC recommendation should provide colleges with most of what they need to know to put your GPA and your rank in context.</p>
<p>Many schools unpack GPAs anyway and recalculate them. Some "strip out" grades from classes that they consider non-academic; some don't.</p>
<p>^^^^^^ yep.</p>
<p>Yeah, that's kind of the case at my school. My school has harsh grading teachers. I have an 3.83 U, which is not really that remarkable, but I am third in my class, because I have taken the hardest courses there are. So I think if you have taken the hardest courses your school has to offer and come out near top, then that will look better than having simply a very high gpa. If my school ranked by unweighted gpa, I would be more like twentieth, because there are people who take all electives or college prep (I take ap and honors) who would have better grades because their classes are easier.</p>
<p>do you know what schools "strip" out GPAs of their non-academic courses (do the schools say that they do)></p>