<p>I am curious. I have seen a few kids post their class rank in their stats. I know only some schools provide this info to students.</p>
<p>My question is, is this something AOs notice of or care about? Especially since not applicants can provide this info.</p>
<p>I could see it going both ways. If a student has great grades but rank is not terribly high, that could mean his current school is pretty rigorous or if a student has straight As and ranks high that the school is not that academic. Or does it? </p>
<p>The AO’s do consider the academic rigor of the applicant’s present school. Here are comments from GemmaV, an AO who sometimes appears on CC to answer questions from parents & applicants. </p>
<p>The comment addresses SSAT performance, but the principle should hold for class rank/grades, too. </p>
<p>This would be where SSAT scores play a role. What would it tell you if two applicants are ranked first in their respective classes, but one gets 99 percentile and another gets 89 percentile?</p>
<p>OTOH it could tell you that one is better at taking standardized tests, and not necessarily tell you about the student’s intellectual capacity or ability to do well in boarding school. As others have pointed out, the SSAT measures a particular set of skills. It does not measure the academic rigor of a student’s current school situation.</p>
<p>@GGM What you wrote is true. But without standardized test scores, it would be difficult for b.s. to make meaningful comparisons, especially when students are drawn internationally from many middle schools they are not familiar with. </p>
<p>Standardized test scores are a single best “available” predictor of “academic” accomplishments, maybe “not for all students,” but for the vast majority . (Please note that I qualified this statement at multiple levels :)). Of course, there are outliers and we wouldn’t want to victimize them. If one believes standardized test scores do not reflect his/her academic ability well, he/she will have to make individual cases. Call it a necessary evil…</p>
<p>Sharing… I don’t disagree with the premise of standardized test scores (it doesn’t hurt that I have a kid who not only does well on standardized tests, but actually enjoys taking them)…</p>
<p>What I questioned was whether, given two students with equally high grades from two different schools, the difference you illustrated— of 10 percentILES in standardized test scores—really spoke to the academic rigor of a particular school. The logic just didn’t follow, to me ;-). </p>
<p>I would think, in the case you described, that a school would look at a wide variety of other factors, including recs and EC’s. </p>
<p>I agree that there needs to be a benchmark, and that the SSAT seems a reasonable predictor in many cases… just not that it can measure the validity of grades or the level of a particular school’s standards.</p>
<p>Add to that the fact that some students have been formally preparing for the test for years and others haven’t. I realize innate intelligence counts for a lot of the score, but so does intense test-prep, and the type of school the kids are coming out of. There is some skewing of the percentiles, don’t you think?</p>
<p>I thought that OP was referring to whether AO would care for an applicant’s class rank, not about academic rigor of his/her school. IMO AO should care for individual’s academic strength, not school’s.</p>
<p>I guess what I am getting from this is that it is just as subjective as any other part of the application on its own. But, if a student is ranked quite well it can add to an already strong application.</p>