I’m in my second semester of freshman year of high school, however I’m worried about my class rank, which is 174/784. I at least want to be in the top ten percent. Is this possible to accomplish this by the time I graduate?
I think as long as you keep your grades up and everything, you should be fine. I wouldn’t be super worried about class rankings though - I’m only in the top 43% (in a class of 1000+) and got into every school I applied to.
Literally, don’t worry yourself over this. Please don’t. You have 3 years left and rank really wouldn’t be that important as long as you have a great GPA.
Colleges don’t care that much about class rank to be honest. Get in the top 10% and you will be fine.
You should be fine. In my freshman year, my class rank was 65%; in sophomore year it was 54%. It is now 20% in Junior Year. If I could increase my class rank by 45%, you can probably increase it by 10%, especially if you are a freshman.
Just exponentially increase your schedule difficulty and work a lot harder, not really much else to say.
If you are truly desperate, transfer to a crappier high school to boost your rank.
Unless you are in a state in which public school admissions depend on class rank (Texas is the main one), your class rank is not really a significant factor in college admissions- rather, your GPA and the rigor is what matters.
If you want to improve your class rank, look at the #1 and #2. What courses are they taking? Take those, but go one step further. What is class rank based on - weighted or unweighted? If it’s unweighted, aim to get straight As. If it’s weighted, add as many AP courses as is feasible. Now, I’m not saying this is the best plan to get into a good college. But it is the way you will raise your class rank.