<p>How much of a difference is it to be ranked #1 versus 40/398 (top 10%)?</p>
<p>A lot, especially considering 40 out of 398 is not top 10%.</p>
<p>Class rank (aka GPA for most circumstances) is practically worth more than anything in your admission package. Valedictorian and 10% bum can be huge.</p>
<p>what...... dammit what about those kids who dont take any ap/honors classes and get As in regular classes. there are probably twenty of those kids and i'm just barely behind them so my class rank is 10%, but could be 5% if i could leap frog the regular class kids -_-</p>
<p>What if I could get my rank down to 25? Then how much of a difference would there be between 25 and say #4?</p>
<p>Honestly, my school uses weighted GPA in order to determine rank. That really stinks :/</p>
<p>My school doesn't even tell us our ranks, or even who the valedictorian is. =/ I'm probably ranked like ~8 in my class of 450, so thats pretty good.</p>
<p>What about if your school doesn't rank? Some schools might just say your in the top 10%, without giving an actual rank. Can this hurt you?</p>
<p>I don't think it matters as much as you think, as long as you are getting excellent grades in challenging courses, and if your SAT scores are good, you should be fine. The Val and Sal at my D's school are attending State School. D is deciding between 2 ivies. She is in the top 5% of students at her HS.</p>