<p>How big of a role does class rank play in admissions and earning merit-based aid? I go to a very competitive school, have a good GPA, yet my class rank is not in the top 10%. (I haven't checked since last year, though. And the school system changed our GPA scale, so it might've changed it.) If you have a good GPA but don't have a rank within the top 10% are you negatively affected? And how do kids who go to schools that rank compare to those who go to schools who don't rank? </p>
<p>My opinion is you are not getting Merritt Aid if you are not in the top 10% … there are so many applicants with amazing SAT / ACTs and are in the top 5% … I don’t see why they would have to offer lower than top 10% … Miami stresses class rank a lot!</p>
<p>So if my application was perfect but I was in the 11 percentile I wouldn’t get any merit aid? That’s a load of crap. </p>
<p>If your application was “perfect” you would have a CR + M = 1400 and top 1% of your class. </p>
<p>What is your Critical Reading and Math SAT score? What is your ACT ?
SAT Subjects?<br>
How many APs do you have? </p>
<p>I was just at Miami the weekend of Nov 15th and had an hour meeting with admissions and we spoke a lot about Merritt Aid …
Some students schools have 4.0 GPA some have 5.0GPA some have 6.0GPA … GPA in high school is irrelevant because every school has such different scoring systems.</p>
<p>They don’t care about anything else when it comes to merit aid other than class rank and CR +M … merit aid is only give to students that they can guarantee will academically perform for them in a college environment and continue to have high GPAs to keep the college average GPA high. </p>
<p>@nickhart, did the Miami admissions folks mention what happens when the HS doesn’t rank? Does that hurt the student’s chance for merit scholarships? </p>
<p>nickhart, There are numerous schools around this country that have avg SATs 2000+, top 25% would be 2150+, top 10% kids will mostly not give UoM a time of day. </p>
<p>Very generous merit awards have a way of changing the time of day…</p>
<p>Yeah, who would want to go to one of the most beautiful campuses of all Universities in the US… . a School ranked #43 … in an extremely beautiful affluent area of Coral Gables,Fla with an average class size of 10 to 20 kids in a class…(in my engineering major it is normal to have 5 kids in the class junior year)… with in the best weather in the United States and a tuition of $48,000+ … for a nice Merritt Aid Scholar Ship on average of $20,000+ … Yeah, Miami is just begging anyone to come because no one wants to go. </p>
<p>FYI … my class rank is 2 out of 87 or 2% at one of the most competitive and highly ranked public schools in NJ and ACT of 34, SAT 2140 and I would love to go to University of Miami rather than any IVY because … I want to go to a school that is both academically well ranked but also FUN … has great school spirit … has an amazing sports program … has tons of stuff to do on campus and off with an average temp of 83 degrees. I went to school tours for Columbia, Penn, Brown and I could never see myself at a school like that because everyone looked bored to death, more than half the students on campus where not from the US and where speaking another language … the points the tour guides where making as “top activities on campus” where nothing I would be interested in and I couldn’t see myself there for free tuition. The Columbia tour guide spent an hour on the “very best” thing that happens all year on campus" that everyone looks forward to … the yearly “broadway style satire musical” on life at Columbia – kill me! </p>
<p>Not everyone has the same stuffy IVY, I’m to good for everyone mindset and if you see below that is U of Miami’s average freshman class so it looks like at least someone in the top 10% are interested … 73% to be exact. </p>
<p>I know 6 kids from my high school who have gone to U of Miami everyone was top 4% class rank and up. </p>
<p>University of Miami Freshman Class Profile
Male
49%
Female
51% </p>
<p>First-Year Applicants
31,608 </p>
<p>Number of Incoming Freshmen
2,000 </p>
<p>Ranked Top 10% in High School Class
73% </p>
<p>Ranked Top 5% in High School Class
54% </p>
<p>Average weighted GPA
A- </p>
<p>nick,I have access to Naviance for the NYC Specialized HSs , UoM will not get top 25% from those schools.
It is a nice school, it certainly is in a nice location, it is not going to attract best kids, just a fact.</p>
<p>Anotherparent22, Naviance doesn’t tell even close to half the story. Nowadays, high schoolers (specifically ones in the top 25% of their class and higher) are less interested in overall appeal of a school, and more interested in the programs that school offers. For example, I’m in the Marine Science Program at UM, a program that is one of the top 3, if not the top, marine science programs in the country. You better believe that the quality of student in this program is at the VERY least top 25% in their high school class, let alone the fact that the majority of the people I know in the program were in the top 10%. Now, maybe if someone were looking to go into, say, business, and they were choosing between Ivies and Miami, of course they’d choose the Ivies. But there’s a lot more than meets the eye at this school that you should take into account.</p>
<p>Marinebio444,
I don’t think you got my point. Yes there may be particular programs but this was a tread about average UoM student.</p>
<p>Suggesting that you have to be top 10% in your HS to get into UoM is silly. You could be outside of top 25% at Stuy with 2200 SAT and be way better qualified for any College than 99% of valedictorians from average US high school.</p>
<p>Implying that the “best kids” come from “specialized” schools is a bit elitist in my opinion. What makes a kid who has a 4.0 un-weighted GPA at a normal public school less desirable than one who has a 3.5 GPA at a specialized school, all else being equal? That makes zero sense, and that’s not how the system at Miami works.</p>
<p>It has nothing to do with elitist, these schools pick kids based on a test, has nothing to do with social or financial standing. Look at any sort of National competition, Intel and so on, there is 10-15 schools that are always there, they simply have a group of super talented kids. Saying that being top 5% in vanilla school USA is better than being top 25% at TJ or Stuy is just silly. Admissions people are well aware of these facts, </p>
<p>How does Miami deal with the growing number of HS’s that don’t do ranking anymore? Will that affect chances of merit aid if there is no ranking available?</p>
<p>If your school ranks, are you required to report your rank? Some schools don’t rank, so it doesn’t really seem fair to those that do.</p>
<p>High schools that don’t rank usually include a School Profile that describes the grade distribution of the senior class. Sometimes they use % of students at each letter grade or they will provide the GPA for each %. So, top 10%, top 20% etc. The adcon can then use the grid to determine approximately where the candidate fell in the class. The previous poster mentioning Stuyvesant is correct. Obviously the extent to which a student in the top, say, 25% at a specialty high school is stronger than the valedictorian of some high schools depends upon which specialty and which regular you’re comparing. But Stuyvesant High School has some of the strongest students in the US. Their AVERAGE SAT scores are just shy of 2100. The top half of the school is likely stronger than most valedictorians not all. With about 820 per class, that means there are about 410 students with SATS at 2100 or above. Competition to get into the school is stronger than that of most colleges. Approximately 28000 students take the exam for entry. It’s no wonder that they are strong when they apply to college-they had to be top when they entered high school. In terms of the desirability of Miami compared to Ivy League schools? One measure that is a proxy for desirability is the schools yield. yes the yield can be manipulated so differences of a few percentage points is meaningless. Miami’s yield is about 18%. In contrast, Last year Harvard’s was 82%, Brown 59%, Penn’s was 64%. Important also is which schools are generating serious cross admits. For the Ivy league, it tends to be other Ivy’s, MIT or Stanford. A minority of students would choose Miami over an Ivy league school unless they were looking for a very specialized program not offered by the Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>@lostaccount if my school does rank, am I obligated to report my rank, or can I choose not to say so?</p>
<p>Regardless of whether you report it or not, it will show up on your transcript, so it makes sense to just go ahead and report it.</p>
<p>@Marinebio444 okay thanks</p>
Now that we have most of EA results in it is clear school rank in top 10% is not the determining factor in either acceptance or merit decision. It seems much more score based decision.
Just based on chit chat on this site it seems UM merit is based on what they believe will take to attract particular student and how much they want that student.