<p>I think rank means something important IF (a) the school ranks, (b) the college respects the school’s ranking system (i.e., the school’s ranking system rewards people who take challenging academic courses), and (c) the college does not get a lot of applicants from the school. If the college gets a lot of applicants from the school, the college can look at the differences among them without reducing them to a number, and then rank them any way it wants. And it generally does. </p>
<p>The admissions star of my son’s high school class was ranked #7 (out of 550); he did much better than ##1-3, 5-6 or 8-10, no fewer than five of whom had applied to each of the colleges to which he applied. (#4 also got into every college to which she applied, but applied to colleges with a slightly wider range of selectivity.) The colleges weren’t wrong, by the way. His peers considered him their most intellectually impressive classmate. I imagine that came through in the letters of recommendation, too.</p>
<p>UC uses the top 9% of previous classes at a high school to set a GPA benchmark for ELC. Presumably, this is based on UC calculated GPAs, since the student’s UC calculated GPA is compared against the benchmark. High schools that participate send transcripts of their top 12.5%; UC then finds the benchmark GPA of the top 9%. This is presumably independent of whether the high school publishes class rank in general, or how the high school calculates it for its own purposes.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus, interesting, I didn’t realize that the previous year’s class was used to set the benchmark. I’ve no idea if CA high schools that don’t rank send on GPA data to UC. At least one top-notch private high school in our area doesn’t participate in ELC.</p>
<p>The way UC ELC is done does have some effects that are different from using current class rank:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>High schools’ GPA weighting and class ranking methodology do not matter, since UC calculates the benchmark GPA from high school transcripts.</p></li>
<li><p>Since the benchmark GPA is based on previous classes, there should be no incentive for high school students to do cutthroat or rank-grubbing things to improve their current class rank, at least as far as UC ELC is concerned.</p></li>
<li><p>An unusually good or bad previous class that was used to set the benchmark GPA may make it unusually difficult or easy to gain UC ELC status. Grade inflation can also make gaining UC ELC status easier than it should be.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>A “top notch” private school may not bother to participate in UC ELC because any student who would qualify for UC ELC is likely higher than the “statewide top 9%” benchmark as well, and/or is aiming for more selective schools than UC Merced.</p>
<p>This, I find to be the crazy part. How does absolute rank with different weighting systems determine fitness for admission? I will use D’s school as an example. Public, senior class of around 320, magnet test in (SAS 144 for admission) gifted program with about 60 students per class. This draws students from outside the boundary and outside the district. These kids are mixed with regular population for math, science, language and TOK but have gifted humanities classes. They are also 1 year ahead of standard curriculum path and do internships etc as seniors. School offers IB and AP. So . . . a kid not in that program who lives in the attendance boundary neighborhood (D, for example) will have fewer possibilities for weighted grades because of the freshman year program. So, with all honors early, a year ahead of regular path in math and science, 2 AP and 2 IB classes as sophomore, full IB Junior and Senior year, 5 years of same language and 4.0 throughout D is ranked something like 28th - top 8% I think (that’s what she said). GPAs are reported unweighted, but rank is calculated with a weighted GPA. On the upside she ranked higher than about 30 of the kids in magnet program. On the downside, it was impossible for her to rank any higher short of taking AP chem as a freshman instead of regular sophomore chem (has AP chem and HL physics now). </p>
<p>So, the 6 million dollar question is: What measure better indicates her fitness for a top level school, rigour of schedule and GPA or rank?</p>
<p>saintfan – somewhat similar situation here. Extremely selective full IB program (100 kids out of 700 applicants, county-wide selection in 140k-student, education-obsessed district) comprises 25% of class in regular public school. System does not rank, but provides tables of GPA bands and the % of kids in the entire senior class within each band. </p>
<p>By that chart, S2 was barely in the top 25% of the entire senior class. </p>
<p>Got into Chicago EA and Tufts RD, and UMD-CP and Rochester with merit $$. Full IB diploma, 11 APs (all 4s and 5s). Only non-honors classes were PE, fine art and technology requirements. GPA was consistent throughout HS, even as course difficulty and workload ramped up. </p>
<p>S2 focused on schools that know our area well, and specifically the IB program, and we looked at Naviance to see what schools had a strong history of admitting kids who were somewhat lopsided. </p>
<p>For us, we found that course rigor, excellent test scores and darned fine essays were the foundation for good results.</p>