<p>For weeks I had been stressing about my rank, hoping I hadn't fallen out of the top 10%.</p>
<p>When I got my slip, I was relieved to find my rank, 49/526. Unfortunately, upon review by a lot of peers I discovered that for top tier schools my rank is low, low low. What a thing, relief at my decile only to discover it's actually low.</p>
<p>That preface to ask: Even though I've noticed that at a lot of top-colleges from 5-20% of the kids with schools that ranked were out of the top 10% (which I guess I can assume was because they had other really good quals or that their schools were really competitive), does a low rank as far as decile goes, which for me would be 49 out of 53 rather than 526 do substantial damage to my chances?</p>
<p>Assume most people not in the top 10% are recruited athletes, urms, legacies and development candidates. Of course not all candidates in this group are not top 10%, but those are the candidates colleges re willing to make exceptions for in general.</p>
<p>As for your situation, so much will go into it. How competitive is your school? What has it taken to get into top colleges from your school in the past? Top 10% at one school is completely different than 10% at another. At very top high schools 30% plus go ivy. at others the vals are rejected.</p>
<p>I'd say my school is pretty competitive for deciles; my rank GPA is 3.92, and the top 10 might range from 4.3-4.6. We send kids in the top decile to Yale, Harvard, and all those other prestigious selective places. I think overall my school is actually really good, though not as high up there as some private places, and I'd say my rank was relatively hard to attain. Though any recalced GPA (beyond just unweighting it) might make that not look so true, so I'm not entirely sure.</p>
<p>hmm, you're still in the top 10% so thats good
i was in the same boat a while ago, (60/800) It really looked hopeless, but what you have to remember is that admissions isn't all numbers-based.</p>
<p>your class rank is influenced by many things (grade inflation, competitiveness of your hs, the number and difficulty of your honors courses, etc.). don't worry about it anymore, and instead work on another part of your application.
while your class rank won't help you in admissions, it won't keep you out either</p>
<p>My chances of getting into any of the few ultra presitigious colleges I'll apply to. There plenty of other wonderful institutions that I would be more than happy to attend, and also hope to get into, but it'd be nice to know how damaged my calculable (sp?) (if there is such a thing) chances are if I'm in the lower part of the top decile. I guess you're right though, it is a big crapshoot, but the best applicants ever who apply to a good number of awesome colleges have some better chance than a lot of less-qualified applicants, I think, even if it is really really arbitrary. I'm more worried about my chances becoming even more terrible than they already are, but I'll still apply no matter what; as I'll fail to get into 100% of the colleges I don't apply to.</p>
<p>Are there any other opinions on the significance of the top decile location (49/526 for me). From what I've gathered so far . . . </p>
<p>-A lot goes into it besides numbers (fairly competitive school, send kids to good schools here, I have a pretty good GPA to match it (3.8 uw all classes))
-It won't get me in (of course) but it shouldn't keep me out
-folks have hooks a lot of the time when out of top 10% (I am a urm, I suppose)</p>
<p>i had a class rank of 39/350 when i applied to USC (now it's 32/350) and am a finalist for the Trustee (32,000/yr) scholarship...the way i dealt with it was i told my counselor and in my rec he said it 'did not nearly reflect my position in the class' and explained how being in jazz band zero-period killed my weighted gpa because i have a 4.0UW and have taken 6 AP tests...i'm still incredibly ****ed off at my rank though because 8/350 has only taken 4 AP tests and is a math level below me...basically my chances at any elite universities are ruined by our school's ridiculous weighting system...the only relief i have is that 3/350 and 4/450 (who applied by USC's scholarship deadline) were offered lesser scholarships and rejected from the med program :)</p>
<p>i think at the top tier schools rank is exponentially more important but if you're looking at USC type schools you should be fine</p>
<p>well my reach schools like stanford come back later this month so i guess we'll find out...my numbers are otherwise perfect (800/800/800/80/12/800/800/790/790/5/5/5/5/5/5/4.0UW) so i guess i'll find out how important the rank was and how much they bought my efforts to discredit it</p>
<p>at least you guys have such a big class!
my senior class has 75 people...</p>
<p>i have a 4.1 W GPA (4.3 UC W GPA) and 3.87 UW...
I was ELC because of my UC GPA..
but i'm still only top 15% of my class.
it sorta sucks. oh well : )</p>