<p>Just wondering if Adcoms will actually look at the Newsweek rankings? Or, do they just pass it off as useless? Thanks!</p>
<p>(my school made the top 20 list, that's why)</p>
<p>10charbump</p>
<p>If your school is high on the rankings, I’d imagine colleges would already know of it.</p>
<p>those lists are ■■■■■■■■ (yes offense)</p>
<p>My school is probably on the bottom 1200.</p>
<p>Between my two kids and I, we’ve met with at least 12 adcoms and only ONE mentioned our high ranking. That school was only an hour away from our high school.</p>
<p>Admissions offices generally have a good picture of many of the schools they receive applications from–they know which schools are more rigorous/more easy than others.
Some of the schools my sons applied to actually admitted that they track the success of matriculated students by high school. They don’t need the Newsweek rankings.</p>
<p>I agree that adcoms generally know the quality level of the high schools in the area they are responsible for.</p>
<p>I looked at the schools in my area on the rankings list and noticed something interesting. As my previous posts show, I was interested in attending Vanderbilt but was not successful. Curious, I perused the Facebook group of new admits to see which high schools they accepted from in my area. The top three schools in my area corresponded exactly to the schools that Vandy drew from. </p>
<p>I think my public school may have been a negative factor in my application. Bummer.</p>
<p>I think past about top 25 those rankings are bs. Our local public school made like 150 or something and they have huge classes, a teacher who was just convicted of selling pot to students, their fair share of gangs, etc. My friend who was failing at my school transfered there and has a 120% average.</p>
<p>haha we have one of the top science bowl, science olympiad, NHD, MUN and robotics teams and we are above 500</p>
<p>I hope not…my school=not good. At all.</p>
<p>don’t bother with these high school rankings. It is about you, not the school.
No offense, but these rankings are truly stupid, especially after looking at how the scores are put together.</p>
<p>I don’t think it would make that much difference to adcoms - here the difference between being in the top 100 and out of the top 500 depended on whether your school offered IB or not, it was backwards in a lot of cases. Make sure the schools you apply to get a good profile of your school that shows how they grade, weight honors and APs, etc…especially if the college doesn’t get many applicants from your school</p>
<p>ahahah thats probably why my school was so high ranked…we offer IB and AP at the same time. And yeah, I know it matters more about the student and less so about the school. Don’t worry, I’m doing my best with the rigor part =] Full IB and AP as a sophomore wheee.</p>
<p>This is just another example of how flawed this ranking craze is. My D’s school is one of the best IB schools in the country, and also has AP. By Newsweek’s stated methodology, it should be pretty high on the list. But here’s the catch: It’s a magnet IB school – AND it’s the neighborhood high school, and the “locals” don’t do terribly well academically. The magnets and the locals are split about half and half; it is essentially two different schools who share a campus. Averaging the poor-to-mediocre neighborhood students and the super-duper IB students results in an overall so-so ranking, which is not a true picture of either half of the school. BTW, this is also an example of how deceptive averaging can be.</p>
<p>However, we did indeed find that admissions officers are well aware of the school’s IB rep, so at least in our case, they didn’t buy into the rankings foolishness.</p>
<p>I don’t think that the Newsweek rankings have any credibility or relevance to college admission officers.</p>
<p>Just another person chiming in against the Newsweek rankings: criteria stated in Newsweek: # of AP/IB taken/# of students in graduating class…</p>
<p>Um, if a HS lets kids just “stroll in” to AP classes, they will rank higher…how about using AP scores achieved or something like that?</p>
<p>Only one school in our area is on the list that I KNOW has very rigorous requirements for AP classes; probably should be much higher than it’s ranked IMO given that fact…</p>
<p>Another school that has no requirements to take an AP class (actually uses them like honors level) is ranked MUCH higher…so stupid…</p>
<p>No. But if a college gets a lot of apps from your school, your regional rep should have a sense of the strength of the students. And if not, your school includes a sort of cover letter with your app that helps explain the strength of the school(average test scores, etc.).</p>