Less and less high schools seem to rank each year and most colleges only have it as “considered” on the CDS. I thought it was important to compare you to your peers but from what I’ve read on CC it doesn’t seem as important as I thought. Do college just look for top 10% or something like that?
They look at context. For the schools that don’t rank, the HS will usually list GPA by decile/quintile. Even with this range, the college can make an educated assumption as to where your GPA fits in the band. Of course if multiple applicants from the same HS apply, the AO can certainly sort those applications by GPA.
@skieurope I always hear on CC that top 10% is what matters and anything more than that doesn’t really matter much. If I am ranked 1 or 2, does that look better or is it really all the same after a certain percent?
Also what do you mean by context? Like what I said about comparing your GPA to your classmates or something different?
If you are applying to Texas public universities, class rank matters a lot.
For other schools, the amount it matters varies; look in the school’s common data set (section C7) or the admission tab in its entry at http://www.collegedata.com .
Being ranked 3 vs. 1 is not going to make a difference. Every year, HYPMS rejects applicants with 4.0/2400 and accepts applicants with lower stats. For colleges with guaranteed admissions, like @ucbalmunus said, rank/percentage matters, but once you hit the threshold, there is still very little difference between top 4% and top 5%.
Context means that AO’s will evaluate your application with the tools provided. If the HS does not provide an ordinal rank, there will be something in the school profile or the GC report which will help the AO understand where the applicant fits in vis a vis the rest of the class.