<p>our hs does not rank. I talked with my dd and she said gc wont check top 1%, top 5% or to10%, top25%. so adcom has no idea where a 4.7wgpa applicant stands in his high school. they v to go extra miles to figure out or they never bother to do that due to lack of time. they may think the kid is only in the top 30 but in fact he might be in the top 5%. is this common practice to not check percentile if school does not rank? is it to the good of school to at least check the top 25%?</p>
<p>I do not believe this is commonplace; generally, if ranks are not available, then a percentile is provided. Why don’t you talk to your guidance counselor yourself? Your voice may carry more weight with him/her than your child’s.</p>
<p>thank you ksarmand. I am thinking about talking with her gc. but i have no idea whether this is common or not. I want to get more suggestions or collect more amunition to shoot at her gc. currently our hs (public, about 350 seniors) can send around 20 kids to top 20 colleges in uswrp. I think not checking percentile may hurt those high achieving kids.</p>
<p>Our competitive suburban high school does not provide individual ranking but does provide rank deciles to colleges.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, if this is the case, then I’m sure those schools have a good general idea about your school’s academic strength. I’m inclined to believe that the guidance office does provide percentiles to the schools, but does not release them to students. Again, just call them up and ask - I’m sure you’ll get a clear answer.</p>
<p>Best of luck!</p>
<p>If a significant number of students from your school historically apply to a particular school, that school will have a pretty good idea of where you stand in the class without any input from your GC.</p>
<p>we are at philly suburb. more than 20 kids apply to penn and 5-6 get in eaach in. same for cornell. very few students apply to south and west colleges, so kids might be at disadvantage.</p>
<p>Our school does not rank. The school has a class profile sheet that is sent to colleges when a student applies. On this sheet it shows GPA ranges and the percentage of students who fall in that range. The colleges can figure out the rest.</p>
<p>the range thing solves the problem. but our hs profile does not have a GPA range. Maybe I can suggest they add that into their profile.</p>
<p>^Or your daughter’s GC can simply explain this when she writes her recommendation.</p>
<p>I’m moving up this old thread but I thought this article was worthwhile, for those interested in rank issues:</p>
<pre><code> Print Email Save
</code></pre>
<p>AUTHOR: Mary Lou Santovec
TITLE: The Disappearing Class Rank
SOURCE: Recruitment and Retention in Higher Education 20 no5 1, 6 My 2006
COPYRIGHT: Copyright (C) (2002) Magna Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Over the past decade, fewer secondary schools are including class ranks on transcripts of postsecondary applicants. The impact that this has had on postsecondary admissions offices varies by college and university, according to the enrollment management officers Recruitment and Retention contacted recently.</p>
<p>Behind the disappearance
Secondary schools cite several reasons for leaving class rank information out of student data. Stacey Cunitz, director of admissions and college counseling at the Crefeld School in Philadelphia, said school size can come into play. “We are a very small high school–about 20 in a graduating class–so class rank makes absolutely no sense for us,” Cunitz said.
In addition, some secondary schools, especially those that are highly rigorous or have selective admissions, say that ranking students doesn’t make sense when almost all students are high achievers. Margi Wieber, college counselor at Providence Academy in Minnesota, notes that only students who pass a rigorous admissions test can attend the academy, meaning that most of its graduates–not just the handful at the top of the class-are ready to succeed in college.
Some schools place the blame on increasing competitiveness for admission to selective colleges and universities. “High schools feel pressured not to report rank, essentially not to be entirely forthcoming, to preserve their students’ best chances for being admitted,” said Bari Meltzer Norman, associate director of college counseling at The Ben Lipson Hillel Community High School in Florida.
Annual rankings from US News & World Report and other media outlets feed this competitiveness, said Lori McGlone, an independent college consultant with Coast to Coast Educational Consulting in New York. “Most selective colleges want to accept as many students as possible who ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school classes,” she said. But high achievers with good test scores, grades, and AP classes attending rigorous, competitive secondary schools could conceivably be ranked in the top 20 or 30 percent of their class, putting them at a disadvantage when they are compared to applicants from high schools that either don’t rank or that are less competitive.
Dan Rosenfeld, dean of enrollment management at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, says that given this environment, he understands the pressure on secondary schools to withhold class rank information. But at UL-Lafayette, officials need class rank information to make scholarship decisions.
“When we call [to get a ranking], the counselors are smart enough and kind enough not to jeopardize the student’s status and will tell us,” Rosenfeld said. But, he noted, “I think that [college counselors] are selling college admissions people short. We know what a challenging curriculum is.”</p>
<p>How colleges are responding
The lack of class rank data is generally not an issue for students from high schools that have long relationships with a particular college. Admission officials know the rigor of a particular school’s curriculum and can make decisions accordingly.
In other situations, a transcript might withhold a class rank but still include other data offering a sense of how an applicant compares to his to her peers.
“Some high schools will give us decile rankings by grade point average, a scattergram with grades, or a bar graph that shows ranges of students by GPA,” said Eric Kaplan, dean of admission and financial aid at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. “Each of these examples provides content without giving an exact rank.”
Another option is reconstructing class rank with available applicant information. For example, Marymount Manhattan College in New York recalculates all of its 2,000 or so applicants’ GPAs on a 4.0 scale and then applies its own weights for Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses.
“We apply a weighting system to put everyone on a level playing field,” said Jim Rogers, Marymount Manhattan’s dean of admissions. “That way we can get a better idea of the GPAs.” All honors courses get half of a quality point. IB or dual college enrollment classes get one quality point. Recalculating GPAs also eliminates the reality of grade inflation.
The impact that withholding class ranks has on a particular college or university often depends on how that school reviews admissions.
Duquesne University in Pennsylvania isn’t concerned about the missing class rankings. “When we…look at applicants, we look for depth and breadth of the curriculum and how the students have performed on standardized tests, extracurricular activities, and [other] experiences,” said Paul-John Cukanna, executive director of admissions.
Cumulative GPAs and test scores determine the scholarship awards at Duquesne. “The reality is that standardized test scores are more heavily considered in some cases,” Cukanna said.
But the situation is more difficult for larger state institutions that must sort through a greater number of applications.
Starting in fall 2005, the University of Southern Illinois-Edwardsville began changing its admissions criteria to rely more heavily on ACT scores rather than class rank. And one of the requirements for a top scholarship is being changed from class rank to a 3.75 GPA.
“Class rank has become so competitive that I don’t think any longer that it’s a true measure of success,” said Boyd Bradshaw, assistant vice chancellor for enrollment management. Of SIUE’s 10,000 applications, 500 or more typically don’t include class rank. The school will also use unweighted classes for admissions decisions and weighted ones for scholarship awards.
Yet, while his peers have found ways to cope, the trend has Bill Brown, dean of admission and financial aid at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, concerned.
“A student’s high school class rank is a very good predictor of collegiate academic success,” he said. “In fact, for our college, it is a much better predictor than any combination of standardized test results. Without class rank, I’m afraid that we’ll be losing a very valuable tool.”</p>
<p>At D1´s high school, they also didn´t rank and didn´t check off a percentile. It´s a common practice. We only found out when D1 wasn´t admitted into our in state honors program or given merit scholarship. I called the admission office to find out why. They said because her application didn´t have a percentile checked off, their computer program automatically didn´t not select her into their honors program. We had to get her GC to write a letter to say she was top 5%. If I didn´t call, we would never have known.</p>
<p>I find that a little disingenuous. We don’t want to give class rank so our students aren’t affected in a bad way. But we’ll put class rank if it hurts them to not have it.</p>
<p>Actually Erin´s Dad interpretation is not correct. If the state school´s adcom would have bothered to read D1´s application and read the school´s profile, D1 would have been admitted to their honors program. BUT our state school chose to use a computer program to do the filtering. It is not something other schools necessary do, and there was no way for us to know that our ISS was doing that.</p>
<p>My post #12 is just to make people aware that when a school doesn´t rank, it is important to find out each college´s requirement for various programs in order not to be rejected due to difference in information a HS provides. We have no control over whether a school ranks or not. It is what it is.</p>
<p>Oldfort: I’m amazed that your school doesn’t have a way to accomodate your state flagship. Doesn’t anybody notice that nobody ever gets into the honors program from this school? Surely it’s a popular choice.</p>
<p>My D’s school didn’t rank or check percentiles, but for the UCs they calculated who was ELC and provided it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No. In the four years D1 was there, only 1.5 (out 125 each year)student went there. One student went there because a top science professor offered him an amazing research opportunity. The other student (.5) got a guaranteed transfer from Cornell for the following year.</p>
<p>I apologize in advance for butting in, but what about an applicant who has transferred high schools? I personally will have attended 3 different high schools through my HS career (spent my underclassman years at one, my junior year at another, and my senior year at a third). None of my high schools provided either exact rank or percentiles. My first HS included a GPA distribution on its school profile even though there was no formal rank, but neither of my junior/senior year schools had anything. This is probably because there were only 83 or so students in my junior class (at a small, highly competitive private school, where literally over 10% of the Class of 2010 ended up matriculating at an Ivy League), and this year there are less than 10 students in my senior class, so rank would be meaningless. How would my situation be viewed? I always see on these forums that class rank is considered a very important factor in college admissions decisions…</p>