Our HS does not rank students, (or at least not that we are aware of) due to the “competitive nature” of ranking. They claim it adversely affects students. Many of the colleges my D is thinking of applying to rate HS ranking as very Important or important. My own knowledge of our students makes me quite confident that she is in the top 10%. Is the issue of non-ranking going to affect her chances?
No. There are a lot of schools that don’t rank. The guidance counselor recommendation includes a question regarding the comparative rigor of your D’s coursework relative to what was available. That suffices as a proxy.
Don’t worry about it. Your GC may be asked to give a range of your kid’s ranking, and some schools that “don’t rank” will provide that info. But if your D is in the top 10%, you have nothing to worry about.
Is “ranking” exactly the same as pushing a button to get a printout of all the students GPA’s from highest to lowest, or does “ranking” imply that there is grade weighting, etc involved?
Schools that rank and use weighting typically rank using the weighted grades from highest GPA to lowest GPA. If they don’t weight, then they just use highest to lowest GPA.
No. More schools don’t rank than do these days. The Secondary School Report that is sent to colleges is usually accompanied by a school profile which (again usually) has a section where they give the GPA breakdown by quartile/quintile/decile.
She is a junior, taking two APs, two Honors, and college French. She is also self-studying an AP, becasue our school doesn’t offer it. Her GPA is 3.7, unweighted. I too would love to know if the college automatically converts GPAs to weighted, or is the GC expected to do that? When I look at GPA ranges at various colleges, she should be up there, but I don’t know if every other kids GPA is presented as weighted or not.
For the most part (UC’s are the major exception), neither. Because different HS’s apply different weighting schemes, colleges will generally look at unweighted GPA, or will recalculate a weighted GPA to their parameters.
My D’s high school did not rank and it is a feeder for the Ivies. As you can see my handle - she is a freshman at Yale.
Most colleges use unweighted GPA’s. If it is sent weighted, they will convert it.
Thanks all, that makes it clearer.