<p>I have a friend in another state who lives in a pretty depressed area and the school is not so great. She's an overachiever anyway and her class rank is somewhere at the very very top of a class of 800 something. Many of her classmates are not even going to college and some don't even come to school. She lives there because her father is a minister and was transferred there but they are probably much better off financially than most of the people in the school.</p>
<p>I have the exact opposite situation. Everyone in my high school is an overachiever and everyone is going to college. My class rank is top 50% (150 out of 460). Most of the students come from very well-to-do families and I do not.</p>
<p>I honestly think that she and I have taken similar classes with similar results. But her class rank is so much higher than mine.</p>
<p>Does any of this matter or is it just a number?</p>
<p>It does matter (which just doesn’t seem fair). At a lot of schools your relatively lower rank will give you a disadvantage. That’s exactly why a lot of high performing schools have stopped ranking.</p>
<p>It definitely matters. If you go to a super competetive high school, then it is more acceptable to have a low class rank. If you go to a poor inner city school, then it is expected that you be at the top of your class.</p>
<p>The more competitive colleges certainly consider the type of high school.<br>
They assign admission officers to certain geographic areas, and they get to know many types of high schools. Also, most schools provide a profile that describes their student body. </p>
<p>Moreover, most private schools try to convince the admissions officers that their school is much tougher in grading than all of the other schools in the country.</p>
<p>Depending on what schools the other 149 classmates are applying to may hurt you if too many of your classmates, ahead of you in rank (and assuming many have better test scores, EC’s, etc.), are applying to the same schools. Depending on the school, they may limit the total number of kids they accept, coming out of the same high school.</p>