Should I take easy classes to boost my rank? Our school doesn’t have a 5.0 scale this year, they changed it to a 100 point scale. If you take a pre-ap class you get 5 point bonus to your grade and 10 for AP. I took all pre-ap this year (im a freshman) and got low A’s and high B’s in those classes. If I take regular class and get a 95 or more isn’t that better than a 90 in pre ap? I want to get into UT Austin, they have rule that if you are top 7% you get automatic admission. Will getting 95+ in regular classes benefit me more than getting a low A or high B in pre-ap to get into top 7% for admission into UT Austin
Taking “easy” classes can lower your ACT/SAT scores (you won’t learn as much), in case that ever became an issue.
I think that you need to focus on what feels right to you, and not worry so much about what universities want you to do.
If by top 7%, you mean the top 7% of your High School class, you should talk to your Guidance Counselor about how grades are weighted within your High School.
Two things:
1)Rigor of your course schedule is something that colleges will look at, and the selective colleges give it a lot of weight.
2)Each HS school has a different weighting for AP vs non AP vs Honors, so colleges throw it out, and look at unweighted GPA when they calculate your GPA. But they look separately at the rigor of your academic schedule.The weighting does count for class rank, though, at least at our HS. This can be important for some scholarships that might require top 5% or top 10% of HS class.
Course rigor may be more important than class rank.