I just completed freshman year of high school with an unweighted GPA of 96.67 (on a 100.0 scale) and a class rank of 10/264. I know certain areas where I lagged behind other kids, but do I still have hope of reaching top 3 in class rank by the end of high school or even becoming valedictorian/salutatorian?
In other words, how easily does the class rank of individuals already having class rank in the top 10 fluctuate from the time between freshman year and the end of senior year based on your experiences?
Please don’t base your high school years on class rank - there may be some excellent electives you are interested in that don’t come as AP/IB classes etc. I find it sad that kids get so concerned with class rank that they don’t want to take what they are really interested in.
Depends on how you and the others in your class perform over the next three years.
Mathematically, if the 9 ahead of you have a 100.0 going forward, you can’t move past them. Outside of that, pretty much anything is possible.
There is likely a pretty high correlation among grades between years, so I’d suspect the others will do very well going forward. But you have control over nothing but your own performance, so do your best and what happens, happens.
I agree with the above - take classes you like, classes that help you grow, etc., not those that will get you the highest 9x.x score. Inside the top 10, the position doesn’t really matter that much to colleges.