Frustrated at Non-Ranking School

<p>A few days ago, I asked my Learning Enrichment teacher (she essentially runs the gifted program, and she's doing the paperwork as my counselor through the process) what my class rank was. She informed me that I was 25/694...but that our school doesn't rank.</p>

<p>In some ways, if we didn't rank, I'd rather her have not told me that first part, because now I'm just incredibly frustrated that colleges won't see how high I was in my class.</p>

<p>Has anyone else had similar experiences?
I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but I've worked really, really hard to get where I am, and it seems like not ranking is just a way to give people who slack off an out.</p>

<p>It’ll be okay, it’s not going to hurt you. Just give you one less aspect to evaluate. Plus, I’m pretty sure they’ll still see your GPA compared to the top one.</p>

<p>Yeah, I know how you feel. I’m in the same position. It’s frustrating but I guess there’s nothing we can really do about it.</p>

<p>The colleges will know. Even when they don’t official ranks high schools give colleges enough info (grade distribution charts, historical data and other things) to let them figure out a rank.</p>

<p>I think that colleges know that schools that don’t rank have that policy for a reason… those schools often have a campus full of high performing students and to rank would unfairly hurt those kids who have high stats, but are just slightly under their peers - sometimes by just a few 100ths of a point.</p>

<p>Can you imagine a child at some magnet/gifted/tech school or a strong private who has a GPA of 4.0 or 3.9 being ranked in the mid range of his class, when he’d be in the top 10% in a regular school? Or, the child with a GPA of 3.6 being ranked in the bottom quartile? That’s why those schools won’t rank. Colleges understand that.</p>

<p>Don’t worry about not being appreciated by your colleges. They’ll see your stats; they’ll know that your a strong candidate. IF your GC checks the box that you took the hardest curriculum the school offers (or however that’s worded), the schools will know. :)</p>

<p>My kids’ private school did not rank either, yet its students don’t have any problems getting accepted to their choices. :)</p>

<p>However, since I read your post on another thread, I think a bigger concern for you might be your EFC. Do you know if your parents (you dad in particular) will pay their EFC since it likely will be high? Just something to consider :)</p>

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<p>Which is the situation with my dd. She has a 3.96 UW, 4.17 W and she is in the second decile. Our school doesn’t rank - if they did she’d be about 55/440. It’s a strong public school with lots of bright kids and while I was at first frustrated they didn’t rank, now I’m kind of glad.</p>

<p>If any of you want to have a look at this subject, get the book ‘A is For Admission.’ It goes into great detail about how colleges go to great trouble to figure out the rank for the unranked. They have existing formulas for schools they get a lot of applications from. My job as a work student student years ago was to call college counselors to get info to rank when the school profiles did not give us enough.</p>