So I know that some colleges don’t look at your freshman year grades. If they don’t count freshman grades, does your class rank change accordingly?
Unless your HS provides a ranking without freshman year grades, then no. colleges have no way to calculate class rank.
No, most colleges don’t adjust their rankings just to fit schools that prefer sophomore year grades and up. These schools (like Stanford, CMU, etc.) just go with whatever the high school provides for them. The only thing that’ll be different most likely is their new, re-calculated GPA based on sophomore year and above.
Unless your school doesn’t start ranking until sophomore year, your freshman year grades will count for Rank.
What colleges don’t look at freshman year grades?
^ The UC system, for one.
Then do colleges put a lot of emphasis on class ranks?
Depends upon the college. You can google each college’s Common Data Set which will indicate the importance that that particular colleges places on rank.
UC’s do look at Freshman grades to see if you passed the a-g course requirements but Freshman grades are not used in the UC GPA calculation. Just want to emphasize that Freshman grades are considered in the overall application review.