<p>To anyone who's had experience with the admissions process: how important are GPA (both weighted and unweighted) and class rank in comparison with your entire application? What exactly does it contribute TO your application as a whole? And what would be a safe/good GPA for the most ridiculously selective college :(. I'm just a sophomore who's wondering (and also on a slight mental break with all my senior friends getting college decisions. :) )</p>
<p>Your GPA demonstrates your self-initiative to take challenging classes and your capacity to succeed in those challenging classes. It is one of the single most important components of your application–arguably more important than test scores, as it is a four year summary of your work rather than a four hour one. </p>
<p>Your GPA depends on the rigor of your school and your classes, but generally a “safe” GPA is 3.8+.</p>
<p>^ That safe GPA is only good if it has an appropriate rank. If a 3.8 only gets you to the top 50% of your school then you have severe grade inflation and the school will take that into account.</p>
<p>class rank and unweighted GPA. Weighted GPA has no meaning outside your school</p>
<p>Thanks! I’m mostly worried about class rank and how important that is in context with your GPA. I’m the first in my family planning on applying to college, so I’m relatively clueless. All my friends and peers who have had siblings go to college before them are freaking out to be number one in the class and taking all these extra online AP classes to bump up GPA/Class rank and I’m left wondering what’s backing up the hype. </p>
<p>So please give me your opinions/insights: I’m currently at a 4.0 unweighted, 4.7 weighted, but definitely NOT number one in my class. If I can keep it up for the rest of high school (fingers crossed), how much would not being ranked in the top percentages factor into my application?</p>
<p>i think it depends on the college. there are many people with great gpas who get rejected while people will lower gpas but who shows how much they want to attend the college get accepted, WITH scholarship, like myself. 
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<p>so unless you are aiming for ivy leagues, gpas don’t really matter because i think colleges see 3.5~4.0 about the same and sat 2100 and up about the same.</p>
<p>For rank, try to be in the top 10%.</p>
<p>hey I don’t want to jack this thread, but how would colleges look at the gpa’s of those who’s moved to several different schools?</p>
<p>I’ve moved to 3 different highschools, my fresh/soph year spent at very competitive schools.
freshman year/soph year I both got exactly 3.48 UW ironically with all honor classes.
the schools were ranked 40th and 300th in the nation respectively. the former is the 2nd best public school in the state of new york.
however, at my junior year at this small private school, I have a 4.0 GPA UW with my lowest grade being a 96 lol. im taking all honors and the only AP class this school offers is AP calc which i’ll be taking my senior year.
sat is 2110 and is the highest in the school.</p>
<p>really curious as i’m kind of an unusual case</p>