Currently I am a sophomore at Westwood High School which is extremely competitive and if I switch to McNeil High School my class rank will go up and I will probably be among the top ten people at McNeil, while at Westwood I am top 6.4%. Do you think it is better to graduate from a competitive school or to graduate with a higher class rank to get into University of Texas at Austin. I know UT Austin values Westwood because they know it is so competitive, but is the prestige of Westwood better than a high class rank because from what I know class rank is important to UT?
If it helps, I am planning to get into their College of Natural Sciences or a major that will help me pursue a career in medicine.
UT says they do not take competitiveness of high school into account. But if you look at the feeder school supplement, they admit way more kids from Westwood than McNeil and they are the same size schools from what I can tell. They do take rigor of coursework into account and that may be a factor here since McNeil has several vocational programs from what I can tell…
https://admissions.utexas.edu/research
If you want guaranteed admission to UT, you would go where you will qualify as auto admit. This does not guarantee you admission to CNS but you can major in absolutely anything and go to medical school. You just need the pre-requisites and the MCAT scores. You have to decide if it is worth it to you to risk majoring in something else just to get into UT.
It appears about 20-25 percent of Westwood students get into UT. (Basing that on Wikipedia class sizes of about 650 and feeder report saying 130-150 are accepted per year. If the wiki page is wrong, I am wrong.) Those are great odds by staying at Westwood. Still no guarantee of major.
Have you made sure that you can be included in the ranking at McNeil, that 2 years count. For UT, class rank gets you that automatic acceptance and the percentage is dropping to 6%. So if you switch schools and can be included in the ranking, you will be accepted. That being said, Westwood is a very respected HS and I also believe being 6.4% there will also get you in but there is a low percentage of doubt because it won’t be automatic.
To answer your question, UT prioritizes class rank over competitive HS’s because they are required to do so by law. If you do transfer, just make sure that your classes will count the same and that you will be included in the ranking. I would definitely talk directly with an academic councilor there and also get it in writing. After the conversation write it up and send as an email as a confirmation. Do know that the McNeil councilor’s will not be thrilled with this. Also, the top students at McNeil could surprise you. I know Westwood is an extremely competitive school but that does not mean that your GPA is higher than the kids at McNeil. It does mean you are very prepared to go UT and that is why UT does take more students from Westwood than they are required to do. Tough decision.
Also, you should look at other schools as well if your path is medical school. There are many schools in Texas that can get you there that you are an automatic acceptance for and you could probably get much of your undergraduate degree paid for. That way, you save your resources for med school. UTD is one of them. Acceptance rate of about 73% to med schools and you could get full tuition plus money. Look around at all of your options.