I have a 3.78 GPA (unweighted, school doesn’t do weighted) and am ranked 121 out of 520 (top 23%). If it weren’t for Freshman year (3.3 GPA), I would be much higher in GPA and in rank.
Stanford states, “We will focus our evaluation on your coursework and performance in 10th, 11th and 12th grades, primarily in the core academic subjects of English, mathematics, science, foreign language and history/social studies.” meaning they place less emphasis on Freshman year grades, however even if this was true, my rank still suffers as a result.
Assuming the rest of my application is great (ACT, essays, EC’s, recommendations), is my rank going to kill any realistic chances of admission at Stanford?
When Stanford states “We will focus our evaluation on your coursework and performance in 10th, 11th and 12th grades”, I would believe them. Your 9th grade results will be significantly less important.
However, Stanford accepts less than 5% of applicants. They stated in an article that they sent to alumni a few years ago that 80% of applicants are academically qualified to attend. As such it is a reach unless you are both a child of a popular president or prime minister, and a nearly straight A student. There are something like 37,000 high schools in the US, and Stanford accepts something like 2,000 students each year for the incoming class. Even if you are the #1 student in your high school your chances there are still quite low.
My suggestion is that you apply to a small number of selective schools, such as Stanford or an Ivy League university. Then focus 90% of your college application effort on selecting and applying to match and safety schools. There are a lot of very good universities in the US, and you don’t need to go to a “top 10” or even “top 50” university to do well in life.
Also, you need to find out what your budget is and keep this in mind when deciding where to apply.
I am aware of the high probability of getting rejected, even for “perfect” applicants. I’m just wondering if being not even in the top 20% of my high school is a near-instant reject or not.
Most schools in my area don’t even rank anymore. If you have rigor, recommendations and everything else they look for I don’t think it’s a big deal.
Almost no one ranks anymore. Rank is meaningless. Your GPA tied to course rigor are what matter.
Thanks for the answers. Phew, I feel much better now.
Many schools may no longer rank, but colleges know where students generally rank and most students that get accepted are within the top 10% at their school.
“We will focus” does not mean “We will ignore.”
You can figure out your gpa without 9th.
If less than A grades are in a core, especially related to your hoped for major, it’s tough.
As for rank, if other applicants at your hs or local have better, all around and rank, they’re competition. Sorry. But your best bet is to know S so well that you make a great presentation in your app/supp. That’s not obvious assumptions.
Many schools no longer rank their students. However, colleges can get a sense of where you fall by looking over the school information sheets that go with your transcript.
Unless you are at a selective private high school where everyone is in all the same honors, AP or IB classes, it seems unfair that your school doesn’t weigh GPA, but then goes ahead and ranks you anyway. It makes it easy for kids to game the system.
IMO, selective colleges do evaluate you against your fellow HS classmates whether we like to admit it or not. At D’s high school only a handful of the kids apply to the top 20 colleges and of those, very few get accepted as we would expect. For example, from 2016 - 2018, 48 kids applied to Duke University and only 3 were accepted (6.25% not great odds and below the 10% average acceptance rate for all applicants). I would need to check but most of those 48 applied during the regular decision (RD) cycle. If one is concerned about competing with their HS peers, one strategy would be to apply early decision (ED) and eliminate the local HS competition. Of course there is risk with this strategy as you need to able to afford the college if accepted and you have to be 100% sure that this is your #1 choice college but I see this as one way to MAYBE help your odds of admission, at least as it relates to your HS senior class.
A few facts from Stanford that I found in a two second google search.
http://facts.stanford.edu/academics/freshmen-class-profile
94% of accepted students are in top 10% of class
99% of accepted students are in top 20% of class
It is probably safe to assume that the 1% outside of the top 20% of their class were hooked applicants (ex. recruited athletes, child of huge donor etc.).
That said, it is perfectly fine to apply to a reach school as long as you also have a good set of match/safety schools that appear affordable and that you would be excited to attend.
Consider asking your counselor to mention your upward trend academically in his/her letter.