<p>If you go to a competitive school, colleges are able to see your GPA compared to the average GPA at your school. (Whether that is good or bad for some of you folks, I’m not sure.)</p>
<p>My school doesn’t rank either because I’m pretty sure 50% of my class gets straight A’s and 4.0+ like I do. Except some people take more AP classes than others, resulting in different weighted GPAs even though they all have A’s. Someone with a 4.08 GPA could be ranked 2/120 while another person with a 4.05 GPA could be ranked 27/120.</p>
<p>Weighted GPAs have to be used for class rank. Ranks based on unweighted GPAs are crap. It’s pointless when people who get straight A’s in regular classes which are significantly more easy than honors/AP courses are ranked above people who have A’s/B’s in honors/AP courses. This is why I like my school’s 7-point weighted GPA scale.</p>
<p>Class rank doesn’t mean that much. Last year I was ranked 132 out of 390 at a normal public school. I’m probably smarter than 99.9% of the people who were ranked higher than me but I didn’t take any Pre-Ap or Ap classes. But now I go to a school where they don’t rank.</p>
<p>@ youwiththeface: 15/300 still places you in the top 5%. For me, I’m sort of nervous about my rank because I attend a highly competitive private school, with only 84 kids in my grade, so not being among the top 8 people automatically kicks me out of the top 10%. And we rank according to UW GPA, which I don’t see as being completely fair, but oh well.</p>