<p>Well, my school isn't ranked in the top 50 nationally, but there is a huge gap between regular and AP/honors classes. I am looking towards top 20 schools like Northwestern and Rice, and I am concerned that my grades might be a little too low, but my classes are extremely difficult compared to other schools. For example, kids at other schools in my area get A's easily in APUSH or Chemistry, their tests are not that hard, and they get ridiculous extra credit. The majority of the Honors/AP teachers at my school, however, make difficult tests, only a few people get A's and there is a no extra-credit policy at my school for AP classes. I got pretty low B's in APUSH and APLang, but got a 5 on the tests. My friends at other schools who get A's in those classes got 3's on the AP tests. I have about 8-10 B's so far because I take the most difficult courseload (6 AP's next year) .
I am a rising senior and ranked about 45/620 (top 8%) with 3.85/4.35 GPA, which seems very low for Northwestern/Rice. </p>
<p>I'm afraid I have a low chance at these schools. :(</p>
<p>So how do colleges even know if your school is competitive and does my school even seem competitive?</p>
<p>schools send out a sheet with the average SAT Score, GPA, etc to determine the competitiveness of your context. Also, the rank of all high schools is found on the internet. So colleges could look your school up too.</p>
<p>^again, my school isn’t ranked very well because there is a HUGE gap between AP/Honors and regular classes/students. The poor students do poorly, but the top students do very well. We consistently place in Decathlon and State Academic competitions and people get into Rice, Penn, MIT, UChicago, Dartmouth, etc. It’s like you think China still isn’t very developed since you see their problems and poverty, but the rich are VERY rich…sorry about the bad analogy.</p>
<p>Look to the students that best match you–those who made similar grades in similar classes. Your schools seems to fare very well in college admissions.</p>
<p>Class Rank will compensate for you not getting Extra Credit/Not having a curve/ etc. etc.</p>
<p>As for saying that the students are smarter overall at your school (skewing class rank), you will probably only be bumped up if you are in a magnet or something like that. Colleges consider any regional subset (except low-income urban) of the population to have equal talent.</p>
<p>Edit: You may also benefit in class rank if your school doesn’t weight Honors/AP strongly.</p>